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I was going to quit," Eierstedt says. "Gary Bailey was work- ing on the bike himself, and the carburetor fell off at the National in Florida, so I walked across the pit to the Harley-Davidson truck and knocked on the door and said, 'Do you guys need a rider?' They said, 'Sure,' and that's how it went. I switched teams." While Eierstedt doesn't go so far as to say that his move from Bultaco to Harley-Davidson was akin to going from the frying pan to the fire, it may have been close enough. Even so, he still man- aged to finish 10th again in the 1977 AMA 500cc National MX Championship Series. "Harley was really great because everything was done with a handshake," Eierstedt says. "They paid me my money every week, they met me at the airport, flew me to the races. I still practiced on Bultacos—Bul- taco had given me some bikes at the beginning of the year, but I raced Harleys. I liked Bultaco well enough, but I couldn't stand Gary Bailey. The only good thing that happened on the Harley was that I led a heat race at Anaheim for seven or eight laps, ahead of the Honda team, until my bike seized. So, then I signed a deal to ride with Can-Am for the next two years, in '78 and '79." Eierstedt raced the AMA Nationals with Can-Am, but his time with them was fraught with problems, even though he man- aged another 10th-place finish in the AMA 250cc National MX Championship Series. "We had a lot of bike prob- lems, and the bikes didn't handle too good," Eierstedt says. "I did the best I could, then I quit in 1980. Well, I got talked into com- ing out with Maico for a while. They gave me a bike, but I just couldn't get back into it. I just lost the desire. I'd seen friends get paralyzed. I just got out of it." Eierstedt says that he didn't race for the next 14 years, pre- ferring to just trail ride and ride street bikes. ''But I always liked Mammoth, although I didn't care for the rest of the California tracks because I had been so spoiled from rac- ing back East," Eierstedt says. "I saw where Roger DeCoster won the Over-40 Championship at Mammoth, and when I saw that, I said, 'I want my name right below his.' So, I borrowed a bike from Wayne Mooradian at PEP Rac- ing. He had an old '85 CR500 laying around, and he let me go practice that. The power was no big deal, but I hadn't ever ridden a bike with disc brakes. It actually turned, and it actually stopped. Then I called up Roy Turner at Kawasaki and told him I was go- ing to go up there, and he said, 'I'll give you a bike.' He gave me a brand new '94 KX500, and I took it over to Wayne's, and Wayne did the suspension on it. I went up to Mammoth and won both days." Not long after that, Eierstedt got a phone call from Motocross Ac- tion magazine editor Jody Weisel, offering him bikes to ride and draft- ing him as part of MXA's test team, which Eierstedt happily agreed to. Eierstedt was an MXA test rider for the next 10 years, while also earning a living working in the industry, with companies such as JT Racing and White Brothers. He backed away from riding to pursue a career in the real-estate business, though he says that he doesn't expect he'll be away as long as he was last time. ''As soon as I get the business going, I'll start riding again," Eier- stedt says. And he'll do it because he loves it, and not because of any recogni- tion that he feels is due or overdue. "I guess my career, I was always like Rodney Dangerfield or something, but if you would've seen the wars between me and Grossi, and then me and Chuck Sun, Bryar Holcomb. Those were some pretty competitive races," Eierstedt says. Legend or not, Rich Eierstedt had the kind racing experiences that most people can only dream about. (Editor's Note: Rich Eier- stedt passed away in 2010. He was 56.) CN This Archives edition is reprinted from issue #49, December 14, 2005. CN has hundreds of past Ar- chives editions in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor CN III ARCHIVES P118 Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives