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Some guy had a jaguar or a leopard on a leash in the pits at the 77 Hangtown national.
Dead cows in odd places.
Mechanic dude calmly took off his jacket and extinguished the flaming bike. It cranked and we rode for 2 more hours. Love those Honda 50's. Another family fun story we experienced because of dirt bikes.
One day we showed up very early at the small track and were getting into our gear hoping to be the first ones out there when a bunch of police cars and Japan Self Defense Forces military trucks come rolling into the pit area. They helped a very old and frail main out of one of the police cars. The old man looked around and pointed over to a big tree right next to the starting gate. The soldiers told us to pack up and go home as they were closing the track. They unloaded a backhoe from a trailer on the back of one of the military trucks and started digging up the starting gate area next to the big tree. It turns out that the old man was one of the Japanese soldiers that had buried a load of ammunition and bombs there at the final days of WWII and he had told people about the story so they wanted to find it before the old man died and someone got hurt if they ever exploded. We had been starting our races over tons of WWII explosives for years. They took the opportunity to move the start after that.
Same track, after they redid it after the WWII explosives incident, they built a big step up double in the back, right next to a big old tree. If you jumped up the right side of the jump, you could reach out and touch the branches of the tree. One early morning I was driving up to the track when I saw an ambulance and a police car pull out of the pits. It was about the same time that the track opened and I thought it unusual that someone would get hurt so fast after the track opened in the morning. When I got to the pits, no one was riding and I asked my friends what happened. It turns out that the first bikes out doing the first lap were jumping that back uphill double and saw a man hanging by his neck from the tree. It turns out it was one of the mechanics from one of the major Honda satellite MX teams who had hung himself from the tree the night before. He was a quiet guy and always smiling, but I heard it was over a girl.
Same track again, it was the HARP (Honda Airport Race Park) "Weekend Racers Cup" race. It was mid-summer and stifling hot and humid. I had just finished practice and was rehydrating before my first race. I was eating a banana and walked over to watch the first races. The women's class was just coming around the first turn after the start. A bunch of girls crashed on their 85cc bikes. After they picked up their bikes, one girl laid there on the side of the first turn, not moving. I didn't think too much of it as people get hurt all the time in our sport. Two track crew members hovered over her during several race starts. They didn't stop the races until the ambulance showed up (In Japan, the ambulances are all public and run by the local fire department). I was in total shock when they put her on the stretcher and pulled a sheet over her head. She was dead and they never bothered to stop the racing. I was appalled at this and went over to the race promoter who I knew. He claimed that she had only passed out from the heat, but that was not true. We confirmed later that she was indeed dead... sadly a 22 year old mother of two kids. She died just a few feet from where the WWII explosives had been buried as the new first turn passed right over the old starting gate.
mike
The Shop
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First one, I was about eight years old we were riding where the old Widowmaker hill climb in Utah was held, anyways I'm with my Dad and brothers riding and all of a sudden two people riding horses are coming the opposite way, at first I thought it was two guys that were really buff, but when we got closer it was two teenage girls riding without their shirts on. My Dad told my two older brothers to go back and ask them for their phone numbers.
We used to go riding where rcannon told his stories out in Delle, Utah, it's right next to the Utah military testing range. Quite a few times we got buzzed by F-16's flying really low next to the fence line, we also had a couple Apaches helicopters follow behind us. Later on I had a boss that flew them for the National Guard and told me they loved using motorcycle riders for electronic moving target practice out there.
On my street bikes I've hit a lot of wildlife, in high school I was going down main street at about 40mph I had my wind visor up and a butterfly hit me right under my eye, funny thing is that it gave me a really bad black eye, everyone asked me who I got in a fight with, I would say a butterfly and it kicked my ass. Right after high school I met a girl and we hit it off so I spent all night with her, but I had to be to work at the local moto shop so I had to leave her house early in the morning to be on time, and I hit a deer on a two lane highway, luckily I stayed up, but completely destroyed the bike. A couple years ago I was riding through a canyon and a wild turkey took off from the side of the road and hit me in the shoulder super hard at about 70mph, felt like a MMA fighter hit me as hard as he could.
I have a private practice track it's about a mile outside of the town it's by. The entrance is covered by trees and bushes, one time I headed out to ride and when I got up to the gate there was a guy banging his chick on the hood of his car, I didn't know what to do, he yelled at me to leave I said I needed to get into my property, they got in the car and drove to the end of the dirt road and finished. Another time I was out riding by myself and came around and hit the finish line jump and there was the mosquito abatement plane maybe 50 feet off the deck and I was about 30 feet up, I ducked and he pulled up, I'm sure it wasn't super close, but it felt like it and still totally freaked me out(wish I would have had a helmet cam on that one)
No bike for 4 yrs, man that sucks, never gone more than 5 months without a bike in 37 yrs.
as i kid i remember there was a track or maybe it was just hills but i could see it from the playground. All the other kids were running around doing kid stuff and i was always there pressed against the fence just watching the MX bikes.
Another time in the early-1990's, It was early morning and I was riding shot gun in one of three vans on the way to a practice track in Kashiwa, Japan. Our bikes were in the back and my friend, a mechanic from SRF Suzuki, was driving. We were going down a 3 lane highway that had stop lights every few miles and I was staring out the window as we travelled along at about 50-55 mph.. I noticed that the tractor trailer next to us was bucking because the driver had it in too high of a gear for the speed. I grew up driving tractor trailers in the family heavy construction business and I knew that letting the driveline buck like that can break a u-joint. I have a weird habit of checking out bad drivers, but when I looked up into the tractor trailer, I didn't see any driver at all at the wheel. The tractor trailer is cruising down a 3 lane highway and heading for the next busy intersection/ traffic light with 2 gas stations on both sides of the road on the far side of the intersection. I told my friend to slow down the van and pull up along side the moving tractor trailer. At first I didn't see the driver again, but as the truck was bucking, I saw a person's head fly up and then go back down again each time the tractor bucket. I figured the driver had passed out at the wheel or was dead and he was heading towards the busy intersection. I had my friend pull close to the truck and I crawled out the van window, perching on the window's edge so I could jump onto the fuel tanks of the truck. I jumped onto the fuel tanks, opened the passenger side door and stepped into the cab of the truck. The driver was slumped over the wheel and I couldn't revive him, so I knocked the gear shift into neutral, steered the tractor trailer over to the side of the road, and put on the air brakes. I looked at the driver and his eyes were completely rolled back in his head and he was foaming at the mouth. I jumped out and ran to my friends in the vans that had stopped behind me and told them to call an ambulance. A police officer showed up first. My friends don't speak any English and didn't see what happened in the truck, so it was up to me to explain in my less than perfect Japanese at the time what had happened. My friends only explained that I had jumped from the van onto the moving truck to stop it. It was obvious that the driver was having an epileptic fit, but I didn't know how to say "epilepsy" in Japanese (I know now that it is "tankan" and won't forget because of the incident). Basically a translation of what I said was; "he was unconscious with his eyes rolled back and foam was coming out of his mouth. I don't know the name of this serious disease, but people with this disease shouldn't be driving a truck". The Japanese policeman just stared back at this "round-eyed devil", not following what I was trying to explain and was obviously very dismissive of my suggestion that the driver should not have a commercial driver's license. As we stood beside the truck for about 10 minutes, the ambulance showed up and I continued trying to explain the situation when the driver finally came to, but he didn't know where he was and couldn't even tell us his own name. He was completely out of it. The police offer told the driver that he must have fallen asleep at the wheel because he was tired and told him to drive to a rest stop a mile up the road and sleep it off for a few hours. I started jumping up and down yelling at the cop and ambulance personnel that the driver wasn't sleeping and that they cant let the driver get back into the truck because he might kill somebody with his condition. The cop told me and my friends to leave and that he would handle it.... there was no thank you for saving what could have been many peoples lives and he never took our names. We just went on to the track like nothing happened and I always wondered after that if that driver ever had another epileptic seizure while driving his rig.
mike
Pit Row
We played chicken, and both lost. I veered left, he veered right. I hit him and launched into the trees. We never saw him again, so I guess he was OK. It broke the rear brake and peg off the bike, and didn't do my foot any favors.
I said severe dihedral (angle) on the vertical surfaces ( tail area) canted out from vertical centerline 50degrees plus. Stablizer canted down 25 degrees from centerline.
Not an aircraft flying (standard)I haven't seen.
Aircraft was 3/4 scale in size
Still blows my mind years later.
Cheers, Pat
Cheers, Pat
next time I see him it's on!!!
Cheers, Pat
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