Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

• BY MARK HOYER R alph Nader called this morlling. 'We have reason to believe that there are inherent design flaws to your psyche. Further, these flaws leave you open to damage, which, compoUllded, will leave you even more unsafe... unsafe at any speed." Yes, Ralph, 1 thought I'd better get started on this one before I forget. -Things were going well. Cornering techniques were improving, ruts weren't my mortal enemies, and I was making a good portion of the doubles. The 125s we were testing for the tiddler shootout were all cooperating with unprecedented willingness. So was my brain. Comer speeds were up, and I'd ridden an MX bike more in the previous week than I had for most of the rest of the year. Knobbies do stick. Stoked, baby. Exactly th.e right time for the universe to knock me down to planet earth. And hard. The guy behind me said the b!ke kicked sideways on the .takeoff for one of the doubles. He thought it was savable. Guess he doesn't know me that well. I didll't save it, the bike swapped on the top of the landing mound and flicked me straight down into the dense, hard-packed planet with nary a tumble. All I have left is the vague remembrance of being too, too far out over the front of the bike. I've had my share of nearendos, but knew right away this was very much not the right feeling. At about the moment I thought to myself that I wasn't going to be able to save this, The Earth said, "You are decelerating. Now!" The Ullconsciousness wasn't black or quiet. It was sort of a misty tumult, full of tumbling, commotion and nondescript feelings of crashing and impact. My compatriots told me I was lying there like a side of beef for about 20 seconds, then started rolling around and moaning with my eyes rolled back in my head for about 45 seconds longer. "Mark. Mark! Do you know where you are?" "FIy effin' Raceway ..!' (So-named because it was once a pig farm.) It was a good start, though I had no idea where the pits were, what bike I had been riding, and despite having rUll laps for three hours, I had zero recollection of the track. Photographer Kinney Jones gave me a ride back to the pits. At least that's what they told me. I remember holding a sandwich, though not where it came from or if I ate it. (It came from the Honda truck, and I did eat it, they said.) I made a few calls. The first was to my girlfriend, the second to a friend who is a registered nurse and very good with physiology. There was a bruise on my right temple and I thought I'd like to find out what the helI that was alI about. Nobody answered either call. Later, I said I needed to call my girlfriend. • "You already did." "No, I called Rob." "Mark, you said, 'Hey, baby, [ crashed my brains out.' I hope that 'baby' wasn't somebody named Roi:>." I hoped it wasn't too. They told me.I made a lot of good jokes. "This place used to be a pig farm, right? "Guess you could say I ate s-." "Hey, you're pretty funny when you hit your head." Couple of more blows to the head and I1I be ready for "The Tonight Show." The mood for riding had passed. I washed my wounds, took a few tabs of aspirin, and was glad I'd hitched a ride to the track with a co-worker. General malaise and torpor were oozing steadily down from my poundillg, bruised head. I called the boss from the cellular phone on the ride back to telI him what 30 YEARS AGO... JANUARY 27, 1969 he sixth volume of Cycle News got off to a great start, as was evidenced by the cover shot, which showed Dallas Baker, Eddie Wirth, Jim Rice, Bill Manley and Ron Kruseman ,.4, fUN! S,,,~I" in tight for,./.",mat ion during racing action at the Clyde Litch Benefit IT at A cot Park. Dusty Coppage (Tri) won the Expert main, and David Aldana (BSA) won the Amateur feature... An interesting advertisement appeared on page 8, in which race promoter J.e. Agajanian entered the motorcycle~ helmet business with the Aggie 98 Safety Helmet, which sold for $32.95... J.N. Roberts (Hus) braved the snow and five-degrees-above-zero temperature to win the Lucerne Valley Hare Scramble... Martin DeVries (Hus) won the 84-mile Nevada Hare Scrambles... Some of the sport's top drag racers were up in arms over . some of th.e new rules regarding mandatory front brakes on motorcycles that were capable of more than 140 mph in the quarter mile. Roughly half of the competitors didll't want to see brakes become mandatory, and the other half welcomed the change. T happened, but I forgot to hit End after I finished my voice-mail message, then spent the next three minutes, 56 second explaining to my driver how two years ago we had a guest tester smack his head at Carlsbad and how much of a buzz kill that was on the day's festivities. All on the boss man's voice mail. The amnesia must have been worse than I thought, because I went the whole four minutes without bagging on him. What luck! When I got home a few hours later, it was suggested, that a trip to the emergency room would be prudent. If you read about me, my truck and a hammer, you could imagine that wasn't really a trip I was looking forward to, though I could tell by how I felt that it was inevitable. "I got hit in the head by a rock, a very big rock," I said to the nurse in reception, thinking to myself, "That's not very good, even for a guy with dain bramage." "How did it happen, Mr. Hoyer? Or may I call you Mark?" I didll't like her jab at familiarity, and reminded her that people with head injuries are sometimes violent and unpredictable, if somewhat slow-moving. I attempted to explain "kicker," "swap," "highside,1I "endo" and "flick," but it made as much sense to her as "subdural hematoma" or "helIo" would have to me, at least at that moment. Our in teraction turned ou t to be brief. (They already had all my insurance info from last time.) A nurse cleaned the spots where I had removed my skin. I waited for the doctor. Same doctor, same forehead. "Tell me about this rock," he asked. He was amused in a semi-disgusted kinda way, shot me in the eyes with a penlight, admired his stitch work from 20 YEARS AGO... JANUARY 17, 1979 eammates Jeff Ward and Jimmy Weinert gave Kawasaki a pair of victories at the opening round of the CMC Golden State MX Series at SaddIeback Park. Ward won the 125cc class, while ~~~~~ . .__ .•. . Wei ne r t prevailed in the • 250cc class. Rex Staten (Yam) won the 500cc class... Bobby Schwartz (Jaw) and Mike Bast (Jaw) earned the only two American seeds to the next roUlld of the World Championships by finishing 1-2 in the AMA Speedway Qualifier at Santa Ana Stadium. Schwartz won the meeting in a four-rider runoff... One feature in this issue was entitled "Enduro: Getting Started" and discussed the ins and outs of enduros and why you should be riding them ... Long before the big Pro Circuit or FMF factory "B" teams came onto the scene, Fox Factory riders Larry Wosick (Hon) and Donnie Cantaloupi (Yam) were getting their licks in at regional and National motocrosses all over the COUlltry. Wosick won the 250cc class and Cantaloupi the 125cc class during the District 36 Winter Series opener at Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma, California. T last time while he was there, and told me not to drive for a few days. "You might think green means stop or red means go." What's new. "Amnesia may also be a problem, though most of your memory will come back." "What's red mean again? Green means hot, right?" "We'd better get you a brain scan." "To make sure my brain waves back?" In the past, the rhetorical ques.tion (usually yelled in disgust) of "Do you have a brain?!" always made me pause. I now have photographic proof in the affirmative. In addition, the captions on the matrix of photos said "Custom Adult Brain." Wow, a one-off! There was positively a brain and positively no bleeding or any other bad things they were looking for. Over the following days I did drive, I went to work but didn't really work, was very tired and had a headache for five days. There are things I don't remember about that day, but I know who I am. High motor skills suffered a bit too, but the finer points of coordillation are back up to snuff and people have stopped asking me, "Carl, what are you doing with that hammer?" Ralph ader called this morning. Yes, Ralph, I think I'd better get started on this one before I forget. "We have reason to believe that there are inherent design flaws to your psyche. Further, these flaws leave you open to damage, which, compounded, will leave you even more Ullsafe... unsafe at any speed." Yes, Ralph, I thought I'd better get started on this one before I forget.... CN 10 YEARS AGO... JANUARY 11, 1989 r e d die Spencer was back, and he was "on a mission" to regain the 500cc World Championship aboard the Team Marlboro/ Agostini Yamaha... "In The Wind" carried its usual plethora of in teresting bits; F ~~~~~~: them m 0 n g . .' . . a was the 1iIi news that Coors Extra Gold had signed on to become the title sponsor of the IS-race AMA Supercross Series. Another item announced that AMA Hare & Hound Champion Dan Smith was making the switch from Husqvarnas to KTMs for his '89 off-road campaign... Rick Johnson (Hon), Guy Cooper (Hon) and Ron Lechien (Kaw) alI grabbed a win during the three nights of Paris Supercross action at Bercy Stadium in France... We tested the 1989 Yamaha YZ125W, proclaiming it to be 'The comeback kid" ... Kevin Hines (KTM) was unstoppable at the Tecate 250K Enduro in Mexico... Cliff Thomas (Yam) rode a still viable YZ490 to victory at the Dirt Diggers Winter Hare Scrambles near Red MOUlltain, California. CN I :Ii ;I hi IIliii III :l! ~ :it C.) • 8l ~ ~ ~ ~ :ii .., 67

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