Superbike champion Ben Spies and his girlfriend, model Leticia Cline, on their snowboard vacation. She is possibly better known as 'the Joe Rocket girl'.

It's been a while since my last column. All that's really been going on is we went and did the Daytona tire test and that seemed to go pretty good. Our bikes got caught up in Customs and all that, so I rode the Superstock bike. It had been a couple of years since I rode the Superstock bike. So it was good—I was told it was good to get a couple solid days on it. We got a good race setup, and we weren't too slow on it. We were less than a tenth off the second fastest Superbike on it, so that was nice. And I got on my old Superbike and tested some new tires, and got back in the rhythm pretty quick on it. That test went good. We got a lot accomplished—maybe not on the '07 bike, but we really did. It was good to see everybody on their new stuff: Ben with Yamaha, Jamie with Kawasaki, and all that kind of stuff. It would've been good to have Tommy there to do some more testing for us in some other departments, but it was good. Some teams seemed to be picking it up quicker than others, and some seemed to be struggling a little bit. But by the time we get back to Daytona, everybody's going to be ready to go.

It's just a huge, huge, a multi-billion dollar deal they're doing in Dallas. It's like what Times Square is in New York, they're going to do in Dallas. It's called Victory Park. A bunch of hotels and condos, and the American Airlines Center where the Mavericks play - my condo is a one minute walk from there. For me, being at my age and where I'm at, it presented itself, and it should be a good investment where I'll be able to make some money in a few years. That was one of the reasons we did it.

We did that endurance race I'd mentioned at the end of the season. Kevin Schwantz, Jamie James and myself riding.

We blew the bike up in about the fourth hour of a six-hour race. We started off, no one had had any time on the bike. I started from dead last on the second wave, and by about the fifth or sixth lap, we were up in the lead and put a pretty good gap on everybody. Then we pitted, and when we were in the pits, they threw the red flag. So we had to start from dead last again, and came up and went to the front again, and they threw another red flag and we stripped a sprocket out. Basically, Kevin Schwantz jumped in front of the start before they could start everybody. Everybody's on the grid, and they've got the two board up, and everybody's about to take off, and we're still in the pits. I'm trying to get on the bike and he's jumping up in front of everybody making the "Time Out" sign. "Let's stop this for a second!" Trying to get everybody to let us back in the race. So we got back out there and then just slowly blew up the bike and came to a standstill. It started blowing up in the fourth hour, and by the fifth hour we had SV650s passing us in the straights, so that's when we retired. We weren't going anywhere. But we all had a whole lot of fun. We got to ride motorcycles, so of course it was pretty fun.

Everybody knows what my expectations are for the upcoming season. If I don't win two titles, I'll be going home with my head down, very upset. But all I can do is give 100%. My team's definitely ready to go, and I'm definitely ready to go. I've been doing my training, and it seems like at Daytona we jumped on the Superbike, jumped on the Superstock bike, and my crewchief, Tom Houseworth told me, "That step you made from the year before to last year—it's only been three months of the off-season, but you've done it again. Your setup talk's better, your riding's another three tenths a lap quicker." It looks to be going good.

It seems like me and Tom hear through the grapevine that Mat's ready to go, too. He says he left a lot there out on the table. So if he did, we'll see it. I'm just going to give it 100%, and if we win the title, we did what we were supposed to do, and if he wins the title, he's stepped his game up and was keeping true to his story. So I guess in October of next year we'll see what happens.

I've been out at my other place, too. Kevin (Schwantz) came down, we did a bunch of motocrossing and training. Bicycling, obviously, is a big part of my training. I haven't got to bicycle as much as I'd wanted to, just because of the weather. So I picked up running again. I really dislike running, but sometimes you've got to do what you don't want to do to stay fit.

I'm trying to schedule a couple of triathlons this year. I train with a couple of triathletes, and I have a run that can stay there, and my bike should be really strong compared to them. Hopefully I'll be talking to you after the swim part. I'm not too confident in my swimming. I might sink and drown. I'll be about 200 meters out there doing the backstroke. But that's my goal—I'd like to do a couple of those and just mix the training up, trying to do some different things. Some people just do one thing and get burned out on it, I want to keep everything fresh and fun, and try to stay fit, because we've got two classes that I really feel we can win the championship in. That would be a good deal to do, because in '08 I'm going to do Superbike only, for sure. That will obviously just make Superbike easier for me, with setup, and just a lot of different things. If we can win the Superbike championship again, with riding the Superstock bike, I think that would be a big goal, because it still seems like the big name contenders in Superbike are Superbike-only guys, and that does make it a little bit easier. So if we can do what we want to do and win a couple of championships, it'll be good. And then move to Superbike only, and just get better from there.

I'm really amped about this season. I think it has thr makings of being one of the best ever of racing in the states. The Suzukis are going to be strong, Jamie's (Hacking) on a Kawasaki, Yamaha is back and the Hondas should go good. I can't wait.