An Eccentric Odyssey To Canada
An eccentric Odyssey to Canada
“ALLO JOE...”
THE LAST TIME I went to interview Joe Bolger, the man, I failed, and came back with a story about Joe Bolger’s bike. The job should have been simple: Joe Bolger, the grand old scrambles man of New England. A roster of wins, enough to fill several pages. A bookful of anecdotes about his younger days in Prince Edward Island, and about his racing days. All amusing, in their dry, often cajoling way. But none of them total up to Joe Bolger, the man.
Joe Bolger, quite simply, refuses to define Joe Bolger. Joe Bolger cannot be considered apart from his surroundings. To know Joe Bolger as a man, you must watch what he does, know his friends, and go to some of the places he goes. To study Joe Bolger is to study a living ethic that of a dedicated sportsman, a motorcycle at hide.
As I don't like to give up on an interview so easily, I decided to try a not her tack on Joe, by working around him and avoiding the interview entirely. Joe responded by taking me to a place that the French Canadians call “The End Of The World.” Naturally, I failed again, but I'm getting closer.
THE SPORTSMAN ETHIC
If one thing interests me about Bolger more than any other, it must be his pursuit of something I call the Sportsman Ethic, for lack of a better name. Any gung-ho rider has a feeling, a sympathy with that ethic, which has to do with the beauty of physical motion, and the self-discipline necessary to enjoy the sport of motorcycling, in whole or in part, as an expert or as a devoted buff.
The rider who follows the Ethic in his racing is oriented differently than the professional racer, although the act of being a Sportsman has little to do with whether or not a man makes money from racing.
Sportsmen seem more interesting than their full-time professional counterparts, perhaps because a rider who races for sport is using racing to enrichen his life, rather than using it only for survival and self-advancement. Pursuit of the latter, in undiluted doses, can produce an empty, tortured life style. Perhaps that is why Sportsmen seem to stay active in racing longer than fulltime professionals. A Sportsman is free to quit at any time, without restructuring his life. So he keeps on. He does it because he doesn’t have to do it.
Anyone who has spent some time looking at New England motorcycle racing, an amateur hotbed of the Sportsman Ethic, must therefore come in contact with Joe Bolger. I wouldn't go so far as to call Joe passionate about his racing. He has been scrambles racing a long time, ('all him steadfast, and still enthusiastic. An enthusiast of the old school, like Joe, gets bent sometimes at the new wave of perpetual novices who insist that they should have to learn nothing for themselves. So Joe, who runs the service part of his bike shop in Holden, Mass., comes up with some great rejoinders at times.
Lady: “Everything is going wrong with my husband’s machine. He has a list.”
Bolger: “To port or to starboard?”
JOE'S TEASER
After a few of these, Bolger’s eyes light up and he goes into a comic monologue about a place called Chicoutimi. The mimicked dialect is French Canadian. A telephone call:
“Allo, Joe. Dis iss Ray. Are you kaming down?” Then he laughs and tells me, “Now, Dan, this is a place you’d find interesting, if you could ever talk Ivan into sending you there.” Then he regales me with stories of a motocross festival in the boondocks of Quebec. They have a parade through town. And Joe, who goes almost every year, once shared a parade car with a midget named P’tit Claude. The crowd cheered wildly as their car passed by, and Joe, admittedly feeling flattered, asked the driver why the crowd was so enthusiast ic.
“Zey are waveeng at P’tit Claude. He is ver’ famous.” P’tit Claude, a public figure because he danced with the topless act at a local nightclub, bore up bravely under the driver’s next comment .
(Continued on page 46)
“P’tit Claude, gat your feet off zee seat or you gaddit muddy!” This, of course, is hard for A midget to do if he is to sit on the seat at all.
UNDER WAY
The hubcap rattled. It was hot and muggy, the time of year when the flat meadows of southern Quebec buzz with a surplus of bugs, some of them destined to die in yellow and green splotches on the slot like windshield of our Mercedes. The blow-by from that aging 195X “300” engine was nauseating.
But we were happy. Had it been any other car, we would have been miserable, but that big, lumbering leather-
liveried Mercedes fit in with the adventure of it all. Every motorcycle racer should have a Mercedes with a bike trailer in tow. Many European motocross riders do. using the diesel version to save money. The “Merce” is a classy car. no matter its age or mood. It encourages a stately, dignified pace, allowing the driver to become relaxed and settled between race meetings. Thank goodness, because Joe Bolger drives like a maniac.
Bill Alsup owned the Mercedes and was driving calmly, which gave me enough confidence to turn my eyes from the road to banter with Joe and Bill’s wife, Andrea, in the back seat. In any other car. I’m sure that Bill would
have scared hell out of me. He isa racer, too. All racers drive to races like they are late for practice. Except in a Mercedes. So we could all enjoy the pleasant boredom of the 11-hour journey.
Adventure is 90 percent boredom. Waiting. Traveling. The Mercedes made it more palatable. Was there change in the border guard’s tone (he sounded like a brusque foreign military man) because we clanked up to the customs office to register our bikes and cameras, regally ensconced in a Mercedes? It is pleasant paranoia to think so. And how about the startled looks of villagers, as they jumped at the drumming sound of that hubcap and looked up to see a great
ivory whale approaching, preceded by a snooty looking hood ornament and followed by two strapped down dirt bikes. Did they think we were a famous racing team coming forth to do battle on the Canadian circuits? The signs were all in French now— “Epaule de Jambon sans Jarret, ” or, "Buvez Pepsi. ’’The Fords were Meteors,
the Pontiacs were "Parisiennes, ’’and the cents were sous. We were in French Canada, rapping back and forth about education (Andrea is a teacher), astrology (Joe is a Capricorn, I am a Scorpio, Bill a Cancer and Andrea a Gemini), the racing to come, the car itself, and anything and everything, and the Mercedes trundled on and on, throwing great blasts of engine heat at us through the floorboards. As you can see, it fit the occasion perfectly. There could have been no better car.
CHICOUTIMI'S SECRET
We called her “our Andrea,” which is the sort of thing a lovely, personable young woman must expect when she travels with three men on their way to a race. Perhaps her easygoing Gemini nature allowed her to accept this bit of male sport with good humor. Even when we ogled a tender little French Canadian waitress at a cafe on the way to Quebec, she kept her composure.
Joe made comment that all the girls in Chicoutimi were at least the equal of this one. Andrea thought he was kidding, because she was Andrea. 1 though he was kidding, because all 1 had heard about Chicoutimi was that it had lots of lumber, a big Alcan aluminum factory and a hospital famous for doing a study on the inbreeding of prior generations of natives. I was therefore expecting French Dogpatch, smoking chimneys, Paul Bunyan shirts and rough language. But hordes of lovely women?
No. And Bill Alsup? He had been there before and was saying nothing.
A BRIEF ADMONITION TO EPICURIANS ON HOW TO ORDER IN FRENCH
“What’s dinde roti,” asked Andrea. I looked at the menu and said it must be roast goose. When it arrived, it was turkey. It was bad, not even passable fare for a trucker’s cafe in France. Next time I’ll order in English.
THE THRESHOLD
We circumvented Quebec City, which was unfortunate, as it looked intriguingly modern and picturesque sitting high on a long ridge. It was unexpectedly large and even had signs of creeping suburbs and runaway freeways. Heading north on Highway 54, the sign points to Chicoutimi-130 miles away. Most of this passes through the lonely Laurentides Provincial Park, which is so big and so densely packed with trees that they give you a check stub at the southern entrance, which you must present at the northern entrance. On the stub is marked the number of people in the car. The authorities apparently would prefer that the same number of people come out of the park as came into it.
A NEW IMAGE
Ray Gref's bike shop on the outskirts of Chicoutimi was our first stop. Gref
Moteurs Sports completely shattered my romantic image of Chicoutimi as the rough frontier town. It is modern, completely stocked with parts and accessories, and is the equal of many stateside motorcycle dealerships. Creí sells about 400 motorcycles a year and does an equal amount ot business in snowmobiles. a great recreational attraction in a region having seven months ot winter.
The Chicoutimi region, including towns along the Saguenay River and the shore of Lac St. Jean, has a population of about 300,000. Chicoutimi itself has a population ot 36.000, and Ray estimates that there is one motorcycle for every family in the city.
As for the snowmobile thing, it is out of control. “1 can’t get any sleep in the winter." says Ray. “They come over in the middle of the night and want you to come out riding."
As Ray and 1 talked. Bill Alsup’s wife was also changing her image of Chicoutimi. Several riders had dropped by the shop with their girl friends in tow. Outstanding girls. And they weren't wearing Paul Bunyan shirts. Bolger said, “You haven't seen anything yet." Andrea retorted. “I’m glad I brought a big. long Russian novel."
“Why//.at?"
“I'll be reading a lot this weekend.”
"OH, THE NORTH COUNTRY..."
Rolling into town, we passed by several new car dealers, a Simpson-Sears department store and an auto wrecking yard. An endless supply of late model sedans, sporty cars and striped pony cars are on the roads. The people are decked out smartly, the women in trim, colorful fashions, h'n ville, which overlooks a majestic high-cliffed bend in the Saguenay River, the atmosphere is akin to that of a medium-sized town in the middle of France. Little town parks, stone and brick buildings, streets that criss-cross up and down the hillside, shops, restaurants, night spots and cafes, gas stations, small industries, a Club De Yachting, neat homes and apartments in tidy yards with white fences and overhanging trees, and the big, impressive Hotel Chicoutimi, where we check in to comfortable rooms with color TV. On the late show, there was a five-minute sequence of a French movie in which the camera focuses lanquidly on a nicely shaped nude woman.
If this is the hard-bitten northern frontier, it certainly doesn't feel like it. The greatest hardship I've encountered so far is stepping into the shower and turning on the faucet labeled “C." “(" does not mean cold. It means “elnnnl
which means hot. The other taucet is labeled “H” and that also stands for hot. Turn it on and you get cold water. Just my luck. A bilingual shower.
PARTY TIME
At a party given to celebrate the Motocross des Lauren tides, 1 am introduced by Joe to a plump, clownish character named Roma. He is the CMA racing referee for the region.
“Dan Hunt is an editor at ('YC'LH WORLD a Senior Editor,” Joe explains.
“Oh. Well. I am zee Senior referee.”
The ambiance is cheerful and warm at the Hotel Clairval, overlooking a lake with a beach. The air is muggy with bodies packed like sardines, and the noise, a jukebox and mingling French voices, is intolerable. Roma raises the noise level by giving his date an impromptu birthday party, which is a box of cupcakes. Into each one has been placed a burning candle. She blushes and drops her eyes.
A motorcycle gang, in appropriate sleeveless denim jackets, charges into the room and begins dancing in line on the small floor. Nobody minds. More noise. But no menace. One of them, more zonked than the others, throws his head back with the music and bellows, “ ... it is the dawning of the age of Aquarius . . . as-par-a-gus!”
ROMA, THE REFEREE
Roma used to be a baker, but is now a vegetable salesman in Montreal. “No, really. I'm not kidding you. 1 sell vegetables. 1 have a beeg truck and I park between two stores where there ees lots of people. If the market sells for 40 cents. I sell for 35. Sometimes the police come, they chase me away, so 1 drive around the block and come back. I have a license to sell vegetables door-todoor. but there are all apartments in Montreal and I get tired climbing zee stairway to the third floor to sell only one tomato."
THE PARADE
Race day dawned Sunday morning and we missed the parade. It passed below our hotel room. So I'll never know if P’tit Claude was for real. It's just as well. Bolger has a way of telling things better than they really happen, anyway, editing out all the boredom coming in between the pithy kernels of life that he selects for reproduction. Parades are boring, but P'tit Claude lives.
ON SKIN AND SUN
In America, when they have a motocross race, the parking area fills with cars. Boom. They hold the race. Boom. The parking lot empties of cars. Fast. In
French Canada, as in France, the transition is slower, almost indiscernible People wander in slowly, as if they were going for a walk in the meadows. Many of the women, young and old. wear short shorts or bathing suits. (Jetting some sun is an accepted part of racing in the outdoors. To get sun in the proper places, you have to display a certain amount of skin, wrinkled or not: the sum of which would be frowned upon by most American women in the same surroundings. So. for all her well pandered openness and sexuality. America is not so tree as she thinks she is.
MAKING ODDS
Bolger was making final adjustments to his machine, as was Alsup. As usual, many more people know Bolger than for whom Bolger can remember names, which slowed his preparations to an extent. Some years. Chicoutimi is somewhat of a cherrypick for Joe, but it wouldn't be this year. Two excellent Canadian motocrossmen. Kon Keysand Jean Marc Houde, had also decided to enter in t he 250 class.
“Well, there I go to 3rd." said Joe.
“Well, there I go to 7th." said Bill.
(Continued on page 50)
BOLGER,THE RACER
Alsup was probably serious in his prediction, although he was unsure whether it would be 7th or 5th, or 4th. Bolger, who has been around a lot longer, was quite assured of 3rd, but you couldn't be positive that his prediction was serious: he has a way of
declaring himself an also-ran with a deadpan face, so that he can laugh when he blows everyone in the weeds.
Bolger is a scientific racer, not only in the way he prepares and modifies his ultra-light Bultaco special, but in the way he prepares his body for the punishing laps to come. If the race is to be 30 laps, he practices at the length and pace which he expects he must set for those 30 laps, if the main event is only 12 laps, he attacks practice in an entirely different style. As he is not a full-time professional, he can pick and choose the races he wants to enter and begin training for them weeks in advance, tuning his mind and body to match the character of the event. His attitude is that of the amateur at hlete, training for a specialty in the Olympics competition. The 440 is different from the 100 is different from the high jump. For Joe, Grafton is different from Peppered is different from Chicoutimi. The pacing, the breathing, the attack, the style, the number of practice laps, the mental attitude is unique for each. A Class C Expert on the National Trail is a decathlon man. going for total points in several events; he may excel in only one or two of them, and the full series of events may tear his body up, because of their disparity. Joe Bolger, the Sportsman, has time to set his muscles and his mind, and can emerge from the other side of the conflict in better shape.
"SELF-ECOLOGY"
Occasionally, you can see Joe's counterpart, running lonely laps around a high school track, sprinting a spindly racing bicycle up a deserted roadway, broaching the John Muir Trail day after day with a heavy pack on his back. He is a man past his physical prime. But he has kept his body clean, and his mind on edge. He is a single-minded animal, a one-man experiment in ecology. All the Earth must decay, but the singlemindedness can do much to slow that decay, and mold unavoidable change into something of style and beauty.
Joe's way cannot be everyone’s way. He is the Sportsman Ethic epitomized, but he is not the only Sportsman. There are more Sportsmen in the world like Bill Alsup than there are like Joe.
Bill's life style doesn't allow him the regular discipline of Joe's daily 50-lap practice in the wooded sandpit near the bike shop. In non-motorized athletics, you would find Bill Alsup's counterpart on the tennis court several times a week or on the ski slopes every weekend. He is. in fact, involved with skiing, as an executive with Foma, the well-known maker of ski lifts and aerial tramways. But Alsup's real joy is the sport of dirt racing paradoxically a sport in which you race alone, against yourself, yet compete directly against others, handlebar to handlebar.
Fart icipat ion in dirt riding at any level is to be hallowed, in my book. It is truly an athletic sport, and it refreshes body and soul.
THE RACING
Joe was concerned. He had expected the feature event, a sort of Grand Frix “Hooligan" in which several classes would run together, to be longer. So he had paced his practice at home for the longer race. But the GP had been shortened to 1 2 laps, instead of 20. Jean Marc Houde and Ron Keys were young tigers and could adapt more easily. In the prime of youth, the science of body preparation has less importance.
The first event for Bolger and Alsup was the 2 50 Senior Heat. It went as expected. Keys 1st. Houde 2nd. Bolger 3rd, and unconcerned, for he knows that he warms up slowly.
Alsup took a 7th. but scored a personal victory. On a chattering 45-mph downhill that was giving almost everyone else a horrible rattling, he circumvented the problem entirely by sweeping out to the left and skipping the series of downhill bumps in a great, hairy broad jump off the crest of the hill.
The Senior 2 50 Final repeated the
order: Keys, Houde and Bolger. Alsup crashed, but still avoided last.
USA VS. CANADA
The USA vs. ('añada team race is a great crowd pleaser. You can tell who the six USA team members are, because they are wearing the jerseys marked USA. You can tell who the six Canadians are, because they are wearing jerseys marked Canada. And, naturally, Canada couldn't lose, because, for the most part, the USA team was made up of Cañad ia ns.
It didn't matter. Everyone still was partial to the riders in Canadian jerseys, for six-sixths Canadian is better than four-sixths Canadian. Even Bolger, riding for the USA, is a Canadian; he never did bother to take up U.S. citizenship.
Joe got an excellent start around the outside. The old man was indeed fully awake. Keys got a bad start, and Bolger soon blasted by Houde. Once in front, Joe sustained his drive and finished far ahead of Keys, who had caught up to 2nd, by also passing Houde. Yves Legare, Canadian team, and Ray Gref's brother. Norm, Canadian team, followed. Midfield was Bill Alsup, 7th, right on t he odds.
"So. Joe," said a friend. "You won the race."
Bolger nodded.
"Ah, but the Canadian team won."
At which point I couldn't keep from saying, "That's because the U.S. team was mostly Canadians."
The score was Canadians 31, USA 24, a decisive victory, although I am inclined to think that Chicoutimi’s USA/Canada team match will be overlooked by motorcycle historians.
EPILOGUE
They spread the SI 000 purse very thin, so Joe’s total winnings, after a 2nd in the GF final, amounted to S46. As usual, he would take us all to dinner and blow as much of it as he could. To buy dinner for everyone is Joe's Ultimate Victory, and it is sweet ... as sweet and gratifying as the thundershower that would wash the dust from our great ivory whale as it bore us home, splashing and clanking southward toward the border.
The wet would leave Joe's machine speckled with bits of rust something else for him to refinish with the polish, steel wool and black paint in the warm ambiance of his shop at home in Massachusetts. To me, keeping a hard-ridden racing machine so spotless, so new looking, is tiresome. But Bolger does it year after year, painstakingly, devotedly. He never seems to tire, that Joe. [Ql
