{"id":2599,"date":"2014-03-10T22:40:16","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T22:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/?p=2599"},"modified":"2014-03-10T22:40:16","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T22:40:16","slug":"ive-seen-stranger-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/?p=2599","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve Seen Stranger Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Redlands, Calif.<\/strong> \u2013 Wow, does it feel good to be in one place for at least a week! Between my most recent trip to New Zealand for the Team USA Scholarship and the 2014 Pro Mazda Cooper Tire Winterfest I have hardly had a second to relax. It been a good thing though\u2026 I\u2019ve been keeping super busy with the new Rising Star Racing program as well as preparing for the first race of the season and everything that comes along with it. Not to mention I have found time to start messing around with a small clothing line. The clothing deal has been something I\u2019ve talked about for years with a friend of mine, and it\u2019s been one of those things where we finally said, \u201cWe need to stop talking about this and just do something with it.\u201d Who knows, maybe it will take off? I\u2019ve seen stranger things.<\/p>\n

On my way back from Winterfest, I had a brand spankin\u2019 new GP6RC waiting for me at home courtesy of the boys at Arai. In the meantime, I was thinking about changing up my helmet design and I just couldn\u2019t decide on a painter. Lucky Design in Italy has done my past three lids but I just can\u2019t be bothered to send that thing overseas again just to wait three months for it to get finished. Don\u2019t get me wrong, they do great work but I wanted to get something done quick and I wanted something different than your average lines and airbrushed helmet art. After a ton of research, I found Jimbo Phillips. He\u2019s a local guy close to my parents\u2019 house who does a lot of eye-popping graphics with tons of juicy colors and things like that. His dad designed all the graphics for Santa Cruz Skateboards in the \u201970s and \u201980s. Now, I think he does most of their stuff. Anyway, I\u2019m just looking forward to a super rad helmet this year that\u2019s going to be way different than the usual. Keep your bananas peeled for that one, folks.<\/p>\n

I was also able to sit down with the guys at OMP and set up a design for this year\u2019s suit and I think it\u2019s going to turn out great. We decided to go pretty radical and include everything from neon colors to zebra stripes\u2026 Picture that one.<\/p>\n

The clothing company shenanigans came together fairly quick. I think that\u2019s partially because I\u2019ve been designing and doing research for years before I decided to anything with it. So really it was all ready to go, I just had to find time to get the wheels turning. I have had a lot of encouragement and inspiration from my old art and photography teacher from high school, Alex. I met up with him while I was at my parents\u2019 house in between New Zealand and Winterfest. We just sat down, had lunch, and he showed me his little studio where he gets funky with all his artwork. Basically, that was that \u201ceureka\u201d moment for me. I left his place so psyched to have some fun with this whole t-shirt thing. I guess I was just looking for ways to be creative and possibly make a little dough. I\u2019ve always been super into art, drawing, photography, designing, and things like that. Call it fun. Call it passion. Whatever you want to call it, I find it enjoyable.<\/p>\n

I have this little office space I filled with a desk my dad and I built for 10 bucks. I\u2019m actually sitting at it right now. The top came from an old shipping crate I found behind the garage. Each leg was made from redwood and cedar posts my dad used to build a fence years ago. The leg supports came from our wood burn pile in the backyard, and the extra wood slivers made for exceptional coasters. So there you have it\u2026 One can of ancient wood lacquer and a $10 box of screws later, we had ourselves a workstation.<\/p>\n

Okay, well I\u2019m going to check in for my flight tomorrow so I\u2019ll let you guys marinate on that. I\u2019m trying to keep these things shorter because I don\u2019t want to keep you glued to the computer all day. Get outside and make things happen.<\/p>\n

Whatever you do, wake up happy!
\nNeil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Redlands, Calif. \u2013 Wow, does it feel good to be in one place for at least a week! Between my most recent trip to New Zealand for the Team USA Scholarship and the 2014 Pro…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,5,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2599"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2604,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599\/revisions\/2604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}