Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1960's

,. FICTION (?) FEATURE: THE BIG RACE" Slory by Jim Ca vin • U happened about two years ago. My friend and I. his name 's Art, well anyway we had been r iding off and on. more oft than on. when we got to talk1ng about getting In a desert race. We dldn·t know much about racing but my friend has a Honda 305 Scrambler built for s crambling and I got a Triumph Mountain Cub built for off-the-road travel so wefigure we got all the equipment. We got our Marine Cor ps boots . brown dress gloves . and our neat Bell TX500 helmets with face bubbles . blue to be easy on the eyes and also so no one can see your face on a cloudy day or a t night. Well. Ar t has a fri end who has a Bultaco, which at the Ume we thought was the neatest machine around, s o we figur e he must know all the ans wers . So we go to see him. He shows us a Cycle News with the coming races and he point s out one with noafflllation needed. no club. no AMA. no Dlst . 37. We talk about It and we decide to go In two weeks out to 'a place called the Ponderosa. In Lancaster. California. By the way nei ther one of us has ever seen a des ert race but we know a friend at a motorcycle shop who told us all about the Pondero sa. He said It was a nice short r ace with jus t a ll ttle san d, just r ight for beginner s , Well. we figur ed tha t was for us. So we started wor king on our bikes. I started tuning up the Triumph Cub by puttin g In a new plug. Art tuned up his Honda by putting In two new plugs. I took oft my muffler and Ar t turned his butte r fly baffles. The bikes were ready. We put them both In Art's box trailer. just the thing to be really cool , and to pull It we used his Volkswage n. Ofcourse we do this the night before so we can get plenty of rest. He says " I' ll be by at five." So I go home to go to sleep. I hit the rack at seven and at seven- o- one I get up to get a drink. At seven-o-two I get up to use the head. Gee whiz, am I excited. And besides that I saw Sammy Tanner and talked to him at a cycle shop just the Week before. What a boss week. I can 't get a bit of sleep. I just turn and toss and sweat all nlgbt. At three I bear this knock at the door. " Cavin are you Up? U's time to go." I was ready In ten seconds. We lett at 3: 10 a.m, to get our dates. Sure . If you're going to be a ' manly motorcycle racer you got to have a date to sbow off In front of. I knocked on ber door. I hear this noise, "Goaway and come back later." I ring the bell and knock some more. I says "We are ready .. ' I bear this. " I'M NOTI Come bar.k later." Then I hear this deep voice from the other part of the house yell out "Go ahead and go and get this nut out of here'" So again. I knocked and she says "I'll be out In fifteen minutes ." We repeated this ritual again at Art·s date 's house. Anyway. we flnally get there and get the bikes unloaded. Boy-o-boy, There were some really neat bikes all around. They all had numbers and skid plates and they were all really dirty. I figure let· s go over and get our pie plates and pay our money. I get number 1 and Art gets number 2. We find out all the neat stuff like you have to make two laps and that there are check points and they mark your tank with crayola. Three lines means slow and that was all I could remember. So we take our numbers back and we tape them on the fr ont of our headlights. We try to make them look like the real thing so we cut them In the r lgbt shape. So tar everything Is just great. We take a hop over to the starting line just to check It out and get a little . practice. Boy, about this time I would like to k111 the guy who said just a llttle sand. I kept getting stuck. We decide when the race starts things will be different. We go back to see our dates and they're both jumping up and down. " Gues s what? Guess what? Guess what? .. they kept repeating. " Gues s ·who Is here?" Knowing all about desert racing I says " Sammy Tanner?" They said "Who's be?" I say " J us t about the greatest desert racer who ever lived." They said, "No. STEVE McQUEEN'" Well. we' r e no dummies and we have seen " The Great Escape....and everyone knows that 15 just about the greatest motorcycle r iding In the whole wor ld. I said "Where Is he?" They both chimed In "Over by the head,' I says to Art, "I was just thinking about going over to the head" and then the girls say "SO were we." so off we went to see Steve . Peering over the top of this pick -up bed we spot him. Man. was I Impressed. Dirty gray leathers, helmet In hand. goggles. gloves. and a clean ring around his eyes. About a mile later the Cub got ·bot and the mains burned up and It stopped. ~ I pushed It back to the pi ts and I ::; ~~~~ ::~S~o~:l:o=~ng:m:~ griping about some nut going the wrong way and everyone following. So kind of quietly we put the bikes back In the box trailer. U you think this story Is a pbony ask about the restart In the winter of •66. If you're ever out Ponderosa way. Oh yeah, they said everybody wbo didn't make the restart got their money back, s o I got mine . I'm no fool. I"::"":-:-::-::---::c===:---- - - - ., SALES-SERVICE PARTS- 1M....

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