Monday Madness
Once a motorcycle racer, always a motorcycle racer. Some sort of genetic defect I guess. I went from desert racing to enduro’s, back to desert racing and then on to my real love, roadracing. I had hurt myself pretty badly in a desert racing get off and bouncing around the puckerbushes was no longer an option for me. Thats Ok..it’s too hot in the desert anyway, well except in January and February when it snows.
In 1981 with my friend Ted Toki, it’s off to the original Keith Code California Superbike School at Riverside Raceway. At the end of the day we were whooped but we had our AFM racing licenses in hand, thank you Keith and crew. Now came the hard part…roadracing ain’t cheap. It was a great time to be racing, heck, they still had a 50cc class!!! So many interesting bikes, crazy ass modifications and a lot of fun.
Fast forward into the mid nineties, after a taking a few years off to raise a couple of kids on my own, the urge was back. Off to Willow Springs I go, piloting a… Honda Ascot??? Hey, it was kinda cheap (the race motor cost four times as much as the whole bike!!!) and a lot of fun. Singles racers are a very weird bunch, a close knit family and all families are weird. But in that group I developed some very close friends. We all raced WSMC, AHRMA, AFM and CCS. So what has that got to do with the title of this post you ask… sit right back and I’ll tell you a tale, a tale of a crazy group…that started on a Monday night…OK, sorry about the Gilligan thing.
A little while back we all seemed to semi retire from roadracing…businesses, families, paying for kids college educations..you get the picture. But, we’re all still racers, it’s that right wrist thing…
Our friend and fairly close neighbor Jay, has a five acre hunk ‘o land and a couple of Honda XR100’s. A frenzy of tractor work, buying up more XR100’s…let the fun begin!!
Monday Madness was born. During the ‘Daylight Savings Time’ period, our group of ex-racers and a couple of other friends would gather at Jay’s, on Monday’s, for some slidin’ around the track, good food and of course…good beer. Hey they’re only 100cc bikes, we’re not going that fast, it’s only a sixteenth of a mile oval…we won’t get hurt. Thats what we told the wives. Uh, yeah. Remember, we are racers and we have to win, friends be damned. Bumping someone off the course, sure. Running over someones foot, natch. Cutting the corner, wouldn’t you? Hitting someones kill switch at the start, yeah. All in the name of friendly competition?!
Very large contusions (read..really big nasty bruises),some painful sprains and a couple broken bones (small ones)..hey, thats what beer is for..pain killer. Well, after a couple years of that, the wives got a bit tired of playing nurse when we got home. We had big smiles on our faces, and the women just shook their heads.
Monday madness came to an end a while back, recovering from all that racing was starting to take a little too long to heal, we do have jobs to go to on Tuesday. A number of us took our newly discovered flat tracking skills to a real flat track race, vintage bikes and us, vintage riders. We all went with two goals in mind..don’t fall down and don’t be last. We all succeeded.
Heather and I were sitting in bed last night and somehow Monday Madness came up, I got a big smile on my face and surprisingly, so did she. I miss Monday Madness…I’m still a racer.