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RIP Joe Salas 4TheRiders

Joe was the cause of the very first argument between myself and @dtrides :). We met Joe at the little Prairie City Track in 2008 where I was practicing on my brand new Ducati Hypermotard. I let Joe ride my bike, and @dtrides lost his mind and said, "That guy crashes all the time!" :laughing I just thought it was fun that this famous-ish dude was riding my bike. Thankfully, he didn't crash, and all was well. But over the years whenever @dtrides and I ran into Joe, he remembered us/me as the "girl the the hypermotard." RIP Joe :rip My condolences to Brianna and his girls. :rose:rose
 
I first met Joe in the early 2000's.
He was on a borrowed bike riding with Pashnit on a ride up in my area ( back when I was in Humboldt).
I don't remember exactly how I got involved in this ride but Tim asked if I could lead since I knew the local roads well.
Joe and I ended up riding together at the front most of that day .
Hwy 36, 3, 299.... We road like we had ridden together for years but I could tell he was a superior rider even on a borrowed bike.
Our paths would cross at least once a year, AMA races, the yearly International Motorcycle show, or just some random place. Always good to see him , say hi, and catch up a bit.
In 2008 my Hyper (Sara) bought a new Ducati Hyper Motard and thought it would be a good idea to do a SM track day in Sacramento area with our friends.
We show up and there is Joe.... he asks if Sara would let him take her new bike for a spin on the track.
She says yes and I nearly blew my top! Joe had a history of borrowing bikes and maybe do some crash testing if necessary on them. Not on purpose but he liked to push limits that us mere mortals refrained from . I went on a long walk and contemplated life...
It was all good, bike returned in one piece and became just one more "Joe" story to fondly remember.
While we were never close, it was always good to see him and catch up with what was going on in the Moto world.
Ride on my friend ( probably on a borrowed bike)....
DT
 
budman said:
A couple more pics.

View attachment 602115
I already missed him and now no texts will ever be returned. :(
Click to expand...
Kitty! Man I loved his stories about abusing that poor bike in hilarious ways. I had been thinking of him and checked all the social stuff for posts a few weeks ago and thought he was focused on family and onto a different phase...this news kicked me in the ass. Such a good guy.
While I have some pics on track (few) he actually took family photos of both our kids when they were newborns. Priceless memories that we treasure.

He was so humble about it, noting he wasn’t a “portrait” guy but the pics were beautiful of course.

May he RIP and his loved ones find peace. He was quite the character and will be missed.
 
Joe cast a long shadow, and I'm guessing this is only a small sample of the stories out there. Joe and I had some fun riding together back when he had that YZF600, and there was some fun foolishness involved. RIP, Joe.
 
Lot's of good memories with Joe. Still having a tough time putting it to words, but for now I'll just go with "I miss you brotado".
 
My heart stopped for a moment when I heard this news last night. Nooooooo.

It has been a long long time since I've had the pleasure of riding, photoing and just BS'ing with Joe.
An epic person with such talent, both on two wheels, behind the lens, or just sitting across the table.
I'll miss ya bro. Wiping the tears now, dammit.

Peace and many happy memories to Bri and the daughters.

Saddened... John
.
 
I'll keep this as short as possible

Joe was a photog and moto enthusiast that hung out mostly on SBR, he really wanted to start shooting trackside. So I offered him a job in 2004 or 2005 to shoot AFM RD1. He did something nobody else was able to do at the time and that was to tell a story via the images he took. Back then he didn't really understand shutter speed and Motos so a lot of his photos looked frozen but they still had a certain pop.

Fast forward a few months, we are building a trackside photography company, he's sleeping on my couch in San Jose, bumming Starbucks Wifi, up for days on end traveling from San Jose to Buttonwillow to Reno Fernley to Thunderhill then back to San Jose, shorting photos, manually processing credit cards and building a website. For those that do not know, not only was Joe a great writer but he was great with coding and could build anything on the web but he HATED IT and it was a bit comical to see him start to pout cuz he didn't want have to build a website.

One night on the way back from Reno Fernley, we were discussing a business name, Seppes.com (His) and Sidewazzz.com (Mine) needed to be one and so the names started flying. 4Theriders.com wasn't the first choice as it limited us on clients (moto only) but we rolled with it anyways and it was born on HWY 80 at 11 or 12pm.

From there he was the bad boy of the trackside photo world, he would push boundaries and make new ones. He really rolled with the "4" in the name and constantly threw 4 fingers up in the same manner you would see someone do a westside "W" only his version was a 4 digits lol. He was really the first to publish crash photos consistently online (this was Taboo) and got a lot of heat for it but he was always there defending it with ANYONE. The funny aspect in this was the guy could really piss people off but he somehow managed to make friends with them eventually. He took a lot of photos (Candid Paddock) that photogs like myself considered a waste of time but clearly they were popular amongst the people as he was able to capture moments nobody was paying attention to.

Funny/ Not So funny story's
*Kitty getting Stolen
*Kitty catching fire T12 at Thunderhill
*Plucking Ticks off him
*Start/ Finish lady at Fernley that almost turned me into Bacon bits
*Getting banned from a Trackday provider
*Getting Banned from Buttonwillow

While I had a lot of great times with him, unfortunately I think Joe's selfishness ruined the friendship. He knows I would have enjoyed to have a beer with him and say "I told you so" and just laugh it off. The guy lived life the way he wanted to. Rip Joe, Seppes, Com3
 
Joe would post pics of riding in the most unlikely places. I started 2wheel backroad exploring partially due to his photos. Thanks Joe, you were an inspiration.
 
Joe and I have been friends for 21+ years. This news is terrible he was way too young and sadly he will not see his kids grow.
I will always try to just see his smiley.
Condolences to Joe's family. Godspeed Joe
 
Really sad to hear about Joe's passing.

A story for the crew: I'd known Joe for quite a while, he'd taken pictures while I was racing, I'd struck up a casual friendship, and at some point my friend @U26A1 who was an early adopter of Brammo thought it'd be fun to do a fake Brammo ad. The Brammo was his third bike, and we conned Joe into coming out to just have some fun shooting video and see what sorta hijinks we could get up to to make a video that didn't take itself too seriously.

After some playing around at the house, they took off to do some shooting around SF. There's a famous tabletop in SF, and Joe was like "well, it'd be sick to jump this, so let's have a go at that", and U26A1 asks him "how fast should I hit it", and he says "I dunno, about 30-35, and stay on the gas when you hit the lip", and so he sends it, lands the bike, locks the rear and slides to a stop down the far side of the jump, and Joe is like "that looked great, why the dramatic landing", and U26A1 goes "well, I've never jumped a bike before". He had assumed because we were all friends that of course U26A1 was just as broken about motorcycles as the rest of us. :laughing

I'd always hoped that I could con him into cutting that footage into a video, especially after Brammo got acquired and killed by Polaris. It just wasn't to be. That photo still hangs on the wall of U26A1's place - one of I think 2 photos that came out of that whole experience.

RIP buddy. Wish things had been different.
 
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