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/126031
He arched into the air In a slow cartwheel. His limp body loosened at 50 mph and hit the water like an eruption of Vesuvius. Steve / ( Stackable carved a radical angle in his big white ski boat and anxiously searched the foaming water. .Two minutes later, Gay lon HI like to go fo r it. " oJ' ::l i;j ~ > g ., ~ en g 16 ~ ll. Mosier was again astride the bouncing, b ucking and careening truck inner tube. Stack would power the boat up to full thro ttle an d when it stu ttered un der t he load peel off to the right. At the end of a 40 foot rope, Mosier and the tube would rifle, as though a skipping stone, ' across the wake , at over 50 mph. The tube would cleanly vault off t he curling wake and Gaylon would toss in a clicker, catch an edge and again catapault like a rag doll into the concrete blue water. If it seems like a foolish off-season risk for a professional athlete to tum himself into a human water spout, then consider the fact that the next day was a working day on the 250 National tour. Mosier, 22, has t urned his love of life and do minan ce of the motocross tracks of the nation 's most p opulous state in to a kind of legend - A Califo rn ia kid. Had Gay lon come to hi s Sout hern California heights five years ago when motocross was measured by performance in California he would be King. No racer anywhe re has better captured the essence of the name' Local hero '. Mosier's positively staggering victory record in the intensely competitive west coast racing milieu would have set him head an d shoulders above everyone in 1971. But it is 1976 and the lean, good-Ioo king rider has foregone the rewa rds of local idolatry to chase t he elusive number one p late. Last year, Gaylon an d his m ech an ic, Rick J ones, put 50 ,000 mil es o n his van , ca me home to t he Hun tington Beach h ouse he shares wit h Gary Sem ics only three times all season, and suffered a bad year. "I had too many breakdowns." He said, "I kept trying, but things ke pf"going wro ng." Five years ago, Gaylon Mosier entered his first race an d wo n. " It was out in the desert. My dad, brothers and I were corning back from the desert and saw a bunch of people. ' We said, •All right, let's go see what it's all about.' It was a race... so I entered my Montesa and won." Starting a career at 17 years old, in a sp ort of child stars, is a handicap but Mosie r quickly rose to the to p . At the 1971 Elsinore Grand Prix, he rode his father 's Ossa Stilletto in t he Ama teur class. Out of a field of over 1,000 Gaylon moved up near the front with the Experts. With only a q uarter of a lap to go he ran out of gas. " I had to push it halfway back through the town. It was burnt. My dad calculated a little bit wrong on the gas. " says Gaylon, with a smile. "He said you can make five laps on a tank of gas. I made four and three-quarters." And still he finished 82nd out of 1,000. The public affection for Gaylon in California. earned by blowing away any nat ional star wh o tries to invade a California track, is shared by the spectators o n the AMA circuit. His relax ed rubber-legge d urgency o n the track sets t he crowd o n edge. So does his carefree style off t he track. Whether talking to the crowds, joking in the pits or living up to his Captain Hook nickname, Gaylon enjoys what he's doing. "I draw the crowd when 1 ride. I do a lot of weird st uff when I ride, but it's all natural. I like to go for it." Gaylon, the King of 'Califo rn ia, had a bad year in 1975. In the 250 's he was ninth in the nation, but failed to make any impression o n the 50 0's or Trans-AMA circuit because of rnechanicals. To GayJon the difference between racing locally and national is a giant step. "Mostly it is a matter of being in shape. The average guy is no t in shap e. You have to be willing to put out and a lot of Cali fornia guys aren 't. That's how I was. 1 wasn't WIlling to p ut out. I was used to going out on a Sunday and ma kin g a quick buck. The local scene. Trying to race AMA isn't the same. You have to go into a 'co mplete ly serious thing. At first I wasn't serious and just tried to imp ress everybody."