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April 15, 2005
How it all began
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Motorcycling did not come naturally to me (and some will argue that it still doesn't). I guess what I mean is that I did not grow up in a motorcycle or dirt bike culture. As a kid I did not have a tote-goat or mini-bike and no one in my family before me, as best as I can tell, ever owned or rode a motorcycle. Nobody I knew had a motorcycle either. I grew up in a suburban neighborhood within eyesight of the Philadelphia skyline. I can remember attaching baseball cards to the frame of my bicycle with clothes pins to simulate the sound of a motorcycle but that was the closest I came to having a motorcycle when I was young.
Several things happened in the 1971- 1972 timeframe that changed my life. First, a fraternity brother, Gary Schroeder, bought a Honda 305 Scrambler and he and I rode all over Dayton, Ohio on that bike. Actually, he drove and I rode as the passenger. After a couple of incidents that could have resulted in my death, I decided that if I was to meet my maker in a crash, I was going to die holding onto the handlebars.
That summer (1971) I bought my first bike, a used 1968 180cc Yamaha twin. At the time I was not really sure what type of bike I wanted. I didn't really intend to buy the Yamaha, but I dropped it and scratched up one of the pipes on the test ride and I figured that it would be cheaper to buy it then to not buy it and pay the owner for repairs seeing as he was just slightly pissed. I quickly learned that it was not an off-road bike. I can remember crashing it good on a gravel road out in the pines and I managed to get it really well stuck one afternoon when I tried to ride it on the beach. I rode the heck out of that bike that summer, traveling all over New Jersey on it. When it was time to go back to school I loaded it onto the back bumper of my Pontiac Le Mans and headed to Ohio. (Now I expect this may sound a little weird to someone born after the gas crisis of 1973, but back in the old days, cars had heavy duty metal and chrome bumpers sturdy enough to support a ~250 pound dirt bike.).
The second thing that changed my life was watching a motorcycle race for the first time. I was out riding around Dayton one Sunday that fall and happened across a motorcycle race being put on by the Dayton Motorcycle Club. It looked like a lot of fun but I knew the little Yamaha was not cut out for that type of adventure. I decided to get a more dirt oriented motorcycle. I sold the Yamaha and with the money bought a 1968 250CC Triumph. This bike looked like a dirt bike and it even came with trials block pattern tires. Unfortunately, it was British and I was not much of a mechanic. While I had some good times on the bike they were far and few between because it was always breaking something.
The third thing that happened was the release of the Warner Brothers movie about Evel Knievel. I saw it a couple of times. Gary and I would take our bikes out onto the tiered playing fields at the University of Dayton and attempt to emulate our hero, at least until the campus cops would chase us away. They could never catch us because they were in cars and we would escape by taking the walking path across the railroad tracks into the off-campus housing area. I remember Gary and I went to a Halloween party and he dressed up like Evel - and got lucky! I got lucky too, in a manner of speaking. As I was riding home from the party at 2AM in the morning through Kettering Ohio some weird part of the electrical system broke off, from vibration I suspect, leaving me without lights. Rather than walk, I proceeded to ride slowly along the side of the street until a city cop stopped me. I explained my predicament to the officer and given the late hour, the lack of traffic and the fact that I was actually sober, he let me continue without lights. Think that would happen today?
As my senior year ended, so did my relationship with the Triumph. I sold it to a guy who dropped it while he was test riding it and who probably decided as I had the previous summer that the gracious thing to do would be to buy the bike because the owner was just slightly pissed. With the proceeds from the sale and some money I had saved, it was time to find a new bike.
I had a couple months off before I had to report for active duty at Officer Basic School at Fort Benning (ROTC deferment) so I went home to New Jersey. I don't remember who saved the clipping from the Courier Post newspaper but when I got home I was given a recent article about a motorcycle event, the Curly Fern National Enduro, that was held in the pine barrens (the woods). This, combined with the racing I had witnessed, caused me to look for a "real" dirt bike. I started checking the paper and not long after a 1971 Yamaha DT1 was advertised for sale in Haddonfield. It looked similar to the Triumph in the sense that it was a dual purpose bike, but the guy I bought it from told me he rode it on enduros. That was good enough for me!
I rode it around the woods and gravel pits of South Jersey for a month and then it was time to report for duty so I loaded the DT1 onto the Pontiac and headed south. Fort Benning was a great place to ride. Much of the post was wooded with roads and trails throughout. Because they trained airborne troops at Fort Benning, the Army had large, elevated saw dust rings that were used to practice parachute landings. On weekends I would practice my jumping technique there, not by jumping out of the 34 ft towers used to simulate an aircraft but by launching the Yamaha up the edge of the ring and landing in the middle.
I also tried my hand at "motocross" (actually rough scrambles) at the East Alabama Speedway and actually won a third place trophy at one of the races. Back in the day, dual purpose bikes came with a 19" front wheel. The hot set-up, according to the dirt bike magazines, was to make it a 21" front. Now this might be an easy thing to do in Socal in 1972 but in the back woods of Georgia it was a whole nother story. Eventually the right rim and spokes showed up and I found someone to lace them up. I also bought a GYT kit that included piston, rings, cylinder and an obnoxiously loud pipe and straight thru silencer. Probably one of the reasons I have tinnitus today.
After Officer Basic and Airborne school, I attended a three month course at Fort Knox, KY. I rode around that base a bit and found a MX track in the area where I would practice. A couple times I took the Yamaha up to a friend's farm in Ohio to ride. That is where this picture of the Yamaha was taken. When the Ft. Knox school was over it was almost Christmas and I spent it with my family in NJ.
My next duty station was Ft. Ord, CA. On the way, I stopped over and spent New Year's Eve with Gary in Dayton. He really liked the Yamaha and asked to take it for a ride. As it was stripped of lights and other street essentials, we took it to a construction site to play around. On the site was a area much like the playing fields at UD. One thing led to another and next thing I know we are engaged in a jumping contest. We each took turns and the first few passes were not much to speak of. Then Gary got a longer run, shifted into 3rd or 4th and let her fly, easily besting any previous jump. Of course we had to measure so I got my 25' tape out of the car and measured the distance at just under 25'. Not to be outdone, I got an even longer run and hit the jump in fifth. Gary was standing on his mark when I flew by and I remember looking down at the top of his head as I went by and wondering how bad the landing was going to hurt, given that the Yamaha had a metal tank and not much suspension. Somehow I managed to land it, not destroy my manhood nor hit the tree or chain link fence that on previous jumps had been a long ways away. The tale of the tape was a little over 48 feet. Gary wisely (for him and my bike) chose not to challenge this mark. As it turns out, that was the longest distance I have ever jumped a bike to this day!