Cycle News

CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE T he town of Paradise, California, happened the be the home to a number of vintage motorcycle enthusiasts. The Antique Motor- cycle Club of America (AMCA) recently reported that seven of its members had their houses de- stroyed in last month's Camp Fire. "Never before in the AMCA's his- tory have we had so many mem- bers involved in a single tragedy," the AMCA said in a news release announcing a GoFundMe account for those members. In addition to the AMCA members, perhaps the most well-known motorcyclist to lose everything in Paradise was former ISDT competitor Paul Hunt. Hunt has long been a builder of vintage racing machines. His motorcycles have even won AHRMA Cham- pionships. Paul lost two dozen historic machines in the fire. Paul, who's 81, tells a harrowing story of escaping the fire. "I woke up in the morning, about six-o-clock and turned on my TV," Hunt said. "There's a P96 THROUGH THE FIRE a half-a-mile or three-quarters of a mile long and there were flames on both sides of me all the way down. What normally takes me 20 minutes to get down to the bottom of the hill to my buddy Ray's—it took me four hours. It was bad." Hunt hasn't even been able to go back to his home since the fire. He knows everything is destroyed since a kid he helped raise now works for the water district and was able to go by Hunt's house and take pictures. Hunt's place looks like so many we've seen on the news lately—just a pile of ashes with maybe a tool- box, or some other fireproof item the only thing recognizable in the rubble. In Hunt's case you could see the remnants of a number of motorcycles—frames and wheels mostly—that were in his workshop. It was a devastating loss of not only his home and all his posses- sions, including his racing memo- place called Pulga, which is about 20 miles from me and they said there's a fire. I didn't pay much at- tention. About a half-an-hour later I went and looked at the television and the hospital, which is two miles away from me, was on fire. It moved fast. It was so fast. I went out to my garage and there's a backdoor and open window, and the flames were like 40-feet in the air in my backyard. So I thought, 'Wow! I've got to get out of here now!' So I drove out and about a half block from the main road there was a car parked right out in the middle of the road. I thought the guy was going to move, so I waited and waited. I looked in the rearview mirror and the flames were coming up. So I went around them. There were four cars stopped in the middle of the road with nobody in them. I finally got to the main road and there was a highway patrol guy who yelled, 'Get to the left!' The right lanes were filled. So I got into the left-hand lane. And going through the town, it's not very big, probably (Top left) Paul Hunt was a top off- road racer in the 1960s and early '70s. After racing, he focused on restoring vintage motorcycles. Unfortunately, Hunt lost his prized vintage motorcycle collection in the recent Camp Fire in Paradise, California.

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