Cycle News

MOTOCROSSER JIM WEST P96 Feature was something my parents didn't really support. They weren't into motorcycling and thought any- body who rode one was a Hell's Angel!" She would often "daydream about jumping a train" and see- ing America, so traveling the country with Jim was both a legal and likely safer alternative. It would be just Jim, Susan and Kevin, along with a stove, a sink, a pullout bed and Shamra, the Samoyed dog, all shoehorned into Jim's Ford van. Shamra was a pet-store find from somewhere back east. "I just had to have her. And Jim was so sweet… he could never say no to me, so we got her. She was so big and fluffy. I remember at one race, Joel Robert came over and thought she was a polar bear!" Somehow, they found space for the motorcycles. By this time, AJS, like Greeves before it, was nearing its end times, so after a short stint riding a CZ, Jim's san's remembrances from her time with Jim are mostly about stories from the road. There are very few about the actual races, though she remembers watch- ing many motos, cleaning many pairs of goggles and checking spokes. "And I would pray for the bikes not to break!" she adds. The riders traveled together in a caravan and she laughs as she remembers that she "did all of the driving! We would study the road maps, going from here to there and we would always try to find what's cool in between." Sometimes, it was cliff jump- ing into rivers or pulling off to the side of the road to play ride There was a good chance that Jim West was next in line to land a Maico factory ride. "[Gary Bailey] was the guy to beat and someone did it! It was a new kid and he wasn't even riding a real motocross bike. He was on a Yamaha DT-1, which was really just a trail bike. And his name was Jim West." friend Billy Clements helped him land a semi-sponsored ride with Husqvarna. Along with the two race machines, there was also room for two pit bikes, one for Jim and another for Susan. Her bike was a Honda XR75, modified by Jim to look like his Husqvarna. He even painted the fuel tank red and she recalls with pride, "it looked just like his race bike!" It is almost always the jour- ney and rarely the arrival that provides the stuff of which memories are made, so Su- on the mini bikes. Jody Smith remembers bottle rocket battles with brothers Bobby and Billy Grossi in the streets of Santa Cruz. "We would always stop at amusement parks, too. I remem- ber riding the wrong way down one-way streets with Jim Weinert in Boise, Idaho…it was one big party," Smith recalls. The sport was also growing at a rapid pace. Early on, the AMA struggled to find a way to crown national champions; by 1975, there were champs on

• Cover