Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

We got word of severa l trophy and contingency ha ndouts from previous races that will be made Saturday evening, November 27, in the Start/Finish area of San Gabriel . Valley Me's Hare & Hound. Huntington Beach MC, Invaders MC, and Capistrano Valley MC will all be there with bags of brass and goodies. ~ g ... Seen in Yamaha International 's s~cret testing room - a HOI;da Odyssey (you Q,),. know , that funny four-wheeled buggy ..c ' type thing with the built-in roll cages) 8 being' inspected. Does this mea n Q,) Yamaha will try to steal away Honda 's buggy market? ~ 5 Z From the ·f irs t Board Meeting discussing the possibilit y - t o _ actual - ra ce bikes, it to o k Honda f o u r mont Fis to bu ild t he RCB 941 c c 'e nd ura nc e machines. It looks like the CRC Adela nto Grand Prix on November 27-28 may have more going for it t ha n runni ng through the streets and desert of Adelanto. Cal ifornia . larry Roeseler, Rich Thorwa ldsen. Brya n Breker and Eric Jensen (IS DT Gold Medalist ) have pre-entered . Speedway Champion Mike Bast held a racing school at the Mael y Ranch , near Corona , California, la st . weekend . Professor Ba st is an articulate and competent teacher. His advice ranged from the right line to how to bump with out getting caught. 1\lan agl 'm C'1l! o f ih r- Bonm- vilk- Sail Flats is again on the agenda for the BL1\I 's Sail Lake Dist . Ad visorv Bo ard a ,d l<'dulc'd l)(ocl'm lwr 7 nH';,ting . II st art s a t S::W a .rn , in t lu- BI.J\1 Dislrin O fTin ' . :!:171l South :!:WO W'·SI . Sail Lake Cit v. II's 0pl'n 10 t h« publi c: to m ake' a st au-nu -nt Of gel info . c a ll (SO I )'. :!! ·r,:HS . at Also seen at Yamaha was a nice, new production-line IT 175 , w ith the monoshock YZ frame, With just a tad less travel front and rear than the YZ, the IT promises to handle, Test riders report that it's 'f a s t , The one we saw came complete with leather toolpouch on the plastic rear fender, a plastic tank, leading-axle fork, magnesium cases, and reed valve, Look for the DT 400 Yama ha to be a monoshock next year . It also gets better fenders .and ru bber tum signa l stalks , with the signals tucked in. /' - .,. Chris Johnson, the 20-year-old son of Dick Johnson of Foothill Cycle Center in La Cresenta, California, died November 12 in a car/train collision. He was buried at Forest Lawn on November 18. Watch those four -wheelers - they're dangerous. . Our spies have seen Kawasaki four stroke singles wandering about. with die -cast engine cases. That means that the production items are on their way. Sand cast cases signify prototypes, diecast cases mean production. One thi ng - don 't ho ld your breath. One Kawasaki em ployee is about to buy a Yamaha TT500 , and he's an inside man . Says he can 't wait. District 37 will do the grading of Soggy Dry lake Road for SGVMC's November 27 race, then try to get reimbursement from BlM. If you put a Ducati engine in an Ossa Desert Phantom frame, would you call it the Phantom Duck of the Desert? You can get your own personal copy of the same audit we've used to blow open the OHV Fund caper, Just w rite Office of the Auditor General. Suite 750, 925 l Street, Sacramento, CA 95814; give t hem your na m e and address and ask for a copy of Report 287. It's free, and it 's excellent re a d ing - guaranteed to make your temperature rise. Papa hears that SGVMC and others have been charged $200 for thei r course to cross an aqueduct that's buried ten feet underground . What is this? And what's done with the mo ney? The Champion Spark Plug Classic at Laguna Seca will not be an AMA Camel Pro Series road race in 1977. It will be a Formula 750 World Championship round, and will probably have all the usual classes (S u pe rbike Production, Sidecars, Ug htwei g ht, Novices) as well. The September 11 race date conflicts with the Na t io na l Mile at • Syracuse, NY. Rhodes robs Calif. OHV Fund An e mploye e of De l Monte lodge in Pebb le Beach, Ca . bo u g ht a little m otorcycle t o .ride ba ck a nd fo rth to w ork, a laud a ble purcha s e, yo u mi ght s ay. His company, however, saw it differ ently and ordered the new bik e r to get rid of t he bik e or lose his jo b. The worker got rid of the ride . How about a boycott of Del Mo nt e propertie s , Inc. un til th ey put a sto p to this kin d of discrimination? ByCC R u m o rs circulating Europe sa y Yamaha's next 500cc GP road racer will be a disc valve. However , Johnny Cecotto, interviewed in Italy, denies this - says it's just an uprated version of the current 500 Four. Cecotto and Steve Baker have s igned with Yamaha fo r the 1977 European GP season, and will ride out of the official works headquarters in Amsterdam. Ciacomo Agostin i, meanwhile, is said to have received one new 500 from Yamaha which he will campaign under his own banner with API/Marlboro sponsorship. Last minute trials poop - the Third Round of Ca lifo rn ia 's State Championship is definitely on at Donner Ski Ranch near Norden , November 27. Call (916)426 ·3578 for confirmation. Steve Baker and Johnny Cecotto w ill campaign both 500 a nd 750 Yamahas, now that Formula 750 has fu ll GP status. Cecotto. in addition, will race a 350 under Venemotos colors. We talk ed to Kenny Robert s last Saturday. " King Kenn y" told us that although Yamaha doesn't physicall y han' his 1977 cont ract in thei r hands. it is as good as signed . sealed and dr-livercd . lester Wheels has donated fo ur sets of lester cast wheels as prizes for the WERA 24-hour road race at Las Vegas November 26·27. The first four overall riders win t he wheels . By the way, the official lester Wheels endurance team has entered the race. . Roger DeCoster, who just won his third consec u t ive Tra ns-AjvlA championship, has not slipped out of the top five in the final standings since 1971. I was mISSIng Gone With The Wind on TV to meet with Herbert Rhodes and try to convince him that we off-road recreation riders deserve someplace to do our thi ng , Rhodes, a one-arm black dude. is Director of the State Parks & Recreation Dept. The meeting last Monday evening, November 8. had been set up by Kasey Rogers, local newspaper columnist and President of the Int ern ational Women's M/C Association. Also on hand were Bob Rudolph , President of AMA ; Russ Sanford of M.O.R.E. ; Fred Hoshiya ma of the YMCA 's National Yout h Program Using Minib ikes; Dick Legu e, Publisher of Motorcyclist; my wife Sharon; Steve Harris of the Orange County MO RE chapter; a nd assorted int e reste d observers. Kasey had set out coffee a nd cookies. We showed Rhodes a movie about how poor ghetto delinq uent kids are being sa lvaged thro ugh the YMCA's off-road minibike program . In short, we proved ourselves perfect fools , because this man and his department had been robbing us blind for years, and everybod y knew about it but us. A state audit of the Parks & Rec department was released that very da y while Sanford, our onl y man in Sacramento, was on his way to the Los Angeles meeting. We knew something was wrong with the way Rhodes' Sierra Club-dominated department was using our green sticky money , gas tax money and federal matching funds that was what the meeting was about. Nobody guessed that our recreation funds were being systematically and arrogantly bilked to pa y for pel prese rvationist projects. Like fools, we begged the bureaucrat to make his department take our money and buy us someplace to ride off-road bikes here in the jampacked Los Angeles area ; and like fools we listened poli tely while he told us to " be cool", be patient, not make any waves. Little did we dream that he was double-billing the U.S. Bureau of O utdoor Recrea tion for matching funds on our account , lett ing his people spend our money for anything but our benefit, dissolving the ORV program within his department, and flatly refusing to obey the law that requi res him to gi ve a ' month ly accounting of how our money is spent. His response to our pleas in thi s meeting was that there was "n ot enough money in the ORV fund," that not enough of us ha d bought the green stickles, He promised that before his term in office was out, he would come up with someplace hereabouts for us to ride. If we would cool it. We th anked him ; how he must have laughedl Next morning I read in my dai ly newspaper abo ut the scandal the audit had uncovered. We sent Cycle News' ace invest iga t ive reporte r to Sac ramento to dig out the rest of the dirt . Rhodes , it tu rns out , is a failed politician from Palo Alto who had run for Senator and lost. T here was some question abo ut $11 ,000 in campaign funds not acco unted for. H is campaign manager , Claire Deder ich , was appointed to head the State Resources Agency by Governor J erry Brown , and she in turn appointed Rhodes to his Parks & Recrea tion post. Can Cal ifornia Pa rks & Recreation be purged of the Sierra Mafia ? We' re slow to wake up to the facts sometimes, but now our eyes are wide open. We even have a new slogan to scrawl on the walls that fence us out of our rightful recreation lands: "OFF RH ODESI"

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