Two-wheeled Life Part 3

 TWO-WHEELED LIFE Part 3

All of this had me thinking of another project - AMA Superbike racing. I thought I could qualify for the pro license required and a 750 cc engine would fit in the frame since the 900 was just a bigger bore/stroke version of the 750 and we could hit the big time...all we lacked was money. We found some from the same brother-in-law who enjoyed watching his Moto Guzzi go around the track at speeds he could only dream of.

Our money-man also had one of these. I'd driven him up to the California bay area to haul it back to SoCal and spent plenty of the drive talking up our chances in the Superbike category. This MV Agusta was declared off-limits after he'd dumped his rare Ducati 750SS fooling around in the Malibu canyons. Yours truly went down to ride it around for him whenever it needed exercise, including a photo spread on the rare machine in Cycle News. It was fun being kind of a curator as I kind of talked him into the Moto Guzzi, Ducati 750SS and the MV..vicarious fun.

Brother-in-law wasn't rich and while he did spend plenty on his exotic Italian motorcycle collection he'd hand over a small portion of his periodic trust-fund payments. Those limited funds meant our effort was limited to California events. Luckily for us there were usually three each season, one at the famed Laguna Seca track in Monterey (a track most club racers couldn't use as it was restricted to pro events most of the time) that I'd raced on with the Moto Guzzi while the Riverside and Willow Springs tracks were our "backyard" along with the recently closed Ontario Motor Speedway.

Number 20 in the photo above is yours truly, likely holding-up better riders like #34 Ricky Orlando, #27 Rich Oliver (who would go on to be national champ in the 250 GP class) #31 Harry Klinzmann and #88 Roberto Pietri, coming down out of the infamous corkscrew in practice. We had a rocket-ship motor courtesy of local turning wizard Kaz Yoshima. It wasn't exactly legal though, Kaz refused to put the time and effort required into building a legal engine, figuring my meager talents didn't warrant all that effort and I'd be so slow nobody would ever question the legality of our machine.

He was wrong! While I did get lapped around the (then-short Laguna circuit with lap-times barely over a minute) the speed of this thing down the straights raised eyebrows. A top-10 finish didn't help. The last thing I wanted was to be caught cheating, but Kaz still refused to build us a legal engine, instead swapping the camshafts to some that would reduce the power down to what the other competitors had, with their (presumably) legal-sized engines. 

Years later I learned from some reliable sources how "legal" many of these machines actually weren't with the various motorcycle factories and distributors lobbying the rules makers for strict definitions of what was legal in a class that was supposed to be like the original NASCAR, modified versions of road-legal cars off showroom floors. Once they had those definitions in writing they set about working every angle they could, eventually leading to Honda selling factory built racing machines that were never street-legal machines off any dealer's sales floor or even out of a standard shipping container - they were purpose-built racing machines crafted to be barely legal according to the rules.

We tried to buy one of the limited number available but our request was rejected, as was our request to buy some of the remaining special (but legal) parts Honda had produced and sold for their earlier Superbikes like the one we had. So we went to Willow Springs with what we had and hoped for the best.

There best was on a practice lap, when a group of the top guys came past me into a high-speed turn, one that opened onto the main straightaway. As they went by I got into their slipstream and was sucked along at a speed that scared me! But I quickly thought why not try to hang in there? We entered the turn so fast that we were sliding...both rear and front wheels! Wow! I'd slid the rear wheel plenty of times, helping to get the bike turned, but this was the first time both wheels were moving like on a fast dirt oval, something a few of these guys (like Wayne Rainey, who would clinch the championship this day) had a lot of experience with. But not me!

One of those "light-bulb" moments for sure. Now I understood how they could go so fast. In the previous race at Laguna Seca they went by so fast I never could follow, but once I could it was a revelation. I didn't get any closer to the top qualifier's lap time than 2 seconds but that still put me on the second row on the starting grid! I was starting to think I was getting hang of this!

Another reason for this were some other modifications we made. We didn't have those trick parts that would have made our inline 4 cylinder engine narrower, so too often I was scraping it on the track. Not good since if you lean too hard that way you lever the rear wheel out of contact with the racetrack! Something had to be done and in desperation one afternoon I started looking at the rear of the moto as it sat on a prop stand with the rear wheel off the ground.

I unbolted the two shock absorbers, which let the swingarm/wheel assembly drop to the ground. I decided to try something and had our welding shop friends move the lower attachment points for the shocks forward on the arm so the shocks could be re-attached with the wheel much lower. The idea was to raise the entire motorcycle so it would be harder to drag the engine on the track. We had 'em weld some reinforcement on the arm while they were at it as there was no rule against adding metal and I figured it could use some extra strength since the shocks were now further forward.

This of course made some new shocks necessary as the leverage ratio was changed by moving the lower attachment points. Some measurements were taken and sent to a custom shock company, one more famous for motocross, but they got the damping and spring rates just right!

Now we had more ground clearance with an additional benefit. Jacking up the rear of the motorcycle changes the steering geometry. A steeper angle improves turning but usually at the expense of stability, so street bikes of the time tended to have slack angles to keep unskilled riders out of trouble. Now the angle was much, much steeper, helping me get the bike turned into the corners. Stability wasn't much affected as we had a steering damper fitted. It just needed to have its damping setting increased.

With these backyard modifications, the moto became much more responsive, more like the specially-built factory models. Honda sold at least 10-12 of their customer racing machines and there were usually more than half of them at any race. Add their two factory-backed entries along with two from Kawasaki and getting a top-10 finish was quite the prize for a totally private entry that started out with an actual off-the-showroom floor, street legal motorcycle.

Superbike was run in two races like motocross. Best combined score wins. Race 1 saw me get my usual not-so-good start as the really fast guys got going but within a few laps disaster struck - the leader Honda's Mike Baldwin crashed on the back straight, banging himself up enough to need an ambulance ride to the hospital while his factory-built Honda ended up laying in the middle of the back straightaway...on fire! 

I expected a red-flag to stop the race but it never came, so each lap was a choice of which side of the burning bike would you choose? Right or left? There was no room for side-by-side racing. A crucial choice when you were racing with someone as yellow caution (no passing) flags waved but a good decision here could set up a pass once beyond the yellow flag zone.

We had another top-10 finish with a bit of a brag since the only machines ahead of me were a half-dozen of Honda's factory specials behind rival Kawasaki's two factory-backed entries.  So I was the best finisher on a motorcycle created by genuine private effort. We were very excited to see how Race 2 would turn out for us.

Race 2 was halted after only a few laps and then eventually canceled by more crashing, oddly enough again by riders on Honda's special machines. I made a snarky comment about why the race was being canceled...just because the Honda boys couldn't stay on their motorcycles? That crack probably sealed the idea that we'd never get any assistance from the Honda importers. In the combined scoring I was awarded 8th place. All of us were ecstatic and thinking of the 1984 Superbike season.

In 1984 I would achieve one of my dreams, a national ranking as a pro #39. I don't exactly know how this was done as some of the top-ranked riders kept their favorite numbers but they'd just given me #20 in the past season as nobody was using it. But the big news for me was that finally Kaz accepted that I was good enough to finally deserve his efforts to build us a legal engine with enough horsepower. Our goal was the spring Superbike race at Riverside. The engine was only finished a few weeks before with not even enough time to run it on the dyno long enough for full break-in.

We also needed to try it out on the track we'd be facing-off against the pros very soon so the idea was to do the break-in at a local club race at Riverside two weeks before the big show. 

I ran it around in practice, keeping the RPM's at the suggested limit with the deal to gradually increase during the race. That race never came as during the warm-up lap I slipped and crashed on oil dropped by another competitor's machine. Turn 6 at this track is where the above photo was taken but it's actually 6A while 6B turns back the other way. 6B was where the oil was.

So no race, no engine break-in. A smashed fuel tank also had to be replaced after being quickly painted but otherwise we were ready two weeks later. In practice I was still trying to complete the engine break-in but still ended up with a decent grid position. My usual poor start (I had fears of doing a big wheelie at the start and the wet clutch in this modified street bike wouldn't tolerate much in the way of practice starts) had me further back than I wanted to be.

The engine was finally starting to break-in and I gradually moved up, eventually getting past a group of riders and solidly into the top-10 until I saw a barely waving "oil on the track" flag. Where else but going into turn 6B of course! I really didn't want the group I'd just gotten past in 6A to catch me, but how slow to go? How much oil was there? Enough. Enough for a replay of the club race crash two weeks earlier. But this time there was no red flag stopping the race so things could be cleaned up like at the club race!

Riders went down like bowling pins, one after another. No red flag, just like when a burning motorcycle was laying on the back straight at Willow Springs the previous season. Finally I and a couple of other riders who had crashed walked back onto the circuit with arms waving, hoping to get the race stopped. The track was so slick it was hard to stand up on it! They finally stopped the race but my motorcycle was too badly damaged to make the restart or race 2.

Worse, our sponsor had now seen "his" entry crash two times in two weeks in the same turn at the same racetrack, each time caused by something out of our control. He was finished as a sponsor and I was finished as a AMA pro racer. I was so mad I wound-up and threw my custom painted helmet into the sky! I didn't care what happened to it, though someone managed to catch it before it hit the ground. Pushing 30 years of age, nobody was interested in a rider like me.

I kept the job at the Honda dealership, but didn't race much other than an endurance race at the Willow Springs track, partnering with a customer. I think we were leading the 400cc class before he was taken out by a faster rider making a too-close pass. Talk started about taking part in the WERA 24-hour race at Willow Springs. I wasn't invited to be part of the team. "You're too bossy!" my friends said. I asked if they'd let me ride a few stints on their brand-new, right out of the box Honda VF500, a motorcycle that had just been released if I kept my mouth shut and just rode my stints? They said OK, but reminded me this was THEIR effort, I was not in-charge!

It didn't take long before I was doing a lot more, but they really needed the help with this effort. Somehow, one of the two guys whose idea this was decided to add a fourth rider, a friend of one of them. I started thinking 5 riders might be even better, the race was 24 hours, right? A friend of a friend was a pretty fast racer, but had no money to get a decent motorcycle so Doug Toland was added to the roster though there was some grumbling.

Off we went one Monday to sort-out this brand-new motorcycle once we'd got it set up for racing though it was in the "showroom" stock category. This 500cc bike was so new to the market there were no hop-parts available anyway - I had to measure and provide specs to a custom sprocket maker just to get some choice in gear ratios. Back then one could rent the Willow Springs track fairly inexpensively if you were willing to share it with others. I remember one time a guy was there testing a Chevrolet Camaro racing car. 

We had the Superbike so alternated our time on the track. Lap times were very similar though the car was slower in acceleration and top speed, with four racing slicks on the ground it was a LOT faster in the turns. The driver came over to look at our motorcycle and I couldn't help teasing him. "You're very brave strapped into that car! How 'bout you cut a hole in the roof, extend the steering wheel and see how fast you can go on top of the car instead of inside it?

He laughed, shook his head and went away saying "You guys are nuts."

Our testing for the endurance race went well, everyone got a turn riding it, the guess we'd made on the gearing was pretty close and we could see who was fast and who was not. The two guys whose idea the whole thing was were the slowest while Doug Toland was the fastest with yours truly and other guy close behind. It was all great until the "other guy" suddenly sat-up and went off the track in a high-speed curve! Somehow he managed to stay upright and had to be hauled in to the pit lane - the motor was dead. It had seized-up, locked solid and only "other guy"s quick grab of the clutch saved him.

We hauled the thing back to the shop and started tearing it apart to see what happened. The alternator AND the tip of the crankshaft it was attached to, fell out as soon as the engine cover was removed. That turned out to be after-the-fact damage, the engine had stopped due to bearing failure! Brand-new and fairly carefully broken in, but the engine failed with very few miles on it. Did we do something wrong?

Nope. There was something wrong with the bearings and the motorcycles were recalled by the Honda company. It turned out ours was just the first major failure. Honda wanted to see first-hand the engine but we wanted to race! Finally new bearings, crankshaft, etc. were provided and the engine carefully rebuilt and broken-in. Would it last for 24 hours of racing? We'd soon find out. It did. I tried one last bit of running things, pointing out that if the goal was a high-placing the faster riders should do more stints. The response was "YOU are not in-charge. You're only a rider" and the decision was equal time for each rider no matter who fast or not.

I had fun with this, there was a lady friend at the track who joined us and we'd sit in lawn chairs while various press people and spectators came around to ask questions..of me, since I was usually in-charge, but not this time so I made a request of my lady friend - when I pointed to her would she say "He's not in-charge, he's just a rider."? She agreed and we had a lot of laughs all through the 24+ hours.

Meanwhile, once the sun went down, Doug Toland on our showroom stock VF500 (though we did put a higher power bulb in the headlight, one of which blew-out while I was out there, making things interesting) was the fastest bike on the track! Faster than all the big-bore, hopped-up machines with experienced riders on them. This was real fun as more and more people came by when the word got around,  only to hear "He's not in-charge, he's only a rider."

Doug Toland went on to ride for the team who won this event based on his riding with us and eventually won the Endurance Racing World Title a few years later. I didn't do much more other than try to help some customers sort-out one of their race machines, at one time having the thing start bucking like a bronco, leaving black marks on the track before my wrestling with the unruly beast caused my arm to be pulled out of my shoulder enough to go numb! Amazingly, without my input the thing straightened up enough for me to just ride off the track safely. Some who saw this came over later to describe this as a "great save!" I couldn't help but admit the truth.

 I soon started working for another Honda motorcycle shop, again as parts department manager. The owner of this dealership forbade any of his employees from racing. I bought the CB400 back from my brother, mostly as transportation vs the gas-guzzling van.

I lent my van out to the friend who'd so kindly let me live at his house but my racing was done. I spent a lot more time running and riding my bicycle, even giving bicycle racing a try before admitting I was no good at it. Excellent endurance, but no leg speed when it counted. One Sunday I got up early and rode my bicycle to Riverside Raceway, around 100 miles. My friend was there with my van so I'd stashed some clothes inside and made sure he understood he would be giving me a ride back!

A lot of my former competitors were startled to see me there - on a bicycle! After reaching another goal or two in running and giving up on bicycle racing I gave observed trials another try, but soon ditched that when I found the sport had changed to being about gymnastics as much as riding a motorcycle. I had zero interest in the weight-lifting needed for the gymnastics so it was time for something else on two wheels for playing in the dirt, a mountain bike.

Another e-bike

 E-SHOPPING?

Nah, we know it's Black Friday (how long has it been black month, week, etc. anyway?) but this is Zio Lorenzo's new E-Shopping BIKE. These Bianchi E-Spillo Lady Classic bikes have been discontinued it seems so it was "get it now" even though the old man can still make it up the incline back home loaded-down with groceries. But for how long? He liked the simplicity of this bike, pretty much just like the one he's been riding for eight years, just with a motor/battery and maybe even more important - the step-thru frame.

WHAT you say? A LADY frame? Look how high the box in back is. Add a sack of groceries and you have a pretty high bar to swing your leg over unless you want to hoist your leg and risk scratching the bike's top tube. Zio's never crashed himself doing the swing, but he's come close enough times that the smarter half of our duo insisted he get the LADY model. It IS much easier to climb and get going when it's loaded down and it IS a shopping bike, so..

He started looking for one once it seemed they'd been replaced with newer models and when a shop in Northern Italy had 'em at more than 20% off (Black Friday?) he ordered one. In this photo you can see the front rack/basket, ugly milk crate box on the back and the black plastic fenders he robbed from his previous bike to replace the cute, but likely to rust, rattle and get dented, painted metal fenders.

Here's the business end: motorized hub with battery pack under the rack. It comes out for charging and has built-in tail light, but otherwise looks just like Heather's Spillo Rubino, but for some crazy reason the classic Celeste paint on this one is not the same as hers. One would think Bianchi has been painting their bikes this color long enough to have a formula for their signature color, but what does Zio know?

The only other telltale sign of e-assist is the control unit on the handlebar, but it's pretty small so we don't worry much about this one getting swiped vs a non-electric bike. When they're parked and locked together I doubt anyone would notice.

So now Zio fears no shopping! If he can fit it on the bike, no matter how heavy it is, he'll get it...but no shopping on Black Friday!

Two-wheeled life Part 2

Two-wheeled Life Part 2

I'd sold the little CB400 to my brother and could easily buy it back, but I knew it would never be competitive - I'd finally learned that lesson. 

I chose the smallest displacement class (410cc) in the American Federation of Motorcyclists' (AFM) "boxstock" category, meaning you could do very little to the showroom stock motorcycle other than tape up the lights, remove the turn signals, kickstand and license plate, bolt on your number plates and race. My idea was to limit the effects of the motorcycle and find out if I was any good as a rider when all the machines were more or less the same. No excuses, either I was good at this or I wasn't. I wanted to find this out as inexpensively as possible since I was still making monthly payments of the Moto Guzzi after all. I still wanted to play around on non-racing weekends.

Most everyone competing in this category (there were none for ability - seasoned pro or beginner, you raced in a category based only on the displacement of your machine and how much you'd modified it) were racing on Yamaha's venerable two-stroke, twin cylinder RD400, so off I went to buy one, finding a new but year-old model at a good price, having a leather suit made and taking out a racing license.

My first race (at Willow Springs) went pretty well. After passing the new rider's instruction class, where seasoned racers rode around observing our techniques after some sit-down classroom/chalkboard talks it was time to take some real practice laps where I could go as fast as I dared.

I no longer remember where I finished that day, but I raced in two categories, the "boxstock" and in "modified production". My stock motorcycle was hopelessly uncompetitive there, but it was extra track-time and a chance to see how the more experienced riders went around. Turned out I was faster than a few, despite their heavily-modified machines. Maybe I was good at this?

I started thinking about racing for the category championship after some high placings. This was given to the racer who scored the best over the season's races. including ones at Northern California's Sears Point Raceway. But there were two obstacles to this idea.

Obstacle one was getting to all these races, the northern California ones being 500 miles north of where I lived. Obstacle two was the fastest racer in the class, a fading pro trying to restart his career. How would you restart a career in this lowly category, you might ask? This fellow's idea was not to ride a ubiquitous Yamaha RD400 but one of Honda's new 400cc 4-stroke twins called the "Hawk". If he could win on this (inferior) bike he figured his career would be restarted.

Since I had friends at the Honda dealership I'd considered racing one of these, but really didn't want to go down the road of struggling with a lesser machine. I'd learned that lesson. But now there was a pro rider on one, out to prove something. I solved obstacle one by selling my mini-pickup truck, something that would be a real chore to drive 1000 miles up and back to Northern California with no air conditioning. Next on the block was my Moto Guzzi to scrape up the funds to buy a full-size van to haul everything around in. I was ready to contend for the championship against "obstacle two" despite still being a real rookie.

I came up short winning a few times but finishing 2nd to the champ. Near season's end I filed a protest against the champ to inspect his engine to make sure it was indeed "showroom stock". It was and the champ sort of thanked me for giving him the chance to prove it and with the protest fee money buy a new gasket set to use when rebuilding the engine, which would get a (legal) freshening-up in the process.

I knew he'd be gone the next season so I made plans to be champ in 1979, buying a second motorcycle (RD400F Daytona) with a "one to crash in practice, one to race" idea.

Part of the strategy was also to be in better physical shape. Too much motoring and not enough pedaling had resulted in weight gain. I'd been fat as child and realized my tendency in this area so more pedaling was the answer. My idea was that while motorcycle roadracing didn't require a lot of physical strength, having a good supply of oxygenated blood flowing to my brain would at least let me get the most out of my mental capacity. I'd decided racing was mostly a brain exercise after finding that after doing what I thought was a perfect lap or perfect race I'd have a splitting headache.

The running boom had hit the USA so I soon added that to my training program, eventually training enough to run a marathon in under 3 hours and a 10K in under 40 minutes. The boom even hit the AFM racing club as one Sunday at Sears Point they had a running race during the midday break! I'd brought shoes and shorts and lined-up for the one lap (a couple of miles?) event. Everyone else sprinted off like the finish line was 100 meters away while I ran my normal long-distance pace. Halfway around they'd all pooped out and I won the race with ease, following it up with winning my motorcycle race as well.

Up until this point, training for roadracing (unlike MX) was for most drinking beer and smoking cigarettes along with as many laps of practice as you could manage or afford. Plenty laughed at me for doing all that running and cycling, but it was fun and I thought it let me make the most of my abilities as well as fit into a smaller leather suit. Of course today cycling's the training of choice for top riders in MOTOGP, one of whom got good enough to actually get a spot on a pro cycling team when he hung up the leathers.

That smaller leather suit came courtesy of a sponsorship from a local Yamaha dealership. I needed a source for parts and my friends at the Honda store couldn't help much with parts for a Yamaha so I bought that second Yamaha with a sponsorship pitch. Each time I came in for a part I'd chat up the sales manager and owner, eventually getting the leather suit (with their shop name on it big letters) and a super discount on the parts I needed.

With a reliable van, a lighter frame (my own) and one bike to race and one to crash I was ready to go. What could stop me? I'd been second to the pro the previous season and he'd moved on so who could stop me?

Then "JAWS" came on the scene, a guy from Northern California riding the same Yamaha motorcycle, who looked to me like another experienced pro trying to make some sort of comeback. Unlike the previous pro, who'd always raced me clean, "JAWS" (which was lettered on his racing suit) thought of himself as an intimidator-type, maybe like a famous NASCAR driver of the time? 

This guy was pretty fast at his home track, Sears Point but I seemed to have better luck against him at the three Southern California venues. But that didn't stop him from trying, polishing my front fender with his rear tire in some close overtakes. I wasn't happy.

I wasn't happy either when I was called in by the racing club management. Seems my "one to crash in practice, one to race" strategy was rubbing some the wrong way. While I tried to race everyone cleanly, in practice it was "see how fast you can go in this corner" quite often. If/when I crashed (often) I figured I'd just dial things down a bit in the race,

OK, until you take someone else out with you, which happened too many times. I was told to mend my ways or my license would be torn-up. The next challenge was the new moto, this was the end of 2-stroke motorcycles in the USA so this one had a "smog-control" device that made it horrible to race on. The throttle response was just terrible! It was easy enough to disable but would the rules makers see that as an illegal modification? This thing was a real dog on the straight sections of the racetrack - I'd pass competitors in the turns only to be re-passed on the straights, so the smog device was disabled with a simple plug in a vacuum hose.

"JAWS" was another issue. At his home track we battled for the lead while he was up to his usual antics. I decided to put a stop to it - as he tried to go to my left on the main straight, with the pit wall on that side of the track I boxed him in, then gradually moved over to the left. His choice was to back off and try to go around the other side or be squeezed into the wall. He could tell I wasn't fooling around and wisely backed off. I won the race and never had an issue with his bully-boy tactics again.

We traded first and second in the points chase but I finally got my championship trophy. There was a scare about the smog device though, race stewards started asking questions about whether mine was disabled, but never said if it was I'd be DQ'd. I danced around the issue with them until they lost interest, but I was sweating bullets for awhile, seeing my title going up in smog you might say.

Season ended and I was the 1979 AFM 410 Boxstock Champ. 

Mission Accomplished, but what next?

I'd had fun and decent placings running my stock bikes in the modified category, despite how slow they were in comparison. Extra track time on a bike I had to ride the wheels off to keep-up didn't hurt so I figured why not do some modifications and see how I could do in that category on a competitive machine?

I found a tuner who would help with the engine modifications, tore the bike(s) down and rebuilt them as modified production class entries. You couldn't do a lot - no racing exhausts or huge carburetors but you could update and backdate components from the same make/model to optimize the bike's performance. I spent more time on physical training as well, both running and cycling. I also raced this motorcycle in the "super street" category, an anything goes class as long as you started-out with a street-legal motorcycle. I was fairly competitive in this category, again using skill to make up for lack of horsepower.

The Yamaha dealership was happy with the promotion. I started with one motorcycle with the second one used to try some ideas I had for further (but legal) modifications, turning my parent's garage into my personal racing shop.

That might have been too much because Mom decided it was past time for her oldest son to get out of the house! My younger brother and sister had already left but no rent, free food and a garage to use as my personal racing shop was just too tempting for me to leave. 

Motorcycle racing wasn't inexpensive even at the low-level club racing scene so there wasn't going to be any money left after rent and food once out from under my parent's roof, so the Yamaha bikes were sold-off, garage cleaned-out and I moved-in (temporarily) with a racing friend. He sort of felt sorry for me I think and soon proposed I join him (a guy already racing, starting in the same boxstock category but now racing a big-bore boxstock machine) in an endurance racing effort.

I supplied the van and the gasoline to get to/from the races, but spent none of my own money otherwise. This arrangement worked well, even when I finally had to get my own apartment. I still got to race, even on a Moto Guzzi like the one I sold that belonged to his brother-in-law. We won one race and ran second in another of the Battle of the Twins series (in the stock class) and then began a new endurance racing project with a Honda CB900F based machine. 

The endurance racing was kind of fun, though complicated with arranging help with refueling, wheel changes, etc. I'd done some before with smaller machines, teaming up with various racers in the small-displacement categories looking for a fast guy to partner with. We did OK, but never won anything.

It was going to be the same with this big-bore endurance project, we'd just be going faster, my first taste of real speed beyond fooling around on the public roads with my Moto Guzzi which probably ran out of power at maybe 120 mph. Luckily, I was never caught and cited for silly stuff like that, though chased once or twice.

2-wheeled life, a memoir Part 1

 Life on Two Wheels - a Memoir

Zio Lorenzo decided he better write this stuff down before he forgets it all. So it's going to appear here in bits and pieces as the inspiration comes and goes.

When didn't I have a bicycle? Everyone remembers the experience of freedom when your training-wheels are removed and Dad steadies you for a bit followed by a shove and you're free, on-your-own, under your own power. My two-wheeled adventure started like that, pretty much the same as every kid.

It was a few years before the Schwinn Sting-Ray came out in 1963. Dad was a mechanic in Southern California so there were tools around and me and my friends took apart old steel tricycles, flipping the fork around to make 'em low-slung three-wheelers, something the Marx toy company later exploited as the "Big Wheel" in 1969.

Kids in this area were also the inspiration for that Schwinn Sting-Ray, riding 20" wheeled bikes around in dirt lots as shown in the famous motorcycling film "On Any Sunday" that debuted in 1971. Dad wouldn't spring for real Schwinn bikes at first but cheap imported copies were gifted for Christmas or birthdays. When my parents finally sprung for the real thing I'll never forget the excitement of riding my new Sting-Ray home from the bicycle shop, kind of like when you get new shoes and you just have to wear 'em right out the door of the store.

I rode various bicycles through high-school, including a Schwinn Supersport, a 27" wheeled "10-speed" bike that I eventually rode 100 miles in one day, most of it up the famous Pacific Coast Highway. My rear-end hurts just thinking about that along with the bright red sunburn my friend who joined me got on his back between shorts and t-shirt. I did my paper route on that bike with the bag slung over my shoulder instead of the handlebars, trying each afternoon to beat my record, zooming along and tossing the papers onto porches as I rode with no hands.

Then a high-school friend was selling a motorcycle! $65 dollars of that paper-route money later I was the proud owner of a beat-up Honda CL90, complete with "blooey" pipe, the heavy muffler removed and replaced with a tube robbed from a barbell set. It was "buy first, get permission later" and my parents weren't thrilled, but relented enough to take me down to a department store for a cheap crash helmet. 

No driving license yet (and no lights or license on the moto) meant this was a toy to play with in vacant lots, with endless laps around the little-league baseball complex a few miles from our house. What I told Mom was I'd walk/push it down there, ride around and then walk/push it back, though pretty soon it was idling slowly along the sidewalk, with maybe a quick fast bit on the city streets if I thought no cops were looking. 

My friends got motos too, all of 'em much better than mine but I used that to motivate me to beat 'em in our informal races around the ballpark. While they moved on to other things (like girls) I stayed with it, starting to read magazines about dirt bikes and an exotic new import from Europe called MOTOCROSS.

Driving license finally time came and back then you could ride a small motorcycle during the day without a passenger with only your learner's permit. A used Honda SL100, a cheap trail bike with lights so it was street legal was found and $275 later the bicycle as transportation took a back seat for awhile.

This motocross thing seemed really interesting. There was a California racing club promoting races, including a Wednesday night race at nearby Ascot Park, a place we used to pedal our Sting-Rays out to watch the half-mile dirt track racing under the fence. But now I could get inside and actually be part of the show?

It was no half-mile oval, just a twisty course laid out in the infield, using just a bit of the oval, but most importantly the big TT jump where you could get airborne for a bit. My parents weren't keen on signing a racing license application but Dad figured there were worse things I could be doing as a budding juvenile delinquent, so they signed-off. My father and grandparents even came to a race but it scared them so much they never came again.

But this MX bug had bitten. The little SL100 was stripped down and hopped-up and soon I was loading it up into Dad's old GMC pickup truck not only on Wednesday night but also on Sunday morning (and later on Friday nights at another local track at the famous Lion's Drag Strip) to races. There was a larger jump there called "Lion's Leap" where I regularly bent my foot pegs from too-hard landings.

I wasn't very good at it but it was fun. I started in the 100cc beginner class. The racing club had a points system so you couldn't keep winning at this level, you were forced to move up into the intermediate category eventually. I won a few races and placed in enough others to get moved up. But there was no 100cc class other than that one for beginners, once you moved up it was 125cc, 250cc or 500cc, so another motorcycle was needed.

Honda had just released a real 250cc MX bike to compete with serious European motos like CZ, Maico, Bultaco and others. I had to have one! Dad loaned me the money to buy a brand new one, but I was even worse in the 250cc Intermediate category than in the 100cc beginners class.

I managed to win just one race and that only by accident as most of the fast guys in the race (put on by another club who didn't know any of us) signed up in the beginner class. That was where I belonged skill-wise but I didn't want to "cherry pick". Worse, my Intermediate category was combined with the Expert/Pro class!

Yikes! I was on the start line with pros from this other club, guys who raced for prize money, not trophies. But the Intermediate entries were so few since the "cherry pickers" were all in the beginner class that I was 1st in the Intermediate class! I also learned I was never going to be any good at motocross as the pros lapped me more than once. Time to sell the MX bike, but what to do next?

Honda (a friend worked at the local Honda dealership) had just brought out a 125cc bike designed for what was called observed trials. Pretty obscure sport, the basic idea was you rode over, around and through a short obstacle course with points like golf - front wheel stopped turning = 5 points. Put your foot down once = 1 point. Twice = 2 points. More than 2 = 3 points. Like golf, lowest score wins.

The bicycle again sat idle most of the time though still used it for errands and the occasional ride on a Sunday when there were no trials events. I was better at trials than MX and like before I moved up into a higher category. This time I thought the machine was limiting me rather than vice-versa. Just like that earlier Honda 250cc MX dumb move, I bought a Honda 250cc trials bike which turned out to be really uncompetitive. That MX Honda was more bike than I was a rider but the reverse was true this time.

What next? Honda was blowing out unsold road motorcycles and a cute 400cc 4-cylinder CB400F was my next had-to-have. Some friends already had street machines and it was fun to go out on a Sunday morning to zoom around in the Malibu hills or San Bernardino mountains. I also took a few weekend trips to...what else....motorcycle races in Northern California...but just to watch.

The bicycle saw even less and less use in favor of the motorcycle. Riding around the twisty canyon roads in SoCal was so much fun I decided I needed something special, so a bank loan was taken out to buy a slightly used Moto Guzzi 850 LeMans. Sundays zooming around with the other guys on exotic motos like this became a regular thing, including visits now and then to watch races at the local tracks - Riverside International Raceway or the Ontario Motor Speedway or even out in the desert to Willow Springs near the US Edwards Air Force Base.

We'd get chased by the cops now and then, which was kind of fun at first but when I ran a highway patrol roadblock and my friends were stopped and harassed I started to think about going fast on a racetrack. But the Moto Guzzi seemed way too nice to risk throwing down the track...so time for another motorcycle!

 I'd sold my CB400 to my brother and could easily buy it back, but I knew the little Honda would never be competitive - I'd finally learned a lesson. 

to be continued

Light mount

 Is your handlebar too crowded?

Due to the new Italian vehicle code bicycles are now required to have lights front and rear, on all the time. We bought some cheap rechargeable ones that strap on with rubber bands.

Bur Zio Lorenzo already had a computer mount on one side of the stem and a bell on the other. Don't laugh, you need a bell on our island where there are no sidewalks but hordes of tourists waddling along the narrow streets looking at smart-phones or gawking at shop windows instead of where they are walking! 

But where to put it on the already crowded handlebar? Zio kept banging into the thing when it was strapped onto the bar outboard from the computer mount.

Here's what he came-up with. A piece of old handlebar (you could use a piece of PVC pipe of the same diameter) cut off, plugged with a standard bar plug at the bottom and covered with a bit of old inner tube at the top.

A hole drilled through the side lets you strap the thing onto the bottom of your stem with a zip-tie. If your stem's not flat on the underside, you can shape the tube with a file, making a concave surface so the tube is stable. Then just strap-on the light making sure you can easily reach the power button. It's easily removed for recharging.

Out back things were easy as our seat packs have a loop sewn onto the back just for this purpose.

UCI - save us!

 Dear UCI - save us from this, PLEASE!

What is this? A shark?

 

What is this? A spermatozoa?

What is this? A two-wheeled cockroach?

Do any of these things look useful for anything other than racing against the clock or the wind? Of course not, but Zio assumes they're great for what they're designed for..which is certainly NOT aesthetic beauty.

And of course they're pretty useless for anyone not paid to race on one while wearing the other. A person not familiar with bicycle racing would be forgiven for asking "why a shark appears to be riding something that looks like a cockroach turned on its side with two wheels attached? I thought this was a bicycle race."

Zio was reminded of this while watching the World Cycling Championship in Rwanda, the first time they've been held in Africa. It seems a lot of the big stars from the rich cycling countries didn't bother to show-up, leaving room for lots of cyclists one would only (maybe) see at the Olympic Games every four years. Cyclists from relatively poor countries who can't afford to provide their athletes with this kind of expensive (and ugly) overly specialized equipment.

Plenty of racers competed on more-or-less standard roadracing bicycles wearing more-or-less standard crash helmets. How refreshing! And how affordable!

It's past time for the UCI to step-in and ban these crazy helmets and almost useless bicycles. All riders should compete on a standard road bicycle. No full disc wheels, no crazy handlebars to let the rider be splayed out and barely in control of the thing while wearing a "helmet" that is more for streamlining than head protection. Perhaps a simple limit of 10 centimeters in any direction from the rider's head would be enough to rid us of these gawdawful helmets while it should be easy to specify standard roadracing machines for racing against the clock.

PLEASE UCI - Save us (and the competitors) from this!!

Pro Cycling's REAL Problem

Pro Cycling's REAL Broken Business Model

Events like the disruption of La Vuelta 2025 by political protests against a team with ISRAEL on its jersey warrants a look at what Zio Lorenzo would call “Pro Cycling’s REAL Broken Business Model”.

Plenty has been written about the financial structure of pro cycling and how various business models (most of which seem based on somehow getting a piece of the vast fortune the Tour de France organizers supposedly make each year) should be implemented. But the REAL broken business model isn’t financial, it’s ethical. Not commerce vs sport but morality vs sport, two things that should be synonymous but fans are making it clear they are not and they’re not happy about it.

Pro cycling began as an individual sport but soon bicycle makers got involved, seeing the value of their brand-name on the wool jerseys of riders in the famous race. They bought advertising touting how Rider X won the race using their bicycle. Soon, teams were organized and paid by these bike makers to help one man win the race, sacrificing their own chances in the process.

Then Tour de France founder, Henri Desgrange decided in 1930 these industry teams had too much influence. His solution? Change to national teams, hoping to break up industry alliances adversely affecting his race. How to fund the race (and maybe make money?) became an issue, but Desgrange’ solution was a publicity caravan. This way industry of pretty much any type could pay to drive around the race course ahead of the riders, promoting their goods, handing out samples of their products, etc.

This worked OK but in the early 1960’s trade teams (with some national identity, which we’ll discuss further) were allowed to come back. Meanwhile, the lucrative publicity caravan continued. Trade teams again were mostly bicycle industry based, the first non-cycling sponsored team was an Italian one bankrolled by Nivea skin cream starting back in 1954.

Once the value of consumer product advertising became obvious (certainly helped by more and more television coverage of races) all kinds of companies sponsored teams from espresso machine makers, cold-cut producers and supermarkets along with alcoholic beverages one assumes fans would enjoy while watching the races. Even tobacco companies were involved until legislation ruled them out, despite some creative work-arounds by their makers like putting the same brand name on chocolates for example - BOULE D-OR could be eaten but they really wanted you to smoke them!

Pro cycling went along well enough with various companies coming and going, often with a new one just taking the place of a previous one, with no more changes than uniforms and maybe the color/branding of the bicycles. Budgets for pro teams weren’t insane, star riders were paid a pretty decent salary while all of them could add to their income from appearance fees and prizes earned at other races, plenty of which were post-Tour criteriums. Small business owners could afford to have their company name on a jersey, even if it was team that raced only nationally with hopes of an invite to their country’s 3-week Grand Tour

The mid-1980’s saw multi-national Coca-Cola sign up to be the official drink of LeTour, replacing Perrier. This was the same period in which American Greg LeMond started making his mark and other multinationals soon joined the party

Then in 2005 something big happened. A “Pro Tour” idea was cooked up, one that tried to globalize the sport. When cycling went global it meant two important races might be going on at the same time in different places, so now you needed two teams, one for each race with a staff to look after them and their bicycles. Costs of fielding a team competitive on the Pro Tour stage skyrocketed, some compared the budget needed to the GDP of a small country!

Just a few years later there WAS a small country bankrolling a team - Kazakhstan, a team named after their capital city Astana. They were instantly invited to join the Pro Tour. Some questions were asked about the ethics of such an authoritarian regime “sportwashing” in this way, but this was the UCI’s (international cycling union) go-go, “show us the money” phase. These were the same folks who said a certain Texan champ “would never, never, ever dope” to keep their gravy train rolling. The same Texan signed up with the team for the 2009 season, part of his "comeback tour".

Of course there had been national cycling teams in this era like Cafe Colombia, but they were more about promoting coffee than authoritarian regimes. The sportwashing trend continued with Bahrain in 2017 (“financed by the government of Bahrain to promote the country worldwide” according to Wikipedia) with UAE coming a year later. In both cases more questions were asked about sportwashing  but “show me the money” prevailed. More recently an Australian team added a secondary sponsor- ALULA in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps more subtle but otherwise the same idea?

Meanwhile, Israel Cycling Academy was born in 2014, the claim being it was to provide opportunity/development for Israeli cyclists. By 2018 they were invited to Milano-Sanremo and the Giro d’Italia, maybe having something to do with Israel paying big money to get the Giro d’Italia start, the first time outside Europe? Real estate tycoon Sylvan Adams was a big backer of the team as well as a provider of the funding needed to secure that “Big Start”. 

This team next bought their way into the World Tour with the purchase of Katusha-Alpecin, mostly tossing the elements of that team (but keeping their World Tour license) and rebranding the team as Israel Start-Up Nation. In 2021 Adam’s fortune let them buy fading pro Chris Froome.

In 2022 the team was rebranded as Israel-Premier Tech with more Canadian riders added since sponsor Premier Tech was a Canadian company but poor results caused the team to be relegated to the second-tier for 2023. In recent years the team has shown-up at the biggest races without a single Israeli rider, so what is this team’s purpose again if it’s not sportwashing? The governing regime in Israel seemed only too proud to have these representatives, but at the same time claimed to have not contributed to funding for the team.

Seems like Premier Tech is the real sponsor but takes second position to a country that contributes nothing? Zio's guess is Sylvan Adams the main backer and he's the one who wants ISRAEL on the jersey, even saying the team would NEVER compete otherwise..before the name was removed halfway through the Vuelta. More grumbling about sportwashing was said and written, especially as  things heated up (again) in the Middle East.

In early 2024 pro-Palestinian protests against the team’s presence at cycling events began in Australia. As the genocide in Gaza became obvious to the entire world, these protests continued and expanded. Meanwhile, team owner “Sylvan Adams described the Gaza war as a contest between "good vs. evil and civilization against barbarism.” according to Wikipedia.

Fast forward to La Vuelta 2025 where the race was interrupted and finally stopped entirely on the final stage in Madrid due to various protesters, including some climate activists and what seemed like the usual “black block” hooligans who show up any time there’s a chance of tear gas, truncheons and fire hoses.

“Sportwashing” by these entities can’t be legislated away like tobacco or alcohol. Pro cycling tried to keep gambling interests out (remember Unibet?) but the Visma team sported “BetCity” logos from January 2023 to January 2025 and of course there’s FDJ’s national lottery as well as Lotto, so it seems the “show me the money!” idea is still in play.

Is there any entity pro cycling will NOT take money from? In 1990 the TVM team traveled to races in a bus supplied by “Sauna Diana” basically a brothel, so where’s the limit? How about porn sites? The brothel seemed OK while MOTOGP already has “Only Fans” painted on motorcycles so what if the sponsor wanted a pro cycling team? Would a pro cycling team bankrolled by neo-Nazis be OK? How about one sponsored by Hamas or Hezbollah? Does pro cycling even care?

Since sportwashing can’t be legislated away (though the International Olympic Committee can exclude countries, as it has done with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine…but so far turned a blind eye towards Israel)  it’s up to the fans (who are demonstrating as we’ve seen in Spain) but what about the riders? Do they have zero interest in where the money in their pay packet comes from? No issues with the name of an authoritarian regime with a dismal human rights record on their chest? During the Spanish protests one rider described himself and others as “pawns in the game”. But that doesn’t happen unless you are a willing pawn as those authoritarian regimes are not forcing you to don their jersey at gunpoint, you are taking the money to represent the sponsor as well as pedal a bicycle. Shouldn’t you care what that sponsor actually does or sells or promotes?

Pro cycling and its fans deserve better. Little doubt there would be less money in the sport if sportwashing was discouraged but what is integrity, humanity and justice worth?