1970s & Motocross

In the 70's every kid had a bike, mostly Schwinn Stingrays or a different, cheaper maker but the style was the same. Banana seat, tall handlebars and one speed.  Usually around Jr. High age that would transition to a 10 speed bike, almost always as a birthday or Christmas gift. It was part of the "growing up" process, like turning 16 and getting your Drivers License. We went everywhere on our bikes, miles and miles away from home, exploring new places and having new adventures. Our parents were too busy to drive us everywhere, except on occasion. Bikes were our horses or motorcycles. 

  Up to the late 60's, there wasn't a lot of motorcycles on the roads, in fact, there were only 2 types of people that rode. The first type were the retired couples riding full dresser Harley Davidsons, "full dressers" being the big hogs with the windshield and saddlebags designed for cruising/traveling. Clean cut folks roaming the country and National Parks. RVs have since taken their place. The other type were the Biker type, the bad boys, the "biker gang" type, outlaws, hippy on wheels, Hells Angels (I'll dive deeply into this later).

  The 70s brought higher gas prices and import vehicles from Japan. It also brought Japanese motorcycles, like Honda, Suzuki and Kawasaki. As a way of saving money on gas, people started riding motorcycles to work. They also started riding them as leisure, in open spaces, countrysides, deserts, mountains. And racing. Thus began a new Era. In 1972, film producer Bruce Brown, who brought the sport of surfing to worldwide attention in the epic movie "Endless Summer", came out with a new movie called "On Any Sunday". The movie was based on the new sport of "cross country" motorcycle racing, Motocross for short. One of the opening scenes was of a group of boys racing pretending that their bikes were motorcycles. The movie was a huge success and soon it seemed everyone was buying motorcycles and spending the weekend at the desert. This was the beginning of a new sport that would eventually become a multi-billion dollar sport and business. The first time I saw the movie, I was awestruck as was every kid in California. For 8 weekends in a row Mom would take my friends and I to the theater on Saturday to watch On Any Sunday. The theater would be packed with young boys wearing their "Hot Hats", a painters style cap put out by Motocycle dealers emblazoned with their logos. Mine was a yellow and black hat with Allec Brothers Yamaha, a shop a couple blocks from my house in East Anaheim.

  Soon guys started changing their bikes to look more like a motorcycle. We would strip the bikes down, replacing the handlebars with low Motocross style bars, usually with a foam pad around the crossbar to keep from bashing out our teeth when we wrecked. Larger knobby tires for gripping the dirt, smaller sprocket for speed, paint, usually black and a racing number on an oval plate attached to the bike. Gone were the tall wide bars, small front tire, slick back tire and sissy bars, it was all about dirt racing now. The tracks? Well, I can assure you there wasn't a safe vacant lot anywhere in East Anaheim. We would gather up shovels and rakes, clear the weeds and start building a track, complete with high berms and jumps. By Sunday afternoon we were in business. My favorite track was across the street from Boysen Park on Vermont Street. After school if we could, every weekend for sure, 10-15 boys racing all day, sometimes wrecking. Injuries were usually minor scratches, bumps and bruises. Other times more serious as we didn't wear helmets or pads, those were for pussies. After taking a jump, I landed wrong, my mouth connecting with the handlebars without a pad, chipping my front tooth and breaking my left wrist. I didn't want to tell my parents but as the arm swelled up and the fact that I couldn't use it gave away my secret and after dinner was taken to the hospital. A cast from my hand to my shoulder put a temporary halt to my racing. We didn't know it at the time but this was the beginning of another sport that would become a multi-million dollar sport, bicycle Motocross, now known as BMX racing.