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JayLael
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« Reply #19 on: February 23, 2016, 12:06:26 pm » |
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My visit to California was in 1976. The Honda RC factory motocross bike, referred to as the type2, featured a relocated swing arm pivot, closer to the counter shaft sprocket, and revised handling specs. The type 1 works bike was 1975 and prior. I was told by Jon Rosensteil, the head technician and all around genius, in charge of the Honda R&D, their very advanced and incredibly impressive development program for motocross bikes. they destroyed these incredible works bikes, to keep Yamaha, Suzuki etc from having the chance to dissect them and figure out their ideas.
As you might imagine, a ranch kid from Montana doesn't get to see many works bikes. My trip to California began in an unusual, and unpredictable fashion, when I went to the 1976 Wagner Cup USA world championship trials near Gold Bar Washington. At that time I was 17 and had been riding trials since the tender age of thirteen, and had since progressed to Expert class and worn out one 250 OSSA Mick Andrews replica, and had just bought myself a brand new OSSA 350 MAR. I was living just outside of Missoula Montana. The minimum age to compete and hold an FIM license was 18. I was six months shy of becoming 18, so I was a spectator at the World championship trials event.. The next day after this world trial was July 26th, 1976 which will remain burned upon my memory for the rest of my life.
I felt quite strongly at the time that I had enough skills and bravery to be a world class trials rider. I had competed as an expert since the age of 14, and had even been noticed by John Taylor of Yankee motor company. I received a parcel from the local dealer, containing a letter on company stationary, from the president of Yankee motors, saying "Congratulations to your sponsored rider on his recent wins". In the box there was a specially set up Bing carburetor and a super cool factory exhaust system for my bike, to keep! I was the happiest kid, just elated by that, and feeling like I was on the brink of fame and fortune as a factory trials rider.
The problem was that fate was about to deliver a severe setback to my dream. It came in the way of a semi truck that did not budge, when I crashed into it while attempting a foolish pass on a two lane road. My traveling buddy, Vince and I had just crossed the state line, passing the "welcome to Montana" sign on interstate 90, after driving for most of that Monday, within 200 miles of being home. The van rolled over and over, treating myself and Vince to the experience of being like a cat in a dryer. One filled with motorcycles, tools, gas cans,camping gear and our food box, containing bread peanut butter, jam, and raisin bran cereal, which was evenly distributed throughout the inside of my unlucky Ford Econoline van. The whole works finally came to rest on top of my left leg
.The windshield had blown out and the top of the van was crushed down 8 inches or so. We were not wearing seat belts, and I'm not sure the van even had any. Vince's hand was cut very badly, and he was white as a ghost, but he was at least able to stand up and try to help me. Problem was the weight of the van made it impossible for me to move, and there was gasoline spreading on the pavement in an ever widening circle. Imagine my horror when a helpful motorist with a cigarette was asking if he could help. Some level headed guys asked the man to please get back far away with that cigarette. They found my bumper jack and began to lift the van off my leg with it.
As luck would have it, there was a road crew working nearby and they had a backhoe. They ran and brought it back with a heavy chain and lifted the van up about a foot or so, and the men grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me out from under it. My badly broken left leg skittered along the pavement as they moved me back, and just as they got me clear, the van settled, and would have crushed me if the had not gotten me out of there quickly. They covered me with sleeping bags and coats until I was swaddled completely and at that moment a white middle aged woman with Dear Abby hairdo approached me and held my hand. In a West Virgina accent, she said, "I hope you know that the reason you are still alive is because Jesus loves you. If you don't think so, just look around you." and I nodded my head and through tears I said, "Yes, he must".
Shortly an ambulance arrived and they hauled Vince and I down the pass to a tiny town called Silverton. There we were admitted and shared a room. I remember through the fog of sedation, the doctor placed his knee right in the middle of my crotch, pulled on my left foot very hard with a sudden heave! I was looking at the reflection of my leg in the stainless steel lamp shade in the operating room, and I saw the jagged end of my fibula (the larger lower leg bone) suck back inside my leg, and I had to look away. He stitched up the hole where the bone had just been sticking out, and slapped a plaster cast on it as I drifted off to sleepy land.
I spent an entire week there in a shared room with Vince and some old guy who was dying of lung cancer. He was hooked up to a great huge machine which mostly prevented him from speaking, except when they came in to take him off the iron lung to smoke his daily cigarette. He said, "What happened to you guys?" and I thought about it for a minute and said, "We crashed". This struck Vince and I funny and we laughed like it was the most hilarious joke we had ever heard. After several days there, Vince's Mom showed up, having driven all the way from Whitefish, and we said our good byes, me apologizing one more time for the mess I had gotten us into.
The rest of the week passed, and my step Dad showed up to cart me home in the family pickup truck. He had made a bed for me in the back and put on a canopy, which seems like a relic of the past today. I have to say the first time I was in a vehicle traveling at 60 mph, was the most terrified I had ever been up to that point in my life. I wanted to bang on the window and ask him to stop the truck, but he had the radio turned up and never looked back even once the entire trip home. Another week passed before my parents had the van hauled home, with our smashed up dreams inside. At the two week mark I was up and around on crutches and proceeded to straighten my bent rear frame loop and handlebars, and just could not resist the urge to ride her around the yard. Next thing I know I am barging up the creek, trying to clean one of my favorite practice sections. The left turn at the end caused me to loose my balance, and when I tried to take a dab with that broken leg, I folded up like a house of cards.
I was immediately trying to fabricate some kind of brace so I could practice, which I made by sawing a section out of a feed bucket, applied some foam and tape, and made quite the brace. I got to where I could clean all my practice sections on one leg, apparently adapting to this situation, never once considering the madness and ridiculous futility of it all. The world round trials had left it's mark on me, and this is about the time I found out that my girl friend had broken up with me. I took this very hard, but I can see why she felt it was time to cut me loose. She was clearly not my priority, and it must have been the obvious choice for her.
I resigned myself to an earnest attempt at healing, so I was on a vitamin regime, and drinking crazy amounts of milk, which I thought would speed my recovery. I remember I read the entire bible cover to cover that summer, and was convinced that my leg would be as good as new in six weeks, since that is the magic number you hear people throwing about, and Jesus loved me, this I knew. At six weeks to the day, I sawed my own cast off, and slipped the Heckel trials boot on, with the piece of feed bucket inside it. So far so good, and I made plans to ride the California nationals at Donner pass. The trial was two more weeks away so I figured it ought to be good as new by then. I made arrangements to ship the OSSA in parcels under 50 lbs each, so in the end I had four boxes of Ossa. One bright and early morning, my Mother drove me and the parcels to the bus station in Missoula, and I took my seat on the bus, headed to Portland Oregon. There was a nice looking old gentleman sitting next to me on the bus, so I tried to strike up a cheerful conversation with him by saying, "Where you headed?" "To hell!, he replied. We did not speak again the entire trip, and I think it was ok with him.
It's a twelve hour trip from Missoula to Portland if you are in a car and driving fast, but on the greyhound it took quite a bit longer. I had a trials buddy, Brad Skreen, waiting for me at the Greyhound station in Portland and we greeted each other and watched as a heavy set black guy was unloading the parcels. The one with the engine made a terrible clank, as he swung it out of the cargo hold and dropped it upside down onto the concrete. Brad approached the man and asked him to be careful, as there was an engine inside the box. He gave us that look, like a teenager rolling his eyes at his parents when they say "Are you sure riding a national with a broken leg is a good idea?" The OSSA suffered a broken cylinder fin, but still worked. My friend took me on a brief tour of Portland, where I saw a huge shopping mall named Washington square, and ultimately we arrived at the home of trials legend, Powroll Honda sponsored rider, Jay Terry. I had the bike assembled and ready to ride just as the sun went down over Lake Oswego, and the next day before it was light, we set off for California.
We were in a pickup truck with three trials bikes in the back, towing a small camper. The driver was Bill May, and shotgun was Brad Skreen who incidentally won a national trials event overall on a Montesa in 1980. I was seated in the middle, and all that day we drove all the way to Donner Pass to Norm and Mitzi Taylor's Donner ski ranch. We had a small practice session and the first thing I found out was that the bikes run terribly at this altitude. I didn't have a single spare jet for the Bing, and as I asked around the pits I got no help. So I would have to ride up huge boulders on a bike that ran like it had the choke on, with a halfway broken leg! Optimism sometimes needs a reality check, and I was about to get one in a big way!
The rider's meeting was a nervous experience as looking around you saw factory stars from all over the USA. Trials were pretty well attended and were covered by the press. Len Weed of Dirt bike magazine was there. The Honda factory team was there, Bernie Schreiber was schooling everyone on how to ride a trials bike without saying one word. He was an intensely serious rider, and man did his bike run good. I was told that Bernie's dad had machined the cylinder head, advanced the timing, and made a science of slide cutaway mods, different needles etc. Bernie could do a floating turn about 360 degrees on a slight side hill! I was saving my leg so rode very little. Marland Whaley was riding a factory Honda RTL 300 that was said to have cost $30,000 in 1976 money to build! The team Honda members rode out of a Gigantic Dodge tradesman van, extra long version, with a second row of seats. It was a kind of tan orange color, I like to call baby sh%t brown, that towed an enormous enclosed trailer with a small workshop and lots of spares inside. It had three foot long Honda wing emblems on the sides and said Team Honda.
The Sunday morning of the national dawned nice and sunny. It was late summer at ten thousand feet, and the Donner Ski ranch was and is still a beautiful wondrous place. The rocks are everywhere and are mostly huge, granite stones with unbelievable grip! The first section was a little tricky wet stream right in the parking lot. Then we followed a trail into the back country, with sections scattered along at fairly small intervals. This is when I found out another problem I was going to have. The trial was set up in a very unorthodox fashion. They had created an event with 50 sections and only one loop! This meant I would have to walk 50 sections instead of ten or twelve, subsequently riding them from memory, as I had planned. Walking at all was very hard, and what was starting to dawn on me was that there was no way I could walk them all. I rode as well as I could, on the blubbering dog of an OSSA, and a sore leg that was getting more and more painful by the minute.
I think I made in to section 22 or something, and was literally crawling up the rocky sections and getting scared of falling on the steep ground with my bad leg. That's when I saw the back marker. In Canada they call this guy the "whipper in". His job is to follow up on the course and the rule is that if you get passed by the back marker, you are disqualified. I raced ahead of him valiantly, and managed to ride another section or two before he was right on my tail and had announced that I was running behind. He raced me side by side up the gnarliest rock strewn dry creek, and when we reached the next section, I just throttled up, fueled by pure adrenalin. I felt like a gazelle on the African plain, about to become lunch. I raced right into the section without looking at it. I managed to get through the first part of the section clean, then encountered a hard left turn up a four foot rock face with very little run. I made it part way up the rock and fell, but I did not separate the broken bone. It hurt damn bad. At this moment while I was laying there, the back marker passed me, and was in a state of horrified shock. I was gutted. After this man and his Bultaco left us there in a cloud of sweet smoke, me devastated, I asked the observer how I could get back to the parking lot.
He pointed me in the right direction, and I remembered the warnings about anyone going backwards on the loop, being very frowned upon, but I shouldn't have worried, I mean, what are they going to do, disqualify me? At any rate, there was no one coming. Right about then as I was wrestling with the decision, and wasn't entirely sure which way to go, I came around a corner on the high mountain trail and there was the ski lodge far below in the distance. I realize just how idiotic this whole thing is, so what's one more stupid decision, in a whole string of bad choices? I headed straight for the ski lodge off the trail. As anyone with half a brain knows, it didn't take long before I was in serious trouble. There are sage brush with tentacles as long as your arm intertwined among the rocks. The only thing this place lacks for hazards might possibly be rattlesnakes! I never saw any, but I found myself on a side hill that was damn steep, on loose gravelly soil,with sage brush tentacles gabbing at my front wheel. Every time I tried to let out the clutch the rear wheel would slip downward toward a ravine that was there, forcing me to put way too much weight on my leg. I was learning first hand how the Donner party must have felt trying to negotiate this place in a heavy wagon pulled by mules.
By this time you must surely be wondering, "Where are your parents, and why are they letting you do this thing?" They probably would do this differently looking back as would I, but then I wouldn't have this incredible memory. In the end, memories are all we take with us from this one shot at life, so in that light, I would do it over again. They felt that my dream was more important than "safety" and they were right to decide this, in my case. I would have felt like I was going to curl up and die without this dream. I had already lost my girl over this thing, so I was already in for a penny and now I was in for all eight pounds, or however many rhetorical pounds there are.
Had I been managed by someone who has a history of riding competitively for decades, I'm sure they would have recommended that I should have taken more time to heal. Later on team Honda trials division manager Bob Nickelsen said that I should have had my bike taken away for as long as it took to be fully recovered. Overall it might have served me better, but we'll never know.
So there I am grinding my way along a steep loose hillside, above a small ravine, and I manage to gut it out and struggle my way down to a gravel road, which I followed to a paved two lane highway. I drove the OSSA at least a mile or more, back to the Donner Ski ranch property, sweating the possibility that I would get pulled over by a cop. I was riding along crying, as I was still very upset, and very concerned about my leg. I moped around our truck as there was no one around. After an hour or so of sitting there feeling sorry for myself riders began to trickle in from the event, I had cheered up a bit, or forgot to be upset for a moment, and got back on my bike. I was using it as a golf cart to "walk" around the parking lot, gawking at the bikes and riders.
Curt Comer had a 300 cc Kawasaki special. A guy had made a mono-shock Kawasaki with a snail pipe that looked really amazing. It ran worse than my OSSA as he was obviously ignorant of jetting as I was going into this thing. Every famous trials rider was there, Don Sweet, Rich Delaney, Martin Belair, Joe Guglielmelli, Jack Stites, Bermie Schreiber, Lane Leavitt, the list goes on and on. So I was sat there on my bike chatting with some people and Honda factory rider Mark Eggar came riding up on one of the sewing machine model RTLs, the short stroke 300, and shut it off right there. He said, I saw you ride. You ride pretty good! How did you do? I gave him a brief omission filled explanation of my unfortunate dnf. "Are you gonna' ride the Saddleback park and San Diego nationals next weekend?" "No" I said I was going to have to head back to Montana soon, as I had no ride to get to those events. "Well, I could ask Bob (Nickelsen) and Fred (Wing) if they wouldn't mind hauling you down there. "Well I'm not pre-entered" I said, trying to do the right thing and go the hell home. "Let me just see inside your trailer", I said. When I saw inside there it was a shrine to ultimate coolness in titanium, magnesium, and chrome moly splendor. They had long stroke thumpers in red and white, and short stroke super exotic ones also. They had brand new two ply pirelli M13s that were stacked to the ceiling and an entire parts department, with cables hanging in rows, and drawers full of inner tubes and small parts in factory Honda wrappings straight from Japan, all the plastic parts and spare fuel tanks hanging on the walls..
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