Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

, Reflections on the Six Days Two weeks ago I wrote a report on the ISDT: who did what, what happened to whom, and how it affected our various teams' efforts. Providing this kind of informational article is the new'spaper's most important function, but unfortunately it does not, and cannot, tell the real story of the event, any more than an aerial photo of a bombing raid tells the story of people involved. The more you try to convey the' Ureal story" of an even t, the more you get into the realm of impression, opinion and unverifiable fact. For this kind of story, the column is an ideal vehicle because it is labled. u Opinion",a warning in advance that it is a biased outlook. In Six Days competition, the only really significan t questions pertain to winning. Did we win, and if not, what can we do to produce a better result next year? In enduro competition, we might legitimately ask if the riders enjoyed themselves, if the course was interesting, if the club made money, if there was sufficient emphasis on safety and even if the trophies presen ted were commensurate with entry fee. The Six Days, however, is not a sportsman event so all such questions become irrelevant. We did not win. In fact we only very barely made it in the top half with our Trophy Team (6th out of 13 entries). This placement, however, was great compared to most of our Vase and Club teams, who finished from abou t the 50% mark (the Vase HB" Puch team) to 36th out of 38 in d,e case of one of the our club teams. . There are obvious reasons for our lack of success - broken chains, flat tires, fouled plugs, leaking forks and so on - but these are as trivial as they are obvious. Some riders bad the same or similar problems and coped with them to finish. Sometimes to stay on gold. Sometimes riders coped "Yith trivial problems early in d,e week, only to be defeated by them near the end. There are other inconsistencies as well! The riders on the two Vase teams are the approximate equals of the Penton Trophy Team and the machinery is definitely comparable. The Puchs were far improved over last year and the H uskys win a far larger percentage of en'duros here than anyone could reasonably expect. Lars Larsson did the best of any American on his Puch in the Six Days. Vet kss than half of the Vase Team members finished while all of the Penton Team finished. It seems to me that we must pay much more attention to the psychological aspects of the Six Days than we presently do~ iI we are to win. It is my purpose in this, and the following two or three, Gambit columns to in·vestigate the psychological a tm osphere of the Six Days in considerable depth. The Czechs and the East Germans are not supermen; they can be beaten. Contrary to a popular myth, they are not all members of a crack military team. According to one of the officials of Motokov, the Jawa Export division, two of the winning Czech team are employees of the factory, one as an engineer and one as a mechanic. One team member is a doctor and two are in the army. I don't recall tl1e occupation of the last one, put the makeup of the team is roughly the equivalent of the makeup of our own trophy team, a couple of whom are employees of Penton, one of whom is a student, one of whom has a Penton dealership and one of whom is in the military . Their equipment IS not really superior to ours and may be inferiO'r. Gene Cannady had a J awa motorcycle which he practiced on for a couple of man ths. He did not like the J awa as well as he did the production Penton that he wound up riding. True, the trophy team Jawas are probably better than the Jawa Cannady was riding, but, at best, it would seem ~hat the Jawas are the equal of the Pen tons, plus or minus. maybe 5%. Not a decisive margin, by any means. And certainly, the production J awas ridden by the minor teams were not the equal of our Puchs and Huskys. The Czechs an.d East Germans, though, do seem to have one advan tage over us. They don't lose on trivial matters. They seem to have mastered the psychological environmen t. The battlefield this ye'ar was Czechoslovakia. Next year it will be the U.S., but the following year it will be another foreign country in all probability. Adjustmen t to the country of conflict would seem to be extremely inlportant to any successful Six Days effon. It seemed to me that our teams did not make a satisfactory adjustmen t to Czech oslovakia. Almost from tl1e momen t the gian t Russian jet touched down at the Prague airport, comparisons were made between Czechoslovakia and the U.S., and Czechoslovakia invaribly came out the loser. Th.eir maln airport was tiny, much smaller than Hollywood·Burbank. Only a few planes were in evidence and, rather than a takeoff every 30 seconds or so, as at Kennedy International, there were\ about two in an hour. "Rinky-dink" was the way one of the riders described it. In thinking of the problems generated by L.A. International, the traffic, the noise, the pollu tion, the displaced families who have made room the ever lengthening runways, I found myself wondering if there were anyway we could achieve URinky Dink" status. Contrary to expectations, getting through customs was a breeze. I was not asked to open anything and all of the forty or so people were through in less than an hour. I had lost my traveler's checks on the airplane; They were returned to me by the mechanic who serviced the plane, after I had given up all hope of ever seeing them again. I wondered if that could have happened here. Our first real exposure to Czechoslovakian life was their money system which we (I. as well eyeryone else) referred to as Monopoly money. Although their system was very similar to ours (strictly decimal, unlike the British system which is somewhat illogical) many of those on the tour could not even make basic conversions after two weeks in the co un try. And, to my knowledge, no one realized d,e value of having different values of bills be different sizes. A lesser denomination was physically smaller. I'm sure a blind person would im mediately recognize this value. To us, their money 'was difJercnt and therefore not ureal." Since we were in Czechoslovakia, naturally we ate Czech food. It was different. Pickles, cold saugage, tomatoes and cheese for breakfast. Milk was served warm. Coffee was served with the grounds in a kind of sludge at the bottom of the cup. Some of their food was really great, some of it pretty bad. Their version of a hot dog makes anything available in· the states taste like imitation dog food. Their mustard is so good I found myself eating it on bread without any meat. They seem to regard pastry as an art form and every town had its sweet shop with dozens of incredibly fine layered and frosted pastries, stuffed with delicious sweet creams. In the dining hall at our hotel, there was a different menu for every meal with between two and six selections on it. One could pick out the most American-sounding dish on the menu, look around the room and see more than half the people eating that selection. Czech beer is among the finest in the world lUld their wines are excellent, but the favorite drink in our hotel was - you guessed it - Coka-Cola. In talking to me after the trial,John Penton commented on CzechoslQvakia. He said "If you couldn't feel the repression, the dullness of the atmosphere there, you don't deserve to be writing." He was righ t. There is repression. Certainly not all the people are happy with their governmen t, particularly with the iron hand of the Soviet military stiflingly in evidence. There was a Soviet military show in Prague the last weekend of the trial and, on our return, we saw thousands of red flags and banners proclaiming Czech·Soviet friendship through mili tary migh t. Considering that tanks were in d,e streets of Prague only a .scant two years ago, (and not for a parade) it takes no genius to deduce that a Soviet military show in Czechoslovakia is abou t as welcome as a Police Field Day in Watts. One of the few Czechs who could speak English told me, after I had remarked that I was enjoying his country, "Yes, it good for you. But not for us." I t was an impulse statement, which he immediately regretted and try as I would I could not get him to utter another word in English. Yes, there is repression. Bu t there is another side to the story. The right-wing groups in this country are fond of propagating slogans about __." .by Ron Schneiders Hmaking the streets safe." The slogans have had very little effect on me, however, because it is onlY,with great difficulty that I can remember any time when the streets of the city were safe. Maybe back in the forties they were, but I was too young to be able to make realistic evaluations (ben. The last time I took my came"! out in the streets at night someone hit me from behind and broke the strap across my neck to get it. A friend was with me, a 6 foot, 200 pounder. He was knocked flat and his watch taken. People stood around and watched. Had the thieves decided to murder us, I am convinced that no one would have lifted a hand to prevent it. I like to walk ·at night and recently have been able to, but I don't take my wife or my camera; l take my gO-pound German Shepherd. In Czechoslovakia it was different. I roamed all over, in the city streets and the country, carrying camera equipment worth more than the average Czech earns in a year. Alone and with company, daytime and night. There was a feeling th at you were perfectly safe always, everywhere. There was a fellow who was traveling around with me who was making a movie. He had a ton of expensive equipl11ent, which he carried in the back seat of the car. We had only one key to lhe car which was inconvenient because one or the other of us was always having to go back to car for rilm or to change equipmen t or something. After two days in Czechoslovakia my friend said "Just leave the car open." From then on we did, with all that stuff in plain view on the back seat. It was never touched. In Los Angeles I've chained. my bikes inside of a locked garage. There was a feeling of safety, unprovable, but shared by at least two of us in Czechoslovakia. Police and soldiers were everywhere in Czechoslovakia and were virtually indistinguishable. If you see a stateside cop in silhouette, his most prominent features are his club and his revolver. The most prominent feature of the Czech cop was his radio. He carried no club and his pistol is small, carried in a completely enclosed leather case. All the police and soldiers were on foot, and quite often by themselves. In my two weeks in Czechoslovakia I saw two iden tifiable police vehicles, both motorcycles. The discipline of the police was outstanding. At the final day's road race there was one very obnoxious German photographer who would not observe the police safety lines. Time after time he would cross the line and move up to tl1e track .• The police would move over to him and make him move back. He shouted at them, (obscentities probably. but I don't know enough (;<,nnan to be sure) waved his arms around, planted his feet, and came back time after time. The pofice never raised their voices, never made a threatening gesture. When two of them proved insufficient they called a third but there was still no force. He ",as quietly but inexorably moved back behind the lines. I t is hard to avoid con trasting a scene like that with its U.S. equivalent. Here the character would probably have been blubbed, hospitalized and then charged with resisting arrest. J.N. Roberts could probably fiB in more details on that procedure. With just a little bit of luck there migh t have ensured a rial. My own memories of an L.A. police officer descending upon myself, my wife and three small children while we were playing on the beach, club upraised, snarling "Move, you son of a bitch!" are vivid enough for comparison. The police were in the process of breaking up a rock concert a full half-mile down the beach. It seems ironic that· it takes a Communist coun try to teach you d,e meaning oE right wing slogans, but safety in public places, freedom from fear of both thugs and police, does seem to be a r<;ality in Czechoslovakia. Perhaps my impressions are erroneous; two weeks is hardly time for a complete study. There are adler things, too. There is poverty in Czechoslovakia, but not nearly as much or to the degree that one would expect. It seems that every second kid has a three or five.speed bicycle. and there are pJenty of groceries on the shelves at reasonable prices. Some of the stores were an obvious shuck, stocked for our benefit with one of each item which the Czechs could not buy. In a town far from Spindleruv, there was a model shop with dozens of beautiful HO gauge engines and model airplanes that would be the envy of most such shops here. And it was a real store. One item could not be purchased in Czechoslovakia; guns. No pawn shops, no Saturday specials. Most noticeable however was the fact that there was very little observable difference in economic level of the people in Czechoslovakia. There was nothing even remotely comparable to say, the differen t between Beverly RiBs and East LA., or Westchester county and Spanish Harlem. The biggest car in evidence was- a Tatra which was less luxurious than a Volvo but about the same size. The people seem to work pretty hard, beginning about 6 a.m., but there is full employment. In fact, laborers were imported from Poland to build the road into Spindleruv. Although many of the buildings are very old, and it has been a long time since they've seen paint, the towns and the countryside are spotlessly clean. No litter, no' junk yards, no bill boards (though I think the ever present banners and flags might get to be just as objectionable after awhile). 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