How'd you get started and who helped you

Exchanged messages with another member yesterday sharing our histories in the sport, and I enjoyed that common bond a lot in light of the dust and fury between folks here on other issues.

How'd you get started? Who influenced you and helped get you started.

For a lot of you, that's probably family. My family had nothing to do with motorcycles, but growing up in Richmond/El Cerrito in the east Bay Area in the 60's and 70's there were tons of bikes. A few families on the block had bikes (Triumph sleds, Greeves, Yamahas I remember as a kid in the 60s). Then I saw the Pepperell Inter Am that was on Wide World of Sports sometime late 60s, and that looked pretty cool. We lived on the east bay ridge, and people rode in Wildcat Canyon for years, so I'd walk up around the corner and be able to watch and hear two strokes singing in the hills (no silencer days). So bikes were no new.

When I got to junior high school, I was in a circle of friends that got motocross crazy. None of us had motorcycles or families involved, so we BMX'ed our stingrays. I remember being razzed for not keeping straight what an off camber turn was when I was trying to learn moto language. We're talking the Hot Hat era.

Toward the end of that time I hooked up with probably the two most influential people that jump-started my moto life. The first was Malcolm Smith (and, to be fair, Bruce Brown). On Any Sunday came out in summer 1971 (just to see kids doing on their bike what we had spun up ourselves was sick). My parents in no way were going to buy me a motorcycle, and dad considered motorcycle riding just riding, not effort. But I talked him into seeing OAS, and I cannot tell you how impressed he was with Malcolm Smith. He really was taken by him and the completely different element of motorcycling that the Hell Angels On Wheels/Outlaw/Teen rebel movie genre of the era portrayed. I begged him to take me to the 1971 Trans Ama at Carnegie (the last no silencer series in the US), and he did and saw and understood the sport. He kept coming to the yearly Trans AMA until I think 1976 even when I'd ditch him to hang with friends after that first year. I honestly believe that my folks would have killed the idea for me without the influence of OAS and the open mind in created in my dad. They still were not going to spend a dime for a bike.

The second most influential person came into my life when I rekindled an elementary school friendship wat the end of junior high. Rich was older, with a single mom, very mechanically oriented (started working as a freshman as mechanic at Dam Cycles in El Sobrante, then became a car mechanic. We've lost touch over the years as our paths divided, which I regret. The guy won a trophy at the Oakland Roadster show with a custom taco mini bike before he was a teenager. His mom would co-sign loans for him, that he paid back first from a long route paper route before school, and he was on a used 360 Husky when he was 15. He'd take the trunk lid on his mom's 4-door Chevelle so she could "truck" him down to the Ramblers area down in Point Richmond (later the site of the famous mini gps), or ride the railroad tracks.

It was a different era.

A lot of my other friends started peeling off the moto craze as we went into high school, and I and another friend really circled up with Rich, who actually had a motorcycle and was beginning to race. Rich taught me to ride. He connected me with my first bike (paid for with my paper route money), a 1970 Bultaco Pursang in basket case with bad crank for $300. We split the cases (using his CZ case splitter) and he helped me (i.e., did the work while I watched) rebuild and true the crank in metal shop. Then I put it back together (three times before it would shift). It was such a roach, but totally mine. As we got closer he got me a job with him at a gas station, which allowed me to get my first real bike, and older Maico radial.

Rich was racing regularly by then and moving up to pro, and my other friend and I were able to join them (I can't say that I didn't have some jealousy for my other friend, whose dad was buying him bikes early - he had a 73 CZ before I got my basket case). In 1977 Rich got his AMA pro license, and I wrenched for him the 77 Hangtown National. Which, for me and the reality of Rich's mechanical skills, meant I basically had white overalls with a spare plug and a wrench on the start line if the plug fouled. Rich has the classic privateer qualifier first turn disaster, and that was the end of that. He went out again in 1979 and did the Hangtown and Sears Point Nationals, and the USGP support class, with me as his wrench. I had started taking MX photos pretty early on, but I was starting to be a little more serious about it by this time, and those old Hi Point pit pass holders were excellent for mocking up a counterfeit credential that would past muster from a reasonable to crash pass only areas for better pictures. It paid to be inventive.

I am as slow and unskilled as can be; I might have at best become a midpack intermediate if I had raced every weekend. Rich was a solid money winning local pro in NorCal in the second half of the 70's which says a lot given the NorCal talent pool then. The first race I did was a marathon at Sand Hill, which were all comers races, and Rich passed me the second lap. For all the crap that kids throw at each other, Rich never mocked that. Never. He was as excited if I did well as I was for him when he did.

By the late 70s I began to realize that I was a knucklehead with no life skills to sell, and that I need to make supply and demand work for me if I wanted to have enough money to buy bikes while supporting myself. That was my motivation for finally getting to college and making it work for me. Rich also headed off in different directions from racing MX, our life courses began to diverge pretty radically and we lost touch after my wife and I got married in 86 and then kids. The last I heard he was a Master Harley tech at one of the Bay Area dealerships. My passion for MX never diminished. Eventually in 91 I bought another bike, but never with the intention to race. I was fortunate we had some family friends who had kids bikes, so riding was more a family affair, especially when we came to Sac and our new church here had a dirt bike group that got groups as big as 100 together for Nevada desert trips.

I feel blessed that I still enjoy and am as passionate about bikes as I was when I started. I no longer can ride with any intensity or duration, but I still tinker with bikes. I consider it a gift from God, who gives every perfect gift. That gift to me began with a role model who influenced my dad and a friend who invested in me and took me as I was. What an awesome gift.

I'd love to read your stories.