Justin Shearer Number 87 A Colorado Motocross Legend Born at Watkins
A motocross legend is not made only on race day. A legend is made on ordinary Sundays, in muddy boots, beside family, chasing the next hill with a full heart.
That is how I think of my nephew, Justin Shearer, number 87.
When people hear the word “legend,” they often picture trophies, podiums, bright lights, and someone holding a helmet over their head while a crowd cheers. Those moments matter, of course. Motocross is hard. It demands courage, strength, focus, and a kind of stubborn joy that not everyone understands.
But when I think of Justin, I do not first see a trophy.
I see Watkins.
I see the track now known as Jewell Motocross, sitting out there on the Colorado plains, where the sky feels too big for a person raised in Spain. I see dust hanging in the air like a memory. I see trucks lined up, bikes unloaded, kids running around in boots too heavy for their legs, and families turning a patch of dirt into a Sunday home.
Most of all, I see Justin smiling through mud.
The real legend began on Sundays at Watkins
Watkins was more than a place to ride. For our family, it became a ritual.
Every Sunday had its own rhythm. Load the bikes. Check the gear. Pack food. Forget something. Laugh about it. Drive out toward the track with that quiet excitement sitting in the truck. From my Spanish eyes, Colorado still looked like another planet in those early days. So much space. So much light. So much silence before the engines started.
Then the first bike would fire up.
That sound changes everything.
The track came alive. The land that looked empty a moment before suddenly had movement, color, and dust. Riders leaned into turns. Parents watched from tailgates. Friends shouted advice, most of it useful, some of it purely emotional. Someone always had a tool. Someone always had water. Someone always had a story from the last ride.
Justin belonged there in a natural way. He did not need to announce himself. He had the kind of presence that comes from love, not performance. He loved the bike. He loved the dirt. He loved the freedom of it.
And as number 87, he carried himself with a spirit that made people look twice.
Not because he was trying to be famous. Because he was fully alive.
He taught me to ride, and he taught me more than riding
I can still feel the nervousness of learning to ride at Watkins.
There is a special kind of humility that comes when you are an adult, especially one from another country, and your nephew is explaining how not to embarrass yourself on a motorcycle. In Spain, I knew roads, villages, old stone streets, and the beauty of walking through places where history sits in every wall. Colorado offered a different lesson. Here, the lesson came with dirt, throttle, balance, and the courage to trust the machine beneath you.
Justin taught me with patience.
He could have laughed more than he did. He had the right. Instead, he showed me the basics. How to stand. How to relax my arms. How to look ahead instead of staring at the front tire like it was going to betray me. He reminded me that the bike often follows the eyes. If you look down, you go down. If you look ahead, you give yourself a chance.
That has stayed with me.
At first, I thought he was teaching me motocross. Now I know he was teaching me something larger.
He was teaching me that fear shrinks when you move through it. He was teaching me that confidence is built lap by lap. He was teaching me that nobody starts smooth. You stall. You wobble. You get mud where mud should never be. Then you kick the bike back to life and try again.
In those moments, I saw what made Justin special. He was passionate, yes. He was brave, absolutely. But he also had generosity. He wanted other people to feel what he felt on the bike.
That is a rare gift.
Muddy gear tells the truth better than clean trophies
Clean gear looks good in photos. Muddy gear tells the better story.
After a day at Watkins, everything came home marked by the ride. Jerseys were heavy. Boots looked like they had been dug out of a riverbank. Gloves smelled like dirt, sweat, and gasoline. Helmets carried small scratches that became part of their character.
To some people, that mess looks like work.
To us, it looked like proof.
Proof that we showed up. Proof that the day asked something from us. Proof that nobody stood around waiting for life to become perfect before enjoying it. The mud was part of the joy. The dust was part of the memory. Even the tired drive home had its own sweetness, with bodies aching and hearts full.
There is a childlike happiness in getting dirty for the right reason. Motocross gives that back to you. It strips away the polished parts of life. It reminds you that adventure often comes with laundry, bruises, and a little grit between your teeth.
Justin understood that.
He did not chase comfort. He chased horizons. One jump led to another. One lap led to another. One Sunday led to the next. That is how a person builds a life with shape and color.
For Justin Shearer number 87, the track was not simply a place to practice. It was a place to become.
Family, friends, and the sacred noise of the track
The best part of those Sundays was never only the riding. It was the circle around the riding.
Motocross families understand this. A day at the track is a strange and beautiful mixture of noise and care. Engines scream, but people look after each other. Riders compete, but they also help each other load bikes. Someone wipes mud from goggles. Someone shares gas. Someone offers a sandwich. Someone checks if a rider is okay after a fall.
That combination of toughness and tenderness is what I admire most.
Coming from Spain, family gatherings often meant long meals, loud voices, and everyone talking at once. In Colorado, I found a different version of the same love. Instead of gathering around a table, we gathered around trucks, trailers, bikes, and coolers. Instead of church bells marking the day, we had engines. Instead of polished shoes, we had boots caked in mud.
But the feeling was familiar.
We were together.
That is what made Watkins sacred to us. It gave us a reason to return. It gave Justin a place to share his fire. It gave the rest of us a front-row seat to his joy.
And joy, when shared, becomes memory.
Trophies matter, but they do not carry the whole story
Some people might say a sports legend needs a list of wins. They might want records, rankings, medals, and official recognition. I understand that view. Motocross is a sport, and racing has a scoreboard for a reason. Competition pushes riders to grow. It gives structure to courage.
But a trophy can only hold one moment.
It cannot hold the early morning drive. It cannot hold the uncle learning from the nephew. It cannot hold the laughter after a muddy fall, the smell of wet gear in the truck, or the quiet pride of watching someone you love do what they were born to do.
A trophy cannot hold every Sunday.
That is why I believe the word legend should be larger than winning. The truest legends leave marks on people. They change the way a family tells stories. They become part of a place. They make an ordinary track feel like a chapter in someone’s life.
Justin did that at Watkins.
He made riding feel like an invitation. He showed us that courage could be playful. He showed us that adventure did not require a distant country or a perfect plan. Sometimes it waited just outside town, on a dirt track under a Colorado sky.
Watkins became Jewell, but the memories kept their name
Places change names. Tracks change owners. Signs change. People who ride there now may know it as Jewell Motocross, and that name belongs to the present.
But for us, Watkins remains alive inside the memory.
That is how places work. They carry official names, and then they carry the names families give them in their hearts. To me, Watkins will always mean Justin. It will always mean number 87. It will always mean the first nervous ride, the Sunday gatherings, the dusty horizon, and the feeling that Colorado had opened a door for me.
As a Spaniard in Colorado, I often noticed the contrast between where I came from and where I had landed. Spain taught me to love old paths, plazas, and the human pace of walking. Colorado taught me to love distance, open land, and the kind of freedom that comes with a throttle in your hand.
Justin connected those worlds for me.
He made Colorado less foreign. He gave me a way to enter the landscape, not only to look at it. Riding with him, or watching him ride, helped me understand something about this place. The West is not only scenery. It is movement. It is risk. It is friendship built outside, under weather, around machines, with dust on your face.
That is a beautiful education.
The extraordinary was hiding in the ordinary
The older I get, the more I believe that life rarely announces its most important moments.
You may not know, while loading a bike on a Sunday morning, that the day will become a memory you carry for years. You may not know, while wiping mud from goggles, that you are taking part in a family tradition. You may not know, while your nephew teaches you how to ride, that he is also teaching you how to look ahead in life.
That is the magic of ordinary days.
They become extraordinary later.
Justin’s legend, to me, lives there. It lives in the repetition of Sundays. It lives in family and friends coming back again and again. It lives in the courage to ride, fall, laugh, and ride again. It lives in the search for new horizons, even when the horizon is just the next turn on the track.
And it lives in the bonds formed along the way.
Those bonds are stronger than dust, stronger than mud, stronger than the sound of any engine fading at sunset. They are the real prize.
Number 87 will always ride through Watkins
When I think of Justin Shearer, I think of motion.
Not just speed, though he had that. I think of the motion of a life pointed forward. The motion of someone who loved the next trail, the next lap, the next Sunday. The motion of a young man who turned a motocross track into a family landmark.
Number 87 belongs to that place in my mind.
He belongs to the muddy gear, the wide Colorado sky, the lessons given with patience, and the laughter shared with people who loved him. He belongs to the story of Watkins, now Jewell Motocross, and to every ride that taught us something about bravery, family, and joy.
In Spain, we say that the road is made by walking. I have always loved that idea. It means life appears as we move through it. We do not receive the whole path in advance. We create it step by step.
Justin made his road differently.
He made it by riding.
And in doing so, he reminded us that the extraordinary often waits inside the ordinary, on a Sunday, in the mud, with family nearby and the horizon calling.
ARTESEROSTEK:::...VCF:::...COLORADO
Comments