JT Racing - The good Ol' days...

Never really thought about it, but that is probably why I have a gear bag full of TLD stuff. It is very similiar in style to some of the old JT stuff. Dug up this old picture of me. JT jersey & pants- and BTW that is one of Troy Lee's first custom painted helmets... .

Boy - You guys would make good detectives. Yes, I think I might have mistaken those "Leathers" (We still called them that even though they were made form synthetic man made materials) for my old JT stuff. And yes, that is one of Mitch's old PC Jerseys. I totally forgot about it. Got it from my good friend who was one of the first machinists who worked for Mitch when he decided to go from making just pipes to all the other stuff. Mitch called him "Mole Man" for all the burrowing head first he was known for doing out at the track...



And Oh yeah, that is one of the first TLD helmets. Still hangs in my garage. Mole Man was good friends with Troy when he was painting helmets out of an airplane hanger and Troy used to do all of Mole Man's Helmets. I got lucky and got one of his olds ones. I thought Mole Man was insane paying $50.00 to have a helmet painted when I could get a new one for about the same price. Boy was I wrong....



As far as the Xs in this thread go. They weren't there in 2008 when I posted this thread. Kinda weird that someone brought it back form the dead. Use the link at the bottom of the first post. It still works though and the JT gear is killer!

You knew Roger?! He used to wrench for a NASCAR Team now he is in North Carolina as the Engineer for a Truck Team. Those really were the days. Wrote this about the Mole man - keep in mind I might have used a little 'Creative Liberty"- but for the most part the story is dead on...



Mole Man and the MoTo Road Trip



I never really had a chance to be a “Factory” moto star, but back in the day (70’s), a guy with a box van and a little help from a local shop was just about as “Factory” as you could get. There were no Factory rigs, big salaries, personal trainers, life coaches or man friends back then. Your best friend or dad was your mechanic and all you needed was the coveted box van with some huge stickers on the side, a full stand up tool chest, an extra set of wheels, some miscellaneous parts, a nice tarp to designate your “Pits” and a good chair to sit in – Bam! You were “Factory.” That was it. Factory guys certainly had the trick bikes as well, but that was really about it. Oh yeah, there was one other thing they always had – they got the hot chicks. Damn those Factory guys…



Anyway, I didn’t have the box van, but I had a trick Maico and a little help from one of the local shops. I did, however, have a bud – and HE had something just as good as a box van, A Dodge panel van that was portioned off into two halves. Front half for driver and passenger, back half for the bikes, gear, tools etc. This was the type of van that screamed “Road trip.”



My bud was my mentor. He was the Yoda to my Luke Skywalker. He wasn’t a factory rider, but for a pretty fast So Cal CMC intermediate, he had it going on. He even had a cool nickname – “Mole Man” - given to him by none other than the legend Mitch Payton himself. Mitch said he gave Mole Man the name because he was always burrowing into the ground like a mole when he crashed, but I am sure it had something to do with the fact that Mole Man’s vision was crappy in bright light so he always squinted, Ya know, just like one of those Moles in the cartoons. Boy could Payton nail the nicknames.



Anyway, Mole Man rode the exotic bikes (Husqvarnas or Maicos) and only raced the 500 class (The only class a real man should race he told me) and holy sh!t were his bikes trick! He worked at Pro Circuit Products (Used to be PCP, but you can guess why Mitch changed the name) and he always had the best of everything. All I could do was try and follow in his foot steps as he took me from weekend rider to racer. So when Mole Man told me we were going to do the Golden State series, the only thing I said was, “When do we leave.”



“First race is this weekend at Madera,” Mole Man said, “I will pick you up after work tomorrow. We hit the road at 6 PM.” Youth and ignorance sure has its place. That was all I needed to hear. No planning, no worries… All I had to do was prep the bike and take a few days worth of food from my mom’s refrigerator and I was good to go. Being that clueless had its advantages. There was never a thought as to how, you just did it.



Mole Man was in the driveway at 6 P M. In all the years we raced, he was never late by even 1 minute. You wouldn’t expect that kind of punctuality from a guy who looked like, well, er , Mole Man, as he had developed a certain look beyond the obvious Mole thing. The look Mole Man had came from years of hitting the Punk scene in Hollywood. For Mole Man, the only thing he took as serious as his racing was his Punk Rock – hence the look…



Remember the squinty eyes? No problem for a Punker. Mole Man wore these dark green glasses all the time, day or night, indoors or out. They never came off. They had the strangest shape. Kinda like wire rimmed Granny glasses with a hinged top and bottom. Hinge up and they had a full Punker look. Hinge down and they looked like Granny glasses. Mole Man said he got them from his Grandma. I believed him. He always wore them hinge up.



The look didn’t stop there. Although most of the Punkers went with the shaved head look, not the Mole. He had long jet black hair that he proudly flew out the back of his helmet and he always wore the strangest colored tennis shoes. I had no idea were he got them, probably in Hollywood or something, but you wouldn’t catch me wearing a pair. Green, yellow and red weren’t meant to go on shoes. Let alone all at the same time. Later, he did change to black 18 hole Doc Marten’s. He said they worked out better in the Mosh pit when someone needed to have their face kicked in. Mole man took his Mosh Pit serious and had the scars to prove it.



With the bike and gear loaded, I jumped in the van. We made one stop for gas and picked up a twelve pack of talls. We were good to go and hit the freeway north bound. Getting out of L A on a Friday evening was a b!tch and the beers were the way Mole Man dealt with traffic. He figured that before we got to the third beer we should be on the other side of L A, so we popped a cold one and motored.



TSOL was blazing on the cassette player and we were on a mission. The volume on Mole Man’s stereo was like sitting in front of an air raid siren at full wail. When the Mole played his music, I swore I could feel blood trickle out of my ears and down my neck, but hey, it was Mole Man. I didn’t dare say a thing. I think Mole Man said it gave him holeshot powers or something and that little fugger could holeshot.



Looking back at it, he made Alessi look like an amateur when it came to pulling big fat holeshots. I saw him make the 5th gear pinned turn at the top of Webco Hill at Saddleback Raceway on that big Husky of his before most of the riders on the gate had shifted their bikes even one time. It was not uncommon for him to have 15 to 20 bike length holeshots. They were a thing of beauty and like his punctuality; you could rely on Mole Man to round the first turn out front – way out front.



We were just about out of L A and probably weren’t three sips into our second beer when over the wail of the Dead Kennedys Mole screamed, “Uh, ohhhh!!! Hide the beers!” I looked in the side view mirror and saw the dreaded rotating red and blue light. Hiding a tall brew with only a few sips out of it isn’t the easiest thing, but I did the best I could. One between the seats and one between my door panel and my seat. God, I hoped I wasn’t asked to ‘Exit the car Sir.” We would be busted for sure.



Mole wasn’t exactly speeding or weaving, but I guess two guys driving down the freeway in a van at night wearing dark sunglasses probably looked a little suspicious. I whipped mine off, but when I glanced over at Mole Man, true to form, the Mole kept his on. At that point I muttered, “We’re done… To which the Mole said, “Don’t say a fugg’n thing. Let me do the talk’n.”



The Highway Patrolman tapped on my glass and I rolled the window down (Yeah, back then, only Cadillacs had electric windows). He poked his head in the van, took along hard look around and said, “What’s in the back.” I sat still and stared straight ahead and kept quite like I was told. This is going to be good, I thought.



Mole Man slid his glasses down toward the tip of his nose, turned his head toward the Cop and lowered his chin to his chest. Looking straight at the Cop and peering over the top of his dark green Granny glasses, the Mole said, “Motorcycles. I am a professional racer and this is my mechanic. We are on our way to Madera for a race. I am sorry if I was speeding, but as a professional racer I need to get to the track as early as possible so that I can get some sleep before the race. I should have been paying closer attention.”



The Cop eyeballed Mole Man for second and began to pull his head back out from inside the van. Just before he did, I saw the Cop take a big whiff of air – he immediately froze and pushed his head back into the van. “You guys haven’t been drinking, have you?” the Cop said, staring straight at the Mole. And with out batting an eye, mustering the straightest poker face I have ever seen, the Mole shot back, “Officer, I told YOU, I am a professional racer. I make a living off of this body. I have NEVER taken a drink of alcohol nor will I EVER!”



The Cop locked eyes with the Mole, but the Mole held his ground and didn’t flinch. I, on the other hand, thought I was going to crap my pants. The Cop briefly hesitated, took another long look around the inside of the van and said, “Well, alright then. You guys have a safe drive and be careful at the race.” What the He!!? Did the Mole Man pull some kind of Jedi mind trick? Damn he was good.



We finished our beers from beside my seat and figured we wouldn’t push it by opening another. This turned out to be one of the best decisions in my life, for I was about to see something the likes of which I had never seen before. We dropped down the Grape Vine a turned toward Fresno and it was like driving off the end of the Earth and into the clouds. FOG! And I am not talking about the Coastal fog I was used to that came in from the beach. This was World War I mustard gas thick stuff. By now we were running late and the option of pulling over did not exist.



For the first time, I saw the Mole pull his Granny glasses off. I really don’t think it did any good because you couldn’t see sh!t anyway, but I knew it was serious for him. Looking toward the windshield was like staring at a TV screen that had that snowy haze all over it. You couldn’t see the dividing lines on the highway or the marked sides of road. It was like driving a car with white paper taped over the windshield and side windows.



Since you couldn’t see anything anyways, Mole Man theorized whether we went 10 miles an hour or 50 miles an hour, it was the same thing. We went 50. Straining to look out the windshield with no physical objects to get your bearings with got really weird. As Mole Man pushed on, there was no real sensation of moving. Your eyes focused in and out like an auto focus camera that was glitching back and forth. The only sensation you had that the van was moving, was the sound of the engine humming along. It was as if we were sitting still on a conveyor belt, engine humming, wheels spinning and we weren’t going anywhere. Several times I glanced at the speedo to make sure we were moving, yep, it said 50 MPH, we were moving all right. Freaky!



I got lucky when it was my turn. The Mole needed to crash outso I took over the driving duties. I pulled on to the freeway and was totally freaked with the whole driving blind in the fog thing. Then I saw my way out. A trucker merged in front of me. I followed those two little red tail lights like a little duckling following his mama duck for miles. It worked! All the Mole Man wanted was two hours of rest and I had given it to him. After my shift I gladly handed the wheel back to the Mole and crashed out myself. Probably the most stressful two hours of my life to this day (Well, there was this one time I was in Tahiti surfing and I decided to cut across this guys property to get to a hidden waterfall I had heard the locals talking about, when out of the jungle popped this tribal tatted Tahitian dude with a machete raised over his head – but that’s another story…) Anyways, I had survived the fog. Thank the Lord!



I awoke at the track. Or should I say I awoke were the track was. I couldn’t see it. Nobody could see it. The fog wasn’t lifting. This was going to be interesting…



Practice was the strangest thing you could imagine. The fog was so thick you could only see about 10 feet in front of you. And as if that wasn’t enough, the moisture from the fog built up on the front of your goggles and the 10 feet of visibility became more like 5. Imagine trying to learn a new track that you could not even see! The only way around the track was to try and follow the sound of the bike in front of you. It was like a bunch of blind guys out on the track.



If you could have seen it, I am sure it was pretty comical. Everyone zig zagging back and forth trying to keep their bikes between the banners lining each side of the track. I used to wonder if I went to heaven would God have a motocross course for us to ride? Being that heaven is in the clouds, this was as close as you could probably get. Not what I had imagined. I was now convinced the answer was going to be no, Damn it!



The fog stayed with us all day. For me, I honestly don’t remember what place I got. I am sure if it was top three I would have remembered, so that should tell you something. For Mole Man, it was a different story. Having always ridden a little blind, he was in his element. Of course he got the holeshot and after that it was - see ya! He checked out and won both motos easily. I guess being a Mole had its advantages that day. Who would have ever of guessed it. Those were the days…