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Motorcycles were in my blood since I can remember.
When our family went on vacation in the family car I would stare out the
rear passenger window imagining I was on a motorcycle riding up and down
on the side of the road making these magnificent jumps at every
intersection. I think my parents thought I was looking at scenery…. I
got my first motorcycle in 1967 (11years old). It was a Sears’s three
speed Allstate Motor scooter
.
When the other kids were trying to keep the chain on
their homemade or Heath kit mini-bikes, I had a transmission! In
retrospect I think we all looked like knuckle heads.
My first "real" motorcycle was a 1965 Honda CL72 250.
That showed up in 1970 with a completely frozen engine from a family
friend.
It was an attempt I think by my parents and neighbors
to keep me from riding the scooter through their back yards and for
"short" durations on the street (yeah right). I borrowed some metric
sockets from a neighbor who had a Volkswagen and 11 months later I was
tearing up lawns big time.
At 15 I made a mistake on a job application and
started working in a Honda Shop on the south side of Chicago. That
lasted the summer. Since this motorcycle thing was getting out of hand,
another family friend delivered a 1971 TR6 Triumph that was in a fire.
Everything was melted. The Amal carb looked like a blob of metal. Wires,
seat, etc. were gone. The tank was good though (weird). That took me 8
months.
Then at 17 years old in the summer of 1973 I was
working for a Triumph/Kawasaki/BMW dealership and started racing Hare
Scrambles and Enduro’s with a 1972 Greeves griffon (see Pic).
In 1974 I took some of my hard earned college savings
and bought Kawasaki’s first KX250 (see Pic).
I also started college at Southern Illinois
University with this great plan that I was going to be able to study
Engineering, race motorcycles, date cute girls, and work in the local
Harley bike shop in my spare time….I almost flunked out. So I did the
smart thing, I dropped Engineering and changed my major to Aviation
Technology. Upon Graduation I had another great idea. I would again
major in Mechanical Engineering and take up Road Racing ( see Picture).
Which did not last long since it was obvious I would
never be a Gary Nixon or Roger DeCoster. So I stopped racing and taught
Motorcycle Safety part time while getting my degree in Engineering.
After graduation I got a job designing Advance Technologies for the
F-16, got married, got great children and the motorcycles slowly
disappeared.
Twenty five years later (2002) I received a phone
call from an individual in my neighborhood who I knew only through
unsubstantiated rumors and innuendos. He introduced himself as Clay
Fugate and said someone told him I once worked on motorcycles.
He had just purchased a 73 Husky CR400 and a Bultaco
Surpa T trials bike that would not run. With the allure of free beer I
agreed to help. After several weekends and a new ignition we took both
bikes out trail riding. I was on the go-slow bike and Clay was on the
Husky. After a short period we switched bikes. All it took was 30
seconds on the CR400. The addiction came back immediately along with the
voice in my head saying "You can still do this! No problem!"
Few months later I bought a couple 75 KX250’s and
KX400’s for nostalgic trail riding. I was going to pick the best and
sell the rest (yeah right). I would later hear a comment Skip Miller
made to my wife… "We don’t sell motorcycles – we buy them" – Thanks Skip
that really helped. I was introduced to TVRC in fall of 2002 while Clay
and I were riding at Marshall Creek. We ran into Mark Brown, AKA Dr.
Kawasaki who at the time was riding his 75 KX250. Mark told us about
TVRC and the opportunity to race these old bikes.
9 vintage motorcycles later my wife Kim thinks I have
lost my mind and always frowns when I mention Clay or Marks name… What’s
with that?
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