Jordan Wilsey “RussOgraphy” | A Budds Creek MX National Story
Photos and Story by Jordan Wilsey
I packed the car and headed out for Maryland from upstate New York around 4am Eastern time. I was thinking I would miss rush hour city traffic but a massive rain storm slowed up my travels so I hit rush hour traffic in New York City at rush hour. Traffic was hit or miss the rest of the way but still cost me another hour of time to get to Maryland.
Once I crossed the Maryland boarder I looked at my GPS and my phone was reading 10 percent and wouldn’t you know I leave my charger at home! Great. At every red light I’m trying to remember directions in my head in case my phone did die I wouldn’t be lost in Maryland! Getting close now. I look down at the GPS and it’s saying to turn right onto Budds Creek Rd. The troubles of my travels had passed! So I thought…
Wouldn’t you know it, a tractor trailer roll-over literally hundreds of feet up the road from Budds Creek Motocross Park. Traffic was backed up pretty far so I could do nothing but wait. I was hoping to arrive there and be shooting by 10 am. Instead I got to Will Call at 12:30 and the rest of media day was a mad dash!
I struggled to find the media tent at first so I didn’t get to my desk until around 12:50. I had just about a half hour to set up my gear and figure out settings for interviews and I decided I was just going to send it and hope for the best.
Interviews went okay minus some audio issues and due to how crowded the media tent was. I’m not going to be too hard on myself though because it was my first time ever doing it.
Then the riders hit the track for media day and I’ve never been to Budds Creek before so I had to learn the track as well and find some good spots for photos. I managed to find a couple and felt pretty confident going into the races Saturday with my settings and equipment.
The goose chase!
It started on Friday when I was trying to find Dylan Wright in the pits. I was told by a special somebody [No finger-pointing, Jordan!] that he was going to be number 539 for the weekend. I literally walked around the pits 4 times and even went over to the armateur side to try to find Dylan. I walked and walked and walked until I felt like I was going to die of heat stroke. It was very hot Friday hauling around all my gear over the rugged terrain of Budds Creek. I decided I was going to call it a day and head back to the hotel for a good night sleep and get a few edits done from media day. Oh wait! The tractor trailer roll over…
It took me an extra 30 minutes to pull out of the track and another half hour to get back to my hotel. Man, that place was great too! Let’s just say I got 50 percent of my money back on that stay. The pool was green the smoke detectors had been ripped out of the walls and there were just wires hanging there! The WiFi being as bad as it was definitely was the worst of it though and would hinder me from putting out more content than it did. I ordered some sub-par Thai food and packed up my gear and decided I was just going to hit the hay and get an early start in the morning.
Race day, I wake up took a quick shower got dressed and was out the door for about 6 am. I decided against the coffee in the hotel room and decided I was gonna get some Dunkin’ Donuts! Well, I ended up at a knock-off Dunkin’ Donuts called Dunk. I pull up to the window and I guess they sell cigarettes too because they were right in the window? At this point nothing could surprise me about Maryland! On a positive note the coffee was actually better than Dunkin and so was the breakfast sandwich. To a New Yorker that honestly means a lot!
So, I wanted to stop at Wawas and grab a few Gatorades expecting it to be hot and I wanted to stay hydrated. If you have never been to Maryland, every road in the city has medians so you have to drive 10-20 blocks to find a turn around. Spending 12 hours there I quickly came to discover that it doesn’t seem like there are any traffic laws down there and you kinda just do whatever you want!
I finally get to the track at about 7:15 and we had our meeting for media at 7:30. I figured I had a few minutes before anyone hit the track so I went out searching for Dylan Wright again. At this point I’m thinking he’s a ghost because I’ve walked more laps around Budds Creek pits than the riders had on the track at this point! Billy had said he’s probably just there in his pickup and camper so I’m thinking he’s just parked with the privateers. Still no luck and riders were headed to the track!
I ran down to the track because one of the riders local to me was in the 250 B qualifying and I wanted to get some pictures for him.
250 A comes on the track and I’m down in the corner right before the Big Gulp and this guy absolutely wads himself on the outside line and the flagger is standing about 10 feet from the edge of the track just lightly waiving the cross flag after the point the rider was down on the track! He gave the Alpinestars medical staff no protection so I started yelling at him to wave the flag! Literally, no reaction at all. I unhooked my camera, set it down on the Alpinestars medical cart, and tried to grab the flag out of his hand to wave it in the correct spot where the riders would see it before making impact with the downed rider! He wouldn’t give it to me so I told him he was in the wrong and how to make it right! We finally managed to get the rider up and out of the way and no one was injured, surprisingly.
Finally 450 B qualifying began and I figured now would be the time to catch Dylan Wright out on the track. Still no number 539! I texted Billy and said, “I don’t think he’s out here.” Billy replied with what do you mean, he just set the fastest time!? Followed by a, “Oh, he may be number 109 down there.”
Well, that changes things so now I’m looking for a number 109 and I found it…it’s a KTM? What on God’s green earth is happening?!
Then another text from Billy: ”He’s pitted at the Team Honda HRC truck.” Well, I honestly didn’t think to look for a guy in a pick-up truck pitted with Jett Lawrance but that’s a shame on me for not understanding just how good this guy is!
I made my way over to the HRC truck and finally get a chance to see the bike and figure out what was going on for my own sanity at this point. There was another 109 as mentioned before so he had to duct tape a line across the 0 to make it an 8 so he was number 189! Someone check the record books but Dylan Wright may have been the highest qualifying rider to make the main with duct tape numbers on his bike!
The crowd at Budds Creek may have been record-setting. Every place you looked was packed full of motocross fans . They where honestly really cool fans compared to us New Yorkers at Unadilla yelling the other side sucks!
Kids were putting their hands out for high fives from the photographers. One drunk fan could barely stand up and he was begging me for my Russography hat that I wear to the events! I asked him if he even followed me and kept it moving. They all loved #238 Haiden Deegan. When he had the 10-second lead the crowd was so loud every time he would come by any point on the track.
The red flag came out and let’s just say the fans were pretty quiet for the remainder of the 250 main. He wouldn’t get the best jump and would go down in the first corner resulting in a 16th place finish in moto 1.
#32 Justin Cooper would get the win in moto 1 with #96 Hunter Lawrence right behind him for second.
Now it was time for 450 moto 1 and all eyes were on Dylan Wright. He would get a decent start and was riding really good. He would climb his way up to 9th place during moto 1 battling with #78 Grant Harlan on a wide bike. Then *poof* he would disappear off the track a little over halfway through the moto.
I made my way back to the pits after another Jett Lawrence-dominated race. Dylan’s chain guide would get broken off with a rock and his chain would let go welding itself into the engine case. His bike was leaking every type of fluid imaginable. Upon further investigation, it would look as if the fluid wasn’t leaking out of the left engine cover but rather was leaking out of the actual transmission shaft that is attached to the front sprocket. He would have had to swap the entire motor with his mechanic in about a half hour in order to make it out for the next moto and time wasn’t on their side!
The red flag in the 250 moto would cause the 30-minute intermission to get nullified, so there really wasn’t much that they could have done to get back out there. A catastrophic failure to the bike but Dylan was in one piece and healthy, and that’s all that truly matters. With how hard and gnarly the track was this incident could have been much worse for the Honda Canada GDR Fox Racing rider!
250 moto 2 was a bit more copasetic and a lot less drama and would show “Hunta” getting the win followed by Cooper and #30 Jo Shimoda.
450 moto 2 would show more of what we are getting used to with Jett taking the win, but it may have been the closest #23 Chase Sexton had finished to Jett all season.
#7 Aaron Plessinger we would take home a second place on the day followed by #21 El Hombe, Jason Anderson. The podium was rocking as all the fans piled in to see the winning riders for the day. Here comes the champagne!
I tried to tuck myself into a corner of the fence between the riders and fans so I wouldn’t be in the crosshairs of a bottle of champagne with my camera. I guess I picked the wrong spot because as I set up to get some champagne shower pictures both Jett and Jason popped their caps and absolutely melted me, covering my lens, my camera, and my face with so much champagne that I literally couldn’t take any more photos of the podium which kinda sucked.
It was finally time for the post-race interviews at the media tent.
I hurried back and packed up some of my stuff while waiting for the riders to show up. They were a bit different this week because of the hurricane that was about to hit California, so Justin Cooper came out first as he had a flight to catch to get back home. Hunter came out next and would phone in Shimoda because he also had a flight to catch to get him back home before the storm hit.
The 450 podium was next and I had a few questions to ask the guys. I was a little bit nervous but I feel like I pulled it off quite well and got all the riders engaged in my questions.
I asked Jason about his life as a new dad and as a motocross rider. I asked Jett about his favorite video game and I asked Aaron about his favorite foods for moto days and cheat meals. It was a good time and almost brought some light back to a very odd and boring press conference.
I got to meet Jason’s baby girl and his wife and was asked to take a picture of them together and that was an honor! The day for the most part was wrapped up but I hung around untill around 9:30 with some of the photographers and introduced myself and got to know everyone a bit better.
I took a picture of the moon rising over Budds Creek and wished it good night as I headed back to my sub-par hotel. I followed the team hrc hauler most of the way back to my place for the evening. I stopped and grabbed a bite to eat and made it back to my hotel around 10:30. I called my fiancé and baby girl and ended up falling asleep shortly after.
I woke up in the morning to hundreds of ants in my room and that was the final straw for me. I snapped a bunch of photos and marched my way to the front desk and showed her everything that I have experienced over my 2-night stay. I was refunded half of my stay and then I packed everything into the Prius (I borrowed my mom’s car for the road trip) and started my journey from Maryland back to New York at about 11 am on Sunday.
I only made one pit stop on the border of Maryland to get a coffee and a bite to eat and managed to make it back home by 7pm. Traffic wasn’t nearly as bad as it was heading down on Friday so I was forever thankful for that.
With this being my second credentialed shoot, I figured I would be more experienced and more prepared to be the only media guy at Budds Creek for the weekend. I learned very quickly that you can never be fully prepared. I struggled with cell phone service and WiFi in the media tent. There must have been so many people at Budds that it just negated service. Media day I was sitting at about 3 bars of service and a decent WiFi connection. Race day my service read “SOS” all day and I got kicked from the media tent WiFi every 5 minutes. I wish I was able to get content out to Direct Motocross a lot faster and more consistent than Unadilla.
I ordered a new card reader so I would be able to dump photos a lot faster onto my hard drive thea I was able to do the week before at Unadilla but the new card reader was USB-C and my laptop is so outdated it doesn’t even have that type of port on it! All of my extra preparation went down the drain and everything became a lot more stressful to the point it was almost hard to enjoy the opportunity. Even though a lot of my pictures came out really nice I kinda felt like I was letting Direct Motocross and all of Canada down by not being able to update on Dylan the way that I had planned.
I wanted to do an interview with him as well and by the time we both had free time he was pulling out of the pits and calling it a weekend. I’m forever thankful to Billy for giving me another opportunity at informing you about the race day. I will learn from this and get some better equipment for Supercross where I hope I can make my media return.
Thank you all for the support and following me along on my journey! It was no vacation and it was a lot of hard work to provide you guys with what I did. I will continue endlessly building on my capabilities in hopes to keep improving on my craft! I appreciate you all and thank you for the love and support.
I’m back home with my newborn so the job never ends, but I will keep posting content for you all and can’t wait to see you back at the races sooner than you think!
– Jordan lives in Ballsay, New York with his fiancé Taylor and newborn baby girl.
Thanks for the great article. Awesome photos too.