Page 36 - PULSE-3-RIDERS-BIKER-SUPPLY

“Why don’t you race that thing? You don’t just ride it by yourself!” He helped me with how to get an AMA card, how to get a license to ride, and so I
did it. Woody came out and watched me ride at my very first race and I probably got last or next to last, but that was the beginning of my crazy riding skills.
You were pretty much racing anything you could at that point -- District 37 scrambles, flat track, grand prixs, enduros, road rac- ing, and even motocross. Was there any
discipline that you favored? I think the truth of the matter was that as long as I was ridin’ I was happy. In the early stages, believe it or not, the rougher it was the better I liked it. I liked motocross and I like the grand prix stuff, but if it was rough I seemed to do even better. I did a few desert races, I did the Jackass Enduro, I rode the Baja 1000 and the Mint 400. I really liked doing the rougher stuff and then that kind of all got sideways when I was doing very well in the sportsman stuff in District 37. My age and the year they came out with the DT1 collided, so here I was the top sportsman guy and they came out with the DT1, so I’m the guy who they asked to ride it.
Looking back on that race in 1967 in Castaic on the Bultaco, I’m sure you didn’t realize the magnitude of what you accom- plished beating Joel Roberts, Dave Bick- ers, and Roger DeCoster. That has to be
really cool to reflect on now... Well, those guys were incredibly talented. I think my youth and my exuberance was hard for them to overcome. That Bultaco of all things was very, very fast and
I loved ridin’ that crazy thing. We went to Castaic and no one was familiar with the track and I think that evened things out a lot. I was just on a winning streak, I felt unbeatable; I think that had a lot to do with it. That was an 100cc class which was very popular back then and I was able to win it. I don’t think it registered at the time and even today I look back on it and think “Yeah, right. I beat those guys.” (laughs) Because, I went on and I started flat track- ing but I watched those guys and they were incred- ibly talented. I do have to say we had the likes of Gary Conrad, Ron Nelson, and a few others who really gave those guys a run for their money.
Shortly after that, you got hooked up with Yamaha and started riding the DT1. How did the deal come together with them as you were kind of unofficially their first fac-
tory rider? Jack Hoel, who worked for them at the time, handed me his card and said “I want you to come down to the Yamaha distributor in Monte- bello, I wanna give you the twenty-five cent tour.” So they offered me the ride on the DT1 and I was kind of a cocky, full of myself guy at that point. I came back with I’m not gonna ride only TTs, you have to give me a bike for the half mile. Initially they didn’t want to do that and I dunno how it came about but they finally decided that they would also build me a half-miler, so that formed the relation- ship between me and Dennis Mahan, because they hired him to build the flat tracker and maintain the DT1. I gotta tell ya, that was the best thing that ever happened to me. Like I said, I was kind of full of myself and and Dennis turned that around and got me to get a grasp on reality. Everything got more fun and I started winning even more races.
In 1968 as a rookie, you broke the re- cord for most novice main event wins in a single season and that record still stands today. What do you remember about that
season? Yeah, it was basically a dream come true for this kid from Santa Susana -- from runnin’ in the orchards on a Honda 50 to winnin’ all those races, that was quite a deal.
How did it feel coming back to Ascot as
a professional? You know, Ascot was a mysti- cal type place and I’ve never been to a track that you had that feeling when you walked out on the starting line, and Roxy Rockwood would announce your name in the lineup. You’re sitting down there now wavin’ to the crowd and it was only a few short years prior that I was sitting there idolizing those guys, and now I’m racing against some of those people that I idolized. It was cool, it was just pretty amazing actually. To this day, if you talk to some- one who rode Ascot -- I don’t care how good or bad they did -- they have a different feeling about racing after having done that. It was a really incred- ible place. Even to this day off the top of my head, April through October every Friday night I’ll be at Ascot...(laughs)
36 THE PULSE • ISSUE THREE
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