Motocross Exhibition Comes to Norwood

14 Jul Motocross Exhibition Comes to Norwood

It's hard enough to let your child ride a motorcycle for the first time. Imagine he or she grows up to be a professional motocross stunt rider, like Chas Burbridge.

Chas and some of his friends who live on the Western Slope are coming home to Norwood for the Freestyle Motocross Exhibition on July 16 (Saturday) at the San Miguel County Fairgrounds. The event is a fundraiser for the Wright Stuff Community Foundation and its Prime Time Early Childhood Education Center. Chas and the other professional FMX team members travel all over the country and world to stage events like these, performing in front of stadiums full of thousands of people, but this show will also be a homecoming for the local boys.

Not that Chas's mother Deanna Burbridge will be watching him ride. Oh, she'll be there—but she might have to turn away from the action when her baby (er, 27-year-old son) hits the ramp. Any sport where the riders perform stunts called "tsunamis," "heart attacks,""dead bodies/corpses" and "the kiss of death" is probably one you hope your child doesn't pick up. And watching anyone jump a 70-foot gap, catch 40 feet of air and do a backflip between two metal ramps is likely get your own heart racing.

But Deanna Burbridge is proud of her son, even if she does have to glance away when he's up. "My heart gets into my throat," she laughs. "But he's good at it, and he loves doing it. And that's the most you can ever wish for your kids."

The motocross event is just one of the weekend highlights at the fairgrounds. Friday evening starts with a greased pig contest and is followed by an old-fashioned country dance, with great music, a beer garden, smoked, barbecued meat, and ice cream. Sunday is a "horse whisperer" clinic where a professional trainer will take an untouched two-year-old filly and teach her to ride in three hours.