The Pit Bike Kulture

I’ve been around motorcycle racing for far too many years than I care to admit sometimes. From desert racing as a teenager to showing my AARP card while signing up for a roadrace. When you love racing, it stays with you for life.

Over the years I have learned that motorcycle racing, no matter what the form, is a community. We all help each other..” I need a clutch lever for a Bultaco Pursang..anybody have one?” …someone shows up in about five minutes with it. Over the PA system comes “rider number 112 needs a clutch pulling tool for a GSX-R750..if you can help he’s behind the garages in a green Dodge truck”…five minutes later, you got a tool. Racers are good people.

The generosity of racers towards one another is a beautiful thing, but I think there is something that binds us together even more closely. No, it’s not the risks of racing, it’s not the kind of bike we ride or the type of racing we do and it’s not sharing tools and parts…it’s our pit bike.

Yes, the lowly pit bike. Never washed except when it’s left outside and it rains…at the track it’s always left laying on it’s side outside the trailer, hasn’t had new tyre’s since the Truman administration, the gas in the tank has been in there since your dad was a kid and it was his pit bike and when somebody asks you what it is, you say..”Uh..I don’t know”.

The late comedian Rodney Dangerfield epitomized the ’Pit Bike’…” I don’t get no respect”…but what would we racers do without our pit bikes? How would we go get new tyres mounted at the Dunlop truck? How would we go visit friends almost a half mile away in the desert?…and most importantly…how would we go get lunch???

So today, go out to your barn, garage, shed, under the plastic tarp…pick up your little pit bike and give it some love. Wash it, you might want to even think about checking the oil…we’re going to call Oct 22nd official pitbike appreciation day