Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

III ...m.~ (aAm'blt) n. 1. Any openina procedural move, especially one that promotes ctiscussion. ...In Just Four Days? by ron schneiders On the four days sandwiched by November 15 and November 18 there is going to be a meeting which will affect every motorcyclist under. the wing of the AMA. This takes 10 qUIte a bit, from poker runs on full dress hawgs to ice rac10g on buzz saws, The occasion is the Competition Congress which meets annually in Ohio. This year it must decide a tremendous number of issues; theu agenda IS a thick 200-page book of 8\12 x 11 pages. Many of the things they have to deal with are extremely dull word changes. For instance, it is proposed (No. 103) to substitute the word "should" for the word "must". The rule itself isn't printed in the book, so the members will have to go to the rule book, study the appropriate rules, and then weigh the various implications and ramifications of substituting the moral imperative for the categorical imperative. Dull business, but important nonetheless. In the Amateur Rules section, one of the biggest jobs facing the committee is going to come when they tackle Section 59 which establishes six-day trials events as a legitimate form of AMA competition. A set of rules is proposed which takes approximately 23 pages and is very similar to the rules used in the very successful Trask Mountain Trials held in June of this year. These, I understand, are a slightly less stringent version of the FIM rules for the International Six Days. Most of the members of the committee probably have never even seen a six-day event, let alone run one or participated in one. Fortunately, Mike Vancil is on the committee and. he has gathered quite a wealth of experience in the last year. But can you imagine the number of problems that can come up when 15 people start working on 23 pages of rules relating to a brand new form of sport? Here's one possible problem: These events are always for street legal machil)es in Europe, b~t the manufacturers know a year ahead of time in which country they're going to be held, so they can make the machines legal for. that country. But, here, street legal requirements are different in almost every state. Does the. s.erious rider have to set up his bike differently for every state? Enduro riders may have a few new rules next year. There's a proposal to allow all "A" enduro riders a number in National Enduros before giving places to the "B" riders in limited entry events. There are also several proposals to limit the. noise that competition machines can make to 92 dB at a distance of 50 ft., but there are no condition of test included in the proposals, nor are there any penalties attached. The committee should have fun kicking that around. If they don't kick it into shape I'll bet the riders will have some fun kicking the officials around next year when it comes time to enforce it! ,. The Amateur Rules committee Will be asked to recognize about 70 new Bonnev.iJle speed records. Talk about haIr-splitt1Og. Here's an interesting proposal: A fellow wants everybody to" have a permanent number plate that he can use at hare scrambles, motocross, and eve:vthing else up to and including ice racmg.. I:Ie gets hiS number from the last two dlg:tts of hiS AMA number and the first initial of his l~st ~ame. That yields about 2600 combmatlOns. Now, there are some 9000 desert riders in District 37. Could be a mite con'fusing.. Another proposal is that no more than one lime mark shall be used before a tum and no ,?ore than one .after ,a turn. Poetic Justice would demand that the originator of the proposal be required to ride the first course so marked. A~d maybe even the second, if they ever frnd hIm. All the above and about a jillion more will be decided by the committee on Amateur Rules. The. committee on Profes~lOnal R,;,les has ItS own problems regardl~g startmg procedures and nder IdentificatIOn. Of all the rul~s to demand attention of the. CompetItion Congress, none has rec~l~ed more .attention than the claImmg rul~. It IS suggested at vari.ous sp~ts. wlthm the agenda that the c1aImmg fee for open class road race machines be jumped to $4500 1$5000 _ _ _ ~~ _ ~ and $9000 from its present position of $2500. Other Claiming figures are likewise to be juggled. There are several propos(l1s coveri,ng the method of claiming and at least one propsal to have a formula for the claiming price based on the retail price of the motorcycle, What inspired all this in terest? Hill climbing is in for quite a' bit of attention. In fact, I guess that there are more proposals for rule changes than there are active hill climbers. Some guys are very image conscious. One such proposes, UN 0 black leathers shall be permitted at any AMA sanctioned event." He doesn't limit his rule to comp.etitors either. Now who's going to be the first guy to tell the State cop to take off his leather jacket when he enters the track? The committee on Road Riders has a lot of fun-type things to deal with, as befits t;heir aspect of the sport. For instance, they will be asked to deal with the concept "Rocket Run" which is essentially a race over roads from a given location to a location marked by the firing of flares or rockets at 10-minute intervals. A fascinating idea! Can you imagine, say, 500 motorcycles starting from in front of E. C. Birt's shop in Lawndale and racing pell-meli through Watts and Hollywood toward some brave soul who is fuing rockets from the top of Mount Hollywood? It boggles the mind... Whatever fun might exist in the Road Riders committee sure isn't share in the' Professional National Championship commitee. They'll start off their meeting with about eight pages of no-nonsense proposals regarding championship points, lap monies, starter's duties, licenses, international riders, minimum purses, and other serious stuff. There'll be nary a chuckle from that crew~ When th'ey get finished with that they'll consider applications for more than 40 National Championships. The commitee on Amateur' National Championships has the easiest job. They simply have to decide who among the 28 applicants deserves the honor of hold1Og a National Championship Enduro. Motorcycling is, at very best, a dangerous sport. At its worst it often has almost suicidal aspects. With enough money, prestige and just good old-fashioned ego at stake, riders and sponsors will do just ahout anything to wm. And that covers a lot. Sometimes it includes using equipment that is unsafe, either for the contestant himself or for the people around him. Promoters, with an eye toward' making a quick buck, sometimes allow very dangerous situations to exist. Sometimes .a dangerous situation occurs without anybody really causing it. Whatever the reason, the committee on Safety and Engineering is supposed to ferret out the unnecessarily dangerous situation and rule it out of existence. Since one person's "unnecessarily dangerous" is anoth_er person's "competitive edge," it will take quite some judgment to deal with these proposals. , Here are some of the proposals: A proposal requires that axles be made of steel. One shudders to think what might have prompted that proposal! Another would require that axle nuts be safety wired, There is a proposal that titanium frames be prohibited. Several proposals would require that brakes the same as used on the manufactured product be used on the competition bike. Several would set limi ts on the size of the gas tank. Sometimes the committee will be asked to fix something already in the rules su.ch as therequirement"for folding pegs, even when the pegs are enclosed in a streamlined shell: There is one proposal that there be no restriction on the type of material used in the construction of a motorcycle. Another wants to make sound level requirements for all events conform to the "position paper of the M.LC." (Is there such a thing?) The men who are going to be working their heads off for the four days of this meeting have the abili~y and the means to change the face of motorcycling during the next few years. Let's hope they have lots of energy, a surpassing amount of good judgment, and when all else fails, that they are lucky enough to .giles' ngft't1' , e I ( ( " J. .,. V"~ .•~Jt.;( .. :'J,}.}/,.;]J"a'''lr _'''' ·b·r-.~ millin' around- ~ .~ By Maureen Lee As I write this, Corriganville is coming up this weekend, the weekend of racing. madness for District 37. With the collapse of the Elsinore Grand Prix, it remains the biggest and best_ That Old Timer's Race should be something to see. Someone reported to me that they had seen some of the entrants making practice rides around their block with training wheels on their scooters (that's how ancient some of these boys are) and one informant confided he'd seen a guy on a Scotch Squirrel, belt-driven and with pedals, yet! Who do you think that could be? Papa Wealey? The Laugh-In Trials comes up next month, open to journalists in our field or people of repute in the industry who can get themselves invited, and believe me, it's a sight to behold. We have journalists who give it a go with barely any riding experience at all and bods like Tony Murphy and Jody Nicholas who can teach a lot of people a few things about trials riding. It's a day of merriment. European motocross stars serve as trap scorers whilst having a good giggle at us dumb pen-pushers. The whole thing is run by N orton-Villiers, so if you think you elIgible to ride, contact Mike Jackson. But accurate scoring, easy traps and no mud can't be guaranteed so you must be able to keep your sense of humor intact! Hope you saw the bit about Dick Mann's suggestion of starting the Saint Peter's motocross with the rear wheels lined up in a trench. That's one way of keeping the boys honest and wouldn't it be a groovey thing at Saddleback? If you've ridden there or helped a rider there I'll bet you've done your share of hunting a nice rock to put l:lehind his rear wheel to keep him from rolling backwards on that incline start. Sure wish the AMA or some of the promoters or somebody would use that gate system used in Europe that was so graphically· illustrated on Wide World's coverage of the Swedish Grand Prix. There's no chance of anyone jumping the gun. on that and no chance of someone endiQg ~p with all that damn starting cable wrapped around him or his bike. Now hang on a bit as we have to drag the soap box out... there we go. This is a desert matter that concerns all of us. Now, the desert is public land, right? Belongs to all of us, whether we ride it as District 37 riders or with the ~on-sanctioned groups or as trail riding mdlV1duals. We try to keep it clean. Much has been said on that point over the years and District rules enforce the point that after a run ribbon markings, lime, signs, anything that wasn't there before the run should be removed so it looks as if we didn't pass that way. I've been hearing reports of one chap, however, who is using the public land to host 'his own events. I don't have to mention names'; if you ride the desert you know where the area is and the name involved. Apparently, big trash cans were provided for trash use but these have been overflowing and un'emptied for so long they are really caus10g an eyesore on the desert. As a for instance, the Jackrabbits spent a long time laying out their run and completed clearing up their trail this past weekend. In the process they also removed miscellaneous litter they found and just picked up in general, acting like our District clubs do in trying to be good citizens while using their own land. Throughout these weeks though, those offending trash barrels have· still been there, same condition. The BLM is now aware of them and took pictures so what we have is one guy who is trying to tear down everything the District riders have worked so damned hard to do. Yes, I know it's his desert too, but it's also mine and yours and we don't want trash dumps on it. The District could clean up for him but that would just be making it easy for old Mr. Garbage to start over fresh again. I can hear my soap box creaking a bit dangerously, but here goes. Don't ride hIS events until he starts acting like he cares. If the BLM gets mad at desert riders and cracks down because of Mr. Garbage it will hurt every single one of us, so let's not help him out but try to make him into a good citizen. A VIEW Of THE INDUSTRY How Much Is Enough? By Charles Clayton Six years ago, when Cycle News started, it was clear enough what we wanted to do. Motorcycle sport was languishing in the doldrums, with barely enough rider e.ntries to pay a promoting club's expenses and no spectators to speak of. A lOO-rider S1gnup at each of the two events scheduled per district per week was considered good for those days and promoters used to complain when clubs threw events that conflicted with their professional dates. . How easy gro"'(th has been! I just spoke to the promoter of an unsanctioned, no-poonts enduro and he asked me not to say anything more about the event in the paper, fo~ he already had 1,000 pre-entries and didn't want to have to turn anyone away. ThiS enduro lUst happens to coincide with the Annual DirtDiggers Hopetown Grand Prix, which traditionally draws thousands of r.iders and spectators. Yesterday I attended a beginner's race at which 1,231 entries paid $7 each to ride and this Thanksgiving there'll be another couple-three millenia of riders lined up for the start of the Barstow-to-Vegas Hare & Hound. This sudden growth of numbers has not happened without its concurrent problems: Some old time promoting clubs, staggered under the deluge of entries, SImply disbanded rather than upgrade their methods. Lots of f.ly-by·night promoters have tned t~ cash on on the demand for track time and left 4S with the taste of disgust. AntI-motorcycle -activists, alarmed at the rapid multiplication of our numbers, are creating new problems for motorcyclists as fast as they can think them up. Naturally we feel responsible for much of this growth, for without Cycle News it pro~ably would not have happened. But we wonder if the southwestern U.S., particularly the Los Angeles area, has now grown big enough in motorcycling. Perhaps It IS tIme to back off on growth-promotion and consolidate the gains that motorcycling has made. .One way that Cycle News could modulate the growth of motorcycling would be to raIse the price of our advertising and newspaper so that the average reader or bUSinessman could no longer afford it, as the magazines have done. But unJortunately or fortunatel.y, it is the smaller.~usin~seswhich are doing the most to alleVIate the problems whIch motorcycling now faces, while the big companies take the gravy off the top. . No, the little and moderate-sized businesses which fill Cycle News' ad columns are the backbone and muscle of the sport. The fat is seldom found in Cycle News. About all that I can suggest to prevent motorcycling in the southwest from toppling under its own growth is: 1. Patronize only the advertisers in Cycle News. They care. ~. Limit too-big entries the way the Eastern enduros do, bOy only accepting mall. ~n.tnes up to a pre-arranged limit and returning all the rest. 3. Expand ~upportlve faCIlities such as parks and trails and customer service departments. 4. Run smaller ads in Cycle News for coming events where too many people would overtax resources. 5. Plan and prepare for the multitudes that can be expected at any motorcycle function, even if it means hiring paid help and buying extra grandstands, restrooms, etc. . ~or::unate.ly the East and Dixie aren't vexed by these problems quite yet (although OhiO IS coming close) and so I shall still have some outlets for my impulses toward promOting motorcyclE! growth.' >J P _ -'. ,.,1 \.1. • J1 J I' .. ,-:: . /9 r I { 'fl' r iLJ ~ ( I I _ I )" r, t M '" ~ z ~ z w W ..J U >- U

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