I know I've been slacking with any kind of updates to all our diehard Ducati fans, and a few of you have let me know about it on Twitter (@NickyHayden69). That's okay, because I deserve to catch a little grief, so here's a little rundown on what I've been up to so far this year.

Wrooom was an awesome event, but getting back to the Southern California sunshine wasn't a bad option either.
My brothers and I have a house out here, and every winter we spend some time here thawing out, because the weather's quite a bit nicer than in Kentucky this time of year. It's really productive for training and riding, and LAX is handy for going back and forth to Malaysia.

My brothers' race teams also do some testing out here, so we kind of use it as a winter camp to prepare for the season. I don't know what the weather's like where you're reading this. Hopefully I won't upset too many people, but it's really only been about 80º Fahrenheit here (27º Celsius) every day.

There's a bit of work involved, but also it's a lot of fun. Anybody who's got brothers knows how it is, and that's especially true for my brothers and me. We're all really tight and have similar ages, so there are some pretty silly moments goofing off, clowning around, and giving each other a hard time-just being brothers, basically! Sometimes on a bike rides, it's helpful to have brothers around to bounce ideas off of and talk about racing, so we enjoy that. And I'm happy to report that Roger is doing much better after the loss of his beloved Bears in the NFL's NFC football championship game. He took it hard, but he's up now, able to get out of bed, and eating again. So rest easy RLH fans; he'll be ready for Daytona!

There's no shortage of things to do in Southern California. I was able to check out the supercross race at Dodger Stadium, and my brothers and I sat with my boy Ernesto Fonseca and got to catch up with him a lot. It was cool to see the fans, and there was some good racing. I'm a sucker for good racing, and they were doing it that night. I'm a bit of a Ryan Villopoto fan, so it was cool to see him win, and after that night, I've become a Trey Canard fan. That dude is tougher than a $2 steak! He had a big crash in his heat race and made a couple mistakes, but he wasn't about to lie down. He fought for all 20 laps and ended up just off the podium, so I'm a fan of his, for sure.

I've also had a few sponsor obligations going on in Southern California. Dainese is my new leathers company, and they had an open house at their D-Store in Costa Mesa. First they did a video interview and a photo shoot; it's always a little tiresome to stand around and just change jackets and fake a smile over and over, but it's part of the job. I'm really proud to be on board and excited to work with them. I've worn the gear a little bit in Supermoto, but I'm looking forward to getting to Malaysia and wearing it on the MotoGP bike.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to. Now it's time to regroup here for a couple days, and then on to Malaysia for the first official test! Right after Wrooom, the Ducati Test Team had a three-day outing at Jerez, so Filippo kept me up to speed on how that went. Now I'm ready to get back on the bike, get locked in, go to work, and get prepared for the season.

Also I included a extra photo of my niece during Christmas with her new Ducati from Uncle Nicky!

Fingers crossed it's a good year not just for Hayden Ducati riders, but for all Ducati riders!