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 od 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. Mine 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 'em 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 bike that I eventually rode 100 mile 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 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 my 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 (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. They moved on to other things, but I stayed with it, starting to read magazines about dirt bikes and an exotic new import from Europe called MOTOCROSS.
Driving license time came and back then you could ride a small motorcycle during the day without a passenger with just 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 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 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.
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 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 the 100cc beginners.
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.
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 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 the same. No excuses, either I was good at this or I wasn't. I wanted to find out as inexpensively as possible since I was still making monthly payments of the Moto Guzzi after all.
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 buying 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 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. This was given to the racer who scored the best over the season's races. including ones at Northern California's Sears Point Raceway. 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 took on the challenge and 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 along with 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, 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. Plenty laughed at me for doing all the 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 exercise of choice for top riders in MOTOGP one of whom got good enough to 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 so I bought the 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? I think there was another NASCAR driver with the same nickname.
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 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 and 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) 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.
Again we did OK but never won anything and for the first time yours truly crashed a big-bore motorcycle at a pretty high speed. I'd dropped the Moto Guzzi in a low speed corner in practice once but it was no big deal. Falling off the big-bore Honda at the old Riverside Raceway's turn 1 was a bigger deal by far! While leading the endurance race! No real harm done except to the results as the bike popped back up onto its wheels and continued down the sidelines of the race track, coming to rest leaning against the barrier. We got it going again but I decided I needed to stop fooling around with street-legal DOT approved tires and put on racing slicks, something I'd learned about with the small-bore modified production bikes earlier.
The street-legal tires' performance wasn't very predictable at these speeds..you'd be OK one lap and on the ground the next with not much warning that the tire was overheated or worn-out. Some real racing wheels and slick tires were needed right away. Some chassis modifications were done at the same time - bigger front brakes, new suspension pieces, etc.
By this time I'd started working at the Honda motorcycle shop as parts department manager and my friend was soon the general manager, so our racing efforts were directly used to promote the business.
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. His 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.
Brother-in-law wasn't rich though he did spend plenty of his exotic Italian motorcycle collection but he'd hand over a small portion of his trust-fund payments, so our effort was limited to California events. Luckily, there were usually 3 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. I'd raced on it with the Moto Guzzi while the Riverside and Willow Springs tracks were our "backyard" along with the by-then closed Ontario Motor Speedway.
Number 20 in the above photo 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 was some best as I was on a practice lap when a group of the top fast guys came past me into a high-speed turn. 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 win 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 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 than 2 seconds but that put me on the second row on the starting grid!
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 crashed on the back straight, banging himself up enough to need an ambulance ride to the hospital but his bike ended up laying the in middle of the track...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? Very interesting when you were racing with someone as yellow caution (no passing) flags waved but a good choice here could set up a pass once beyond the yellow flag zone.
Another top-10 finish with a bit of a brag since the only machines ahead of me were those factory specials and the almost-factory specials of Honda's rival Kawasaki (Wayne Rainey had one while his championship rival Mike Baldwin (who crashed) had a direct-from-Japan factory special, something not sold at any price. So I was the best finisher on a motorcycle created by private effort.
Race 2 was halted and eventually canceled by more crashing, oddly enough again by riders on Honda's special machines. I made a snarky comment about having the race ended because the Honda boys couldn't stay on their motorcycles, which probably sealed the idea that we'd never get any assistance from the Honda importers. In the combined scoring I was awarded 8th place.
The following season would see me 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 so the idea as to do the break-in at a local club races 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 it during the race. The 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 for some reason while 6B turns back the other way. 6B was where the oil was.
So no race, no engine break-in. A smashed fuel tank 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 ended up with a decent grid position though 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. While 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 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. Finally I and a couple of other riders who had crashed went 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 the motorcycle was too badly damaged to make the restart or race 2.
Worse, our sponsor had seen "his" entry crash two times in two weeks, each time caused by something out of our control. He was finished as a sponsor and I was finished as a AMA pro racer. Pushing 30 years of age, nobody was interested in a rider like me. 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.
to be continued
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