Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

In Defense ..... Freedom When to ·Vote AGAINST of by J. G. Kro! As a result of the AMA's good efforts in collecting petitions, your President, Mr. Nixon. has graciously consented to address a letter to the American Motorcycle Association generously allowing that, "It is only proper that the interests of those who enjoy motorcycles be taken into account" while their . Federal Government contemplates how it is going to dispose of them. Bubbling over with gratitude and joy at this incalculable largess, we should hasten to mimic Mr. Nixon's bargaining style. Consider this basic program: 1) Exempt all motorcycles and parts from import duties. 2) Eliminate the absurd requirement for spark arrestors. J) Place motorcyclists in the same category as pedestrians regard ing so-called No-Fault Insurance programs. 4) Mandate the accessibility of all lands and roads to motorcyclists unless specifically exempted under standards and according to proccdures which are, roughly speaking impossible of fulfillment. 5) Establish National Priorities in the transportation field which places motorcycles at the top of the list, wellllhead of mass transit, air transit, automobiles, trucks, buses, railways, waterways, ox-carts. and whatever. 6) Acquire, build, develop and maintain "'recreational rid ing resources'! for motorcyclists across the nation, both paved and dirt. .7) Direct the courts to assume that the automobile driver is automatically guilty in motorcycle/car collisions. When Mr. Nixon has accomplished these few simple steps, what he might like to call "Phase One", the AMA will graciously consent to address a lettet to Mr. Nixon generously conceding that, "It is only proper that your interests be taken into account" while motorcyclists contemplate how they are going to dispose of the temporary tenant of the White House. If Mr. Nixon can demand our fullest co-operation and subservience, offering nothing more in return than the opportunity for us to choose the music at our funeral. why can't we play the same game the other way around' Tbe answer - definitive as it is unfortunate HERE'S DIRT' by Alice Rhea You guys are really getting sloppy! I was so pleased in A ugust of '7 l when District 37 req uired silencers for racers. For a while there it got pretty quiet out in the desert and I, for one, loved it. But mort: and more I have had my ears blasLed on the finish line by those who haYe bumed out their silencers or dug out the insides, .and I'm getting a little hostile about it. At Desert Turtles race I actually saw one finisher who had a nice clean stinger with no evidence that a silencer had ever been attached. It is about time one of the clubs shc.wed up at a desert event with a decible meter and checked the noise levels. More aggravating th an racers without silencers are those noisy little kids who aren't racing and don't have a silencer on their bikes. What's with you people, anyway. You should have a little consideration for others. What really brought this to my attention was tha1 during a screanling conversation at Lhe finish line, it suddenly became so quiet that [ was able to lower my voice to a normal tone. When I looked around to see why it was suddenly so quiet, " there was a Honda and Yamaha, ticking • ovet' with barely a whisper. :'>low tha.t I have wri cten this down. all you racers with burned out silencers beneT get on the ball and repair them or one of th~se days you re going to find yourselves unable to get a starting stamp from some club that doesn't like noise. And you kids that aren't racing, tell Morn to buy you a silencer so Auntie Alice doesn't wring your sweet little neck. Speaking of those little darlings, what do you do with a child who wants to race, hut feel is too young? How about a pOker run? For quite a while I have - is that he's got us over a barrel. His bargaining position is extraotdinarily strong. * • • • A law professor of mine - a man with decades of experience in practical politics, including conducting private polls for candidates to tell them what the voters were really thinking - was the first to explain to me that people never vote for a candidate: rather. they vote agai1lst his opponents. Your first, fundamental, and usually unconscious step is to decide that you're not going to vote for Candidate Smith" Your second, usually conscious. and often self-conscious step is to discover some excuse to vote for Candidate Jones, his opponent. Of course, if Candidate Jones fails to concoct an acceptable excuse, you won't vote at all. and if you have little notion of what's going on. you'll vote at random. This is not simply another way of looking at the same thing, not merely an old P91itical pro's sarcastic judgment of the electorate. It is what you must do. First you must overcome threats. Afterwards you may grasp attractive opportunities. First is survivaJ; second is whatever turns you on. Because Mr. McGovern is so deeply committed to all the frighteningly irrational forces of eco-freakery which, if unleashed, would so' eagerly destroy motorcycling, he must be voted against. Survival is first: everything else is second. Mr. McGovern's own campaign literature ·says that, "Alleged polluters would have the burden of proving that their activities are either not harmful a ndlor absolutely unavoidable and necessary". Get that "a.lleged" bit. The moment McGovern taloes office, some semj-sapient, posy-sniffing Bambi-lover will have a document on his desk "alleging" that all off-road motorcycles are polluting the wilderness. How far will motorcyclists get in 'lttempting to prove th at their activities are not "harmful" (to what? How much' Judged by whom? By what standards)? We kno\\! how far they'll get in proving rlut recreational motorcycling is "absolutely unavoidable and necessary". Kiss off all dirt riding. Next, some pimple-headed jackal will "allege" that all two-stroke motorcycles are polluting the atmosphere. So what if the visible smoke from a two-stroke motor consists mostly of raw, unburned oil droplets that return, by gravity, to the ground which is where they came from in the first place? Who can prove before a hostile tribunal that he "needs" to ride a motorcycle? Kiss off all two-stro kes. The neurotic, primitivistic seeds of Ludd ism found in George McGovern's political career. seeds which prosper like dragon's teeth in the fertile soil of his constituency, will surely grow to engulf the final remnants of motorcycling. I doubt this will happen by the end of his term in 1976. but it very likely will by 1984. Prudent regard for your environmellt is merely an aspect of self-preservation, but this requires knowledge, experience, a balanced perspective, and realistic assessments of the situation ...qualities often enough found among outdoorsmen, but rarely among the starry-eyed romanticizers of "nature" who cluster around the McGovern banner. 'Many aspects of the McGovern political style seem designed to exploit ignorance compounded with hysteria. and this sini ter brew is what motorcyclists have most to fear. Seen in this perspective, Mr. ixon's concession that motorcyclists' views should be "taken into account" does not come off so badly, for the only alternative seems to be a policy that declares, explicitly r implicitly. that motorcyclists' views should not be taken into account. Whereas Mr. Nixon seems to be playing the usual games of political power brokerage, Mr. McGovern seems to be bragging that he will impose upon motorcyclists the obligation to prove that their aqivities are "not harmful" and "absolutely unavoidable" and "necessary". Could you convince a hostile board of inquisitors that your riding meets these criter'ia? While Mr. Nixon is offering nothing, neither is he threatening to take anything away, and in politics, as in chess, a stalemate is always preferable to a loss. Both Republican and Democratic strategists agree that California will play a pivotal role in the 1972 elections. Without the California bloc of electoral votes McGovern will lose; without the California electoral votes, Nixon is likely to lose. We should have no illusio ns that Mr. Nixon is a friend of "motorcycling. He isn't. He is a friend to whomever possess the most political clout. and that's that. But there is a vast difference between a lack of positive friendliness and a posture of active hostility. We can expect Nixon to do business with us if motorcycling is able to implement some of its potential political clout, but McGovern is too deeply committed to a Luddite constituency to compromise at all. Under Nixon motorcycling has a chance; under McGovern, it may have none at all. . It is unfortunate that the Nixon Administration has attacked both street and dirt motorcycling so short a time before the elections, the former with "safety" and the latter with "ecology", for this tends to give the impression that Mr. Nixon is our natural enemy. He isn't. He's just a straightforward political power broker. In contrast, there are many indications that Mr. McGovern, or those among his constituency who will be innuential in his administration, are natural enemies of rlocreational vehicle-oriented spOrts. Survival Grst demands that we vote against McGovern, then gird ourselves for battle with Nixon. Like roy law professor said, the gut issue is whom yo,: vote against. AMXT CONTRIBUTORS MILES HIGA, HonolUlu, Hawaii; BRIAN HERALD, Glens Falls, N.Y.; LELAND R. AYRES JR., Longview, waSh.; STUART MUNRO, Ottawa, Ontario. Canada; CLAYTON GUNST, seattle, Wash.; MICHAEL RUSH, seattle, Wash.; MArtK LENKE, Frazier Park, Calif.; BRIAN NAILE, HonOlulu, Hawaii; ROBERT T. DeLAHQIT, Fort DOdge, Iowa; LYDIA A. RUTH, New Y.ork, N.Y. and JEFF SWAN, Kansas City, Mo. IN YOUR EAR kids who have this energy bursting out of them and they go screaming up and down the pit road, scaring blazes out of me, and I get mad at the time. But when 1 think it over, I feel sorry for them. They want to race, but how do you run a 70 mile Hare Scrambles on a mini-bike? I would really like to see the clubs start laying out a Saturday race for youngsters and ladies. Perhaps we could work off the energies of these kids and preven 1 some acciden 15 on the pi 1 roads. It is time we realized that we have a problem, and instead of beating the kids Jokingly suggested that District 37 institute a "Cream Puff" class. That is for people like me who think they are doing well if they can ride along most of lhe day at five miles an hour without falling off and feel they have really accomplished some tiling. Seriously, there are an awflll lot of over the heads and ta.king their bikes away as punishment for their attempts to work off lheir energy, we should be giving them a healthy outlet for it. I know ,Ulere are several clubs in the District with the ability to run a uCream Puff" race every Saturday and would like to see the Distri t issue competition cards to these youngsters. Desert racing is a [ot of fun. Let's get the tots involved. A CHP arrived at Desert Turtles even t and first was going to stop all riders who were cros~ing the the dirt 'county road and make t1,em shut off and push across. Then he decided to cite Desert Turtles Me for obstructing traffi, although his was the only vehicle seen on ti,e road all day, other than those who were out to race, and at last sigh l, was headed back to the office to see whal law was being broken. Some of the law enforcement officers seem to think that there a.ren·t enou"h problems ill the world. He could have been out looking for speeders, gangsters, murders, etc., but thollgh it was his dut)' to make sure we didn't obstruct the nonex..istant traffic on a dirt road in the middle of the desert. BLM was going to I.!;t SRA. DRA, or URA (can't remember which one) use Turtles' course the following weekend, but the trouble with the law nixed the idea, It must be embarrasing for the decen t cops to have people like that on the force. Boo on you, fella. * * * * * Greg Seda rides a Yamaha. 1 could have sworn it was a Bultaco. The problem is that when I get to where 1 can recognize you guys I can't have you going around changing bikes. You will just have to decide at the first of the year what you are going to ride and even if some big mfg. does come along and offer vou a million dollars a month to ride [or"him, you wiJl have to decline, because [ will still put you on your old bike in my articles. Unless, of course, you see me at the finish line and trot over and say, "Hey, Alice, I gOl a new bike." And con trary to what you mothers might think, no, I don't have anything against Trail Amateurs. It is just that once you make Amateur you sorta get invisible. I think it is even worse than being a Novice. Rick Mark, Floyd Burke, Jr., and Tom Schmid have got the right idea. Rich and Floyd have theiT names on their jumpers and Tom has his on his helmet. All they have to do is point to their name and can be pretty sure I will get it right. Now, fe IIas , could )'ou have your seamstress add the kind and siz'e bike you ride right under your name?

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