Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/125809
T• , • n , re.' 'Y to live the good life in Oregon, stuffed a motorcycle into an airplane and flew on down to Hopetown. Preston just likes to have a good time, but part of having a good time is winning a race now and again so he did; the 350 Expert class. But it's probably the spectators who have the most fun at Hopetown. It doesn't matter where they are on the course, they can be sure something in teresting will be happening. Near the east end they could watch the start on the fust lap and a big sweeper to the left ·.on each subsequent round. The sight and sound of 72 motorcycles exploding onto the course and somehow packing down onto the relatively narrow trail, w heel- to-whee 1- to -footpeg-to-elbow, makes anything seem dull by comparison. After you've seen a Hopetown start you could shrug your shoulders and wander away from the Battle of the Bulge. And, if you've picked the right moment to watch, you'll see Jobl)Hateley ignore the slight berm that's build up in the sweeper and lends security to the motocrossers lay his Triumph over almost horizontal, crossed up beyond belief, and go blasting by riders who though t they were fast - on the outside! ~ Down the course aways is the mud hole. The Dirt Diggers always have a mud hole, but Friday's rain gave them a mud hole you could lose a cow in. There was a sligh tjump coming into the hole and if a guy picked the wrong line, he just stopped and virtually sank out of sight. And, of course, as soon as one rider took up residence in the mud, 14 others would slosh to a muddy bed beside him. The speeds were low enough so no one was getting hun, just good and awkwardly muddy, so the spectators showed their approval wi th saw some guy starting yesterday with K-7 O's!" [f you liked a bit more dangerous action you could wander farther down the course and watch the dropoff into the gully. The guys had a long stretch of road from which they had tp make an abrup t righ t hand exi t down a very steep slope into a gully. The en trance to the gully was a sharp tum to the left. Depending upon your outlook, you could either see spectacular action or learn a lesson in technique. For the action-minded people there was the fmal unquestionable proof of the domino theory. One guy fell at the bottom, right in the entrance to the gully and a good 20 bikes piled up right behind him creating the worst bottleneck I've seen since the time the CERA decided to run all 500 en tries through a five room house. Such a tangle of bikes and bodies you wouldn't believe. But somebody was watching over the Dirt Diggers because, miraculously, nobody got hun in that one. There was an escape road at the top for guys who were going too fast to make the tum and quite.a few guys used It. Some however, pushed their luck right to the wall and jumped halfway down, counting on the marginal traction on the slope to keep them from smearing themselves on the rock that formed one side of the downslope. One fellow named Joe Erwin really overcooked it, and took the most spectacular fall I've ever seen. He went off the lip and missed the ·downslope completely. His Maico, completely airborne, slammed into the rock on the far side like a bug hitting the windshield of a car. [t ricocheted off the rock and dropped into the gully at the bottom upside down on top of rider Erwin. But __ ;:'_;:o,.o~_,;;;.,. ••• N n frue. (Cont. on p. 34) Ul ~ Z W ..J U >- U Hopetown. Whoopeel --- ~"'::;_ bikers are tough. [n spite of a 30-foot vertical fall and a crash landing underneath a motorcycle, the slight young racer escaped with only a broken foot. Far and away the biggest attraction for the spectators though was the Sidehacks. The Dirt Diggers always try to have something really novel for the spectators and this year they scheduled some of the top European Sidehack teams on their 750 Norton and Honda-powered Wasp sidehacks. The Europeans are not allowed to race in U.S. sportsman even ts so they started in the back row and proceeded to pu t on a very fast exhibition. So fast mat by the end of the first lap they were in second and fourth positions! For our own sidehack racers it was the equivalen t of that of the first time a few years ago that the motocrossers saw Joel Robert. That, inciden tally, also was at Hopetown. o W The Sidehacks were out in force and provided. perhaps the best show of the day. The fans went wild. rousing cheers for the most comical debade. My vote went to the guy who got sideways two different directions and then did a perfect half flip to land spread-eagled, fiat on his back in the mud. He almost blew it, though. As he stuck his head up, a big grin indicating his appreciation of applause, a joker on a Maico tried to top his act and almost cen ter-punched him. The moral is do your thing, but don't wait around for a curtain call! A lot of the riders didn't like the mud and in deference to tl,em and the Sidehacks who were going to race on Sunday, the Dirt Diggers bull-dozed the mud hole Saturday night. Carl Cranke, the northern California rider who put on one of the best shows of the tWo days, had this to say about it: "When they said they were going to take all the water out of the mud hole, everybody's saying 'Oh my God, isn't that nice!' and I'm saying, "Son of a bitch! Those guys are all bitchin' and moanin' because they come down here with TT bikes. I ,; Z -- .. - l?espi~7 her feelings at the moment (and the look on her face). we bet even this Powder Puffer liked It. Huh, Sue? -