Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

By 30 YEARS AGO••• APRIL '4, '970 Ron Grant (Suz) and Art Baumann (Suz) graced the cover of Issue #13 racing for the lead at the AMA s.econd National road race of the season. Grant won with Yvon DuHamel (Yam), Gary Nixon (Tri), Dave Aldana (BSA) and Baumann rounding out the top five ... Lars Larsson (Pen) defeated the likes of Brad Lackey (Sac) and Gary Bailey (Sac) in the 125cc class during a motocross race held at Hangtown in Plymouth, California. Hans Hansen (Hus) won the 250cc class while Bob Grossi (Hus) took home the win in the 500cc class... More than 700 riders showed up for . the Sunland Shamrocks' enduro that was held around Jawbone Canyon in Mojave, California. The course was laid out by Bob Steffan and it was a hit with the riders. The results would take another 3 weeks to get in... Famous dirt-track rider George Roeder .announced that he would attempt a comeback. He had been retired for two years and that was far too long for Roeder. 20 YEARS AGO••• APRIL 9, '980 Team Suzuki's Brian Myerscough graced the cover of Issue #13 on his way to a two-moto sweep of the 125cc class during round two of the AMA Outdoor National Championship series held at Saddleback Park in Orange, California. Kent Howerton (Suz) won the 250cc class... We interviewed Patrick Pons about last year's Formula 750 World Championship and his recent victory in the Daytona 200... Eric Kehoe (Yam) was a double winner at the GNC Amateur National Championship motocross held in the Astrodome in Houston, Texas. Kehoe won the Mini Stoc'k ciass as well as the 125cc Intermediate class. Ronnie TIchenor (Yam) took home the Mini Mini class win... We interviewed 125cc king Broc Glover about his three 125cc National titles and his future In motocross racing ... Terry Clark won the Prairie Dogs M.C. desert race in Lucerne Valley, California defeating Bob Balentine, Duane Summers and , DB.rio Cartwright, among others. '0 YEARS ASO••• APRIL 4, '9BO World Champion 500cc Road Racer Eddie Lawson (Yam) graced the cover of Issue #13 which was our Laguna Seca GP Preview issue. Inside we let John Kocinski take us for a hot lap around Laguna Seca, we reviewed the city of Monterey, California for tourist attractions other than the racetrack and we tried to figure out who, if anyone, could beat Team Marlboro Roberts... Team Kawasaki's Jeff Ward ran away to victory at round eight of the AMA Camel Supercross Series held at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. Jeff Matlasevich (Kaw) extended his points lead to 21 with a second-place finish over Honda's Jean-Michel Bayle. Team Suzuki's Buddy Antunez defeated his teammate Jimmy Gaddis and Team Green's Jeremy McGrath in the 125cc main ... Dan Smith and Danny Hamel teamed up on a KTM 500 to win the Las Vegas 300 desert race ahead of the KTM 250-mounted team of Greg Searle and Bryan Folks. CN Final lVIoto CHRIS JONNUM hances are, you have NMB Synrelease the pause button, I would dition for decades, he can reduce a . borrowed bike to a rubble heap in a indeed have used my face to remove drome, a malady whose sole the better part of that whoop straight, matter of minutes. The disease's symptom is complete and utter disrebut on Mush-Mellen's DR, I gritted my symptom first manifested itself in my gard for the wellbeing of any bike you pal when he was but a tyke back in ride that doesn't belong to yourself. teeth, pulled the handlebar hard 1976, temporarily bikeless for a winteragainst the right steering lock, and Chances are equally as good that through a deep-hidden reserve of time night race at Irwindale Raceway. you're only faintly aware that you sufsuper-human effort, fought back conFo's family had arrived late to the fer from the disease, as most people venue, so as brother Art hurriedly are rarely presented with the opportutrol of the bike through a subsequent series of swaps - each diminishing in donned his gear and began stretchnity for its symptom to manifest itself ing, Fo volunteered to take his sib- sort of like if I happen to unknowseverity and speed until I came to a complete stop atop the last whoop in ling's YZ80 out for a spin to warm up ingly harbor a susceptibility to caviar addiction. the motor.. The evening waS Unfortunately, the environparticularly chilly, and throtment 'inhabited by motojourtle response was still hesitant "A helmetless adolescent on a quad after a pair of low-speed nalists - where test bikes are copious and accountability is rendered my wariness ineffective, my loops around the pits, which scarce - is prime breeding paranoia justifiable, and the front end is why Fo decided a quick ground for NMB Syndrome, pass down Irwindale's idle and editors who don't blatant- of the borrowed bike a mangled' mess." asphalt drag strip was in ly display its trait are few and order. He hopped on the tarmac, assumed his best far between. I, however, am immune, and although my caution the straight. Thanks to my newly under-the-paint aero position (left realized immunity to NMB Syndrome, hand on fork tube, head tucked down with test bikes endears me to manuMush-Mellen's bike was undamaged. behind handlebar), and began clickfacturer representatives, it can actually I had not been so fortunate in hinder my ability to thoroughly and ing up through the gears. another experience about a year earAs Fo-Fo tells it, a premonition of accurately evaluate a motorcycle. Observe this freeze-frame, which lier - one that I suspect may actually dread entered his head just about the be what somehow inoculated me I've pulled from my brain's hard time that he hit top gear, so he against NMB Syndrome. As a starvpeeked his head over the handlebar to drive, of the moment I realized I would never need to seek treatment ing college student and the owner of ascertain whither the little Y-Zed was a ratted-out YZ, I persuaded my affludirected. There, in the middle of the for NMB Syndrome: The setting is a whooped-out trail in the Lucerne ent buddy Block-Head to let me take drag strip, was a railroad tie, which his brand-new Husqvarna four-stroke someone had no doubt placed across desert mllny years ago, and I'm astride my buddy Mush-Mellen's out for a spin around the pits of a the asphalt to discourage just the sort District 36 enduro. Aware of how of shenanigans in which Fo waS newly hopped-up Suzuki DR350S, unable I'd be to pay for repairs on engaged. And discourage it did, foldabout halfway through a two-mile such a royal steed, I was extremely ing the front wheel into a Pac Man trial run on the bike. Actually, astride careful, never even getting the shape and bending the bar ends down is not technically the proper term, as boardtrack-racer-style, then pitching the DR's back half is a few feet to the thumper out of second gear as I right of me, making a valiant attempt negotiated the marked one-way trail Fo and the Yamaha down the paveto pass up the front half. It seems that through the trees. Nonetheless, as I ment. Twenty yards of sliding and the majority of Mush-Mellen's hop-up practically tip-toed around a blind tumbling along the strip in a shower of fund had been focused on the powercorner, a helmetless adolescent on a sparks bent the silencer and subframe quad rendered my wariness ineffecin opposite directions, peeled the seat plant, while the DR's suspension waS tive, my paranoia justifiable, and the still of the bone-stock, dual-sport cover off the foam, and substantially front end of the borrowed bike a manvariety - a fact that I am belatedly thinned the wall thickness on much of gled mess, slamming his stout nerf the frame tubing, but incredibly, Fo discovering at the moment this mental image was snapped. bar into the nearly stopped Husky. Of was almost completely uninjured. He While the primary emotion I now course my friends subsequently restarted the bike (whose exhaust associate with this shot is terror, it is ridiculed my pleas of innocence, and note was now akin to a duck-caller I wished it was I who had been with asthma) and wobbled back interesting to note that my fear in the freeze-frame is inspired not by the harmed instead of Block-Head's bike. toward the truck, where Art waS by At least then I would get some symprospect of being compacted in the this time performing calisthenics to trough between two whoops by a big pathy, and my health insurance get his blood pumping and work off four-stroke, but rather by the notion would have paid for repairs (I never his pre-race excitement. At the sight of returning said thumper to its owner did reimburse Block-Head for the of his wounded YZ, Art stopped in snapped triple clamps). mid-jumping-jack, his jaw hanging in a damaged state (and no, I don't As it turns out, injuries are rarely down below his Bell's face protector, mean California, though the impact incurred by borrowers of motorcycles, of the impending crash actually did and slowly and silently extending a a truism supported by the following trembling finger at the perpetrator, threaten to tear out a large chunk of anecdote about my co-worker and haltingly delivered the following edict: the high desert). "No... More ... Borrowing... " close friend Fo-Fo - perhaps the most To this day, I am convinced that As it turns out, that sentence is the severe sufferer of NMB Syndrome I were one to remove Mush-Mellen's motorcycle from this freeze-frame, only cure for the disease which know. Although his belongings, Dick Clark-like, seem to retain pristine conshares its acronym. eN insert a bike belonging to myself, and C In next week's Cycle News - Pontiac 5X #2 National Off-Road: GNCC, Hare & Hound 125 & 250cc MX GPs Freestyle king Mike Metzger & his bike Tum your MXer into a dirt tracker cycle n e _ S • APRIL 5, 2000 79

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