This is where it all started for me. This is the
Harley booth at the very first Cycle World cycle show
in1965. That's a CRTT that I'm sitting on and the 250cc
Sprint powered streamliner that went over 156mph at
Bonneville with Cal Rayborn piloting.
What really got me hooked at the show was a Castrol black
and white film of Geoff Duke doing a lap of
Silverstone(?) with a camera mounted on the tank.
Ordinary mortals didn't do this sort of thing. So, it
never occured that I could do it, too.
I had a 250 Sprint which didn't have a lot of poop. I
asked Bruce Chubbuck, the Pasadena Harley dealer, if
there was anything that we could to make it faster. He
said, "Let's find out." And promptly phoned Dick O'Brien,
the head of Harley racing, in Milwaukee. Dick said that
there was a kit available and shipped it out. I had never
touched a wrench in my life. When the kit came in, Bruce
gave me a corner of the shop and access to tools. The
mechanics guided me in installing the head, cam, piston,
even doing a valve job. The 250 now screamed. I
eventually sold it to one of the mechanics who campaigned
it for several years at Ascot in flattrack and TT racing.
After I got my BS in Math, I moved to Sparks,
Nevada to fix slot machines ... a good use of my
education. While I was there, I went to the University of
Nevada at Reno working on a secondary teaching
credential. What I remember most clearly from a class
called "Legal Foundations of Educations." I was the only
graduate student in the class. The instructor jokingly
said, "Never hit a student in the face ... hit them in
the stomach, it doesn't leave marks." Everybody else
religiously wrote that down thinking it would be on the
test. Partway through my second semester, my advisor came
to me and asked me if I'd like to bypass all the rest of
my requirements and go teach. I bit on this and ended up
teaching in Austin, Nevada, for three years.
The second year I was there, I befriended a kid all
the other teachers as well as the students couldn't
stand. He lived out at Frontier and only came in to
school under threat and didn't want to be there. It
turned out that his mother had died recently and he and
his dad bought the gas station there as well as the
adjoining land. His dad was really interested in
geothermal power and had a D9 Caterpillar tractor with
which he built full sized motocross tracks for his son
who had a 250 Suzuki. It turned out that all this kid
wanted to do was race. But, he didn't know how to get
started. I promised that I'd help him after the summer to
get into a real race. But, during the summer he was
killed in a hunting accident by his cousin. Within two
weeks of this, I drove down to the San Francisco Bay Area
and went from shop to shop looking for a roadracer. Any
kind. Didn't matter. All this kid wanted to do was race.
If he could do it, so could I. I ended up buying a third
hand YAS1 125cc Yamaha twin that had been put together by
a factory mechanic. Lot's of TD1 parts on it. Cool. This
is the bike after I got it ready for the 1988 La Carerra
race. In 1970's race trim, it weighed 165 pounds wet.
I had always heard that when racing two-strokes,
it's wise to always have have your fingers on the clutch
lever just in case. It finally happened to me on the 125
until coming out of the esses onto the short straight at
Sears Point. Just as I shifted into 5th going about 90,
the rear wheel locked up. That's quite a skid on a rear
Dunlop Trigonic tyre! The motor had seized.
I decided that I didn't wan't to replace the crank
bearings every third race and set two sets of points
before every trip onto the track. So, I went from one
popular, inexpensive class to another ... 125GP to 350
production.
One of the images that remains with me that illustrates
the difference between racing and street riding was going
into turn one during a practice at Ontario Motor
Speedway. The front straight was about 2/3 mile long
turning into the infield for turn one. At the turn there
was an orange plastic pylon. Someone was ahead of me and
had clipped the pylon. It broke his right footpeg clean
off and almost tore the rider off the bike. But the image
that I have is of that pylon tumbling in slow motion
seemingly straight up in the air and I'm committed to
collide with it during it's descent. Production classes
were at the time allowed any internal modifications. I
was down on the tank going over 120mph getting ready to
downshift and all I'm thinking is, "I don't want to get
killed by a pylon." Well, drawn-out story short ... it
didn't come down anywhere near me. I had very little
choice because I was at the limits of what I was doing. I
was committed to a line to get through the turn. I could
have gone off the track ... but not at over 100mph.
On the street, ALWAYS allow yourself to have
viable options. Hey, it was bad enough that we
had to thread our way on the back straight through the
ducks walking across the back straight. At Sears Point,
it was rabbits.
La Carerra is a race run on the highways of Mexico.
In 1988, the race was run on HIghway 3 between Ensenada
and San Felipe. Bikes only ran for a few years. Every
year one of the bike entrants crashed out and died. Bikes
were no longer allowed.
I yanked the 2-stroke motor out of my YAS1 and with the
help of my friend, Tom Keeble, and installed a Honda
XR200 4-stroke single. The bike was about 20 mph slower
... but I managed to make it street legal. That's another
story.
The only rule, other than safety, for the bikes was
that anything could run except four cylinder bikes. There
was only one Sportster entered and unfortunately he
crashed and died in the race. My understanding was he was
one of the few that didn't pre-ride the first part of the
course and note where the obstacles were. The race
started at kilometer 10. At K13, through some twisties
lined by boulders, there was a hard to see raised bit of
pavement in the turn. He didn't know about it, hit it at
speed, and went off into the boulders.
