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Back in Time
As the white flag came out for the race before mine, I climbed off my bike. I glanced to my left and saw David Pingree, former Pro Circuit and factory KTM rider, swinging out the kickstarter on his 2005 YZ250. Just past him, British pro-am prospect Adam Chatfield was doing the same on his glossy CR250. I looked down at my ‘83 CR480 and took a deep sigh.
I then pulled out the left-hand kickstarter and gave it a healthy kick, hoping it would fire on the first try and save me the struggle of multiple kicks on the old beast. Instead the kickstarter snapped apart like a matchstick and fell to Glen Helen’s concrete start pad with a metallic ting. Pingree looked over and said, “What the hell was that?”
I sighed again. This, I told myself, is the price of racing a bike that was produced in September 1982.
Allow me to explain. Beginning with last year, I’ve attended the Vintage Iron/Two-Stroke World Championships at Glen Helen Raceway in San Bernardino, California. This year I was joined by some fellow northern Nevada riders--Josh Jacobs, Jake Jacobs, and Michael Bergman--on the trip south, so I thought our efforts would make a worthy narrative for this site. And when my kickstarter sheared from the engine of my CR480 (the only two-stroke machine I own) as I awaited the start of Sunday's open two-stroke pro race, one thing was clear: I would much rather be writing this narrative than living it.
But I’m making the whole affair sound far more bleak than it was by singling out this incident. I actually had a great time, even in spite of the sheared kickstarter and other obstacles that marked the weekend. What obstacles? On my list: a seized engine in the 480 on the Thursday before the race; a narrow, disappointing loss to a local pro on another CR480 in Saturday’s second evolution-class moto; a brake problem that stopped the 480 cold while leading near the end of the second Motocross des Teams race; the stress of nursing the ready-to-seize-yet-again 480 through Sunday’s second motos; and, of course, the aforementioned broken kickstarter that left me searching for people who could push me fast enough to bump-start the ailing monster before each moto.
And those were just my problems (ask Jake about his frame or Mike about his silencer.) But we somehow all agreed at the end of the weekend that the trip had been a success, because even though we had faced down plenty of pitfalls, we had had our share of triumphs as well. And they were triumphs that somehow made the pitfalls seem worth it, and maybe even amusing--at some later date.
To begin with, our results were the envy of the awards ceremony. Josh and Mike both took home evolution-class titles over the course of the weekend and Jake scored near the top of all his motos. I even managed to grab a few moto wins to take a pair of class titles, and my third-place finish in the open two-stroke pro race on Sunday (which I garnered after bump-starting the 480, of course) nearly made my trip a financial success. Not a stunning success, mind you, but it certainly didn’t hurt.
Josh, Mike and I also felt ourselves to be a shoe-in for Saturday’s annual Motocross des Teams race, which pits three-man teams against each other in a format similar to the Motocross des Nations, after we all grabbed top finishes in both motos. But a puzzling point structure that awarded different point amounts depending on the year of motorcycle each team rode left us with a disappointing third-place finish. This result was later found to be suspect by our in-house points investigator, Mike.
It was out of that confusion that the promoter (Vintage Iron’s Rick Doughty) decided he liked our moxie and awarded our team with his “promoter’s award” on Sunday: a brand-new EZ-Up shelter. The award, which was given to us on the virtues of our “being what this event is all about,” left us scratching our heads as to what we had done to deserve it--but only long enough to digest the good fortune of our situation: we had a new EZ-Up!
My only regret on the weekend was that I didn’t get any photos of my northern Nevada compatriots, who truly deserved to be featured on this page on the virtues of their efforts. This was because I was typically on the track (or the line) when they were out doing their thing, and, after more than 30 race laps each day on the circuitous Glen Helen course, I was in no condition to so much as press a shutter button at the end of either day at the awards ceremonies. I convinced my wife to snap the photo of me above on Saturday before the sun had drained the life out of both of us.
But rest assured, friends, that I will make up for it in the near future, at an event where you can throw your agile, modern bike around for the photo in any stylish fashion you wish--free of the fear of broken silencers, frames, or--perhaps worst of all--obsolete kickstarters.
Visit Vintage Iron's website at www.vintageiron.com and click on the "Vintage Iron and Two-Stroke World Championship 2005 Results and Photos" link on the home page to see photos of Josh (#924 on the Maico at top right) and myself (#716 on the CR480 and CRF450R) at Glen Helen.
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