{"id":9162,"date":"2016-10-28T18:30:16","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T18:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idsunmedia.com\/?p=9162"},"modified":"2016-10-28T18:30:16","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T18:30:16","slug":"jett-erickson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/28\/jett-erickson\/","title":{"rendered":"Jett Erickson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Built For Speed<\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n

BY JONATHAN KANE<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Jett
Jett Erickson hops aboard his restored 1979 Suzuki motorcycle. Photo courtesy of Jett Erickson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jett Erickson, a junior at Wood River High School, is both an avid baseball player and a hockey player. He also finds time to pursue a wide range of activities, including skiing, hunting and riding motorcycles.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s his favorite?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever sport I\u2019m playing at the moment,\u201d Erickson said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Born and raised in the Wood River Valley, Erickson attended Bellevue Elementary and Wood River Middle School before high school.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been great growing up here,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s never a dull moment because there are lots of activities. I\u2019ve really enjoyed it and I couldn\u2019t imagine living anywhere else. I\u2019m definitely not a city kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Erickson also said growing up in a small town \u201ckeeps you out of trouble. Everywhere you go you know someone and everyone\u2019s looking out for you. If I did something bad, my parents would hear about it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Erickson lists a number of his favorite activities as being hunting, fishing, hiking, concerts, skiing, sledding and outdoor hockey at night. \u201cThere\u2019s not a ton of things to do at night, so being able to play hockey at night is great.\u201d<\/p>\n

But his favorite activity is riding motorcycles. To that end, Erickson just restored a 1979 Suzuki TS250 bike.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was sitting in a shed at my mom\u2019s store after my grandparents left it there. It hadn\u2019t been ridden in 20 years. My dad had it running before I was born. It was calling my name.\u201d<\/p>\n

Erickson said that he learned how to ride a motorcycle before he knew how to ride a bicycle.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was 3 years old and it was a 50cc bike,\u201d he said. \u201cMy parents threw me on it. They figured that the sooner I learned, the sooner I could go with them on rides.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Erickson loves most is the freedom that riding provides.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can pick a trail and you don\u2019t know where it leads. You can cover a lot more ground and see things that you otherwise couldn\u2019t see. I also love the speed when you open the throttle and go into fifth gear. With a name like Jett, you have to go fast,\u201d he says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Erickson put quite a bit of work into the Suzuki to get it up to shape and road worthy. This included a lot of electrical work, draining the oil and cleaning the bike and tires to make it look sharp.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt starts on the first kick and it saves a lot of miles on my truck.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before hitting the road, Erickson had to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles and get his motorcycle license. That requires a written test and a road test, which included a trial on a course, including turning and braking.<\/p>\n

\u201cI only missed one point,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The bike can now reach a speed of 65 miles per hour.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty proud of the work that I did and I\u2019ll take great care of it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Built For Speed BY JONATHAN KANE Jett Erickson, a junior at Wood River High School, is both an avid baseball player and a hockey player. He also finds time to pursue a wide range of activities, including skiing, hunting and riding motorcycles. What\u2019s his favorite? \u201cWhatever sport I\u2019m playing at the moment,\u201d Erickson said with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,38,41],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9162","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-schools","8":"category-sponsored","9":"category-student-spotlight"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}