Daytona'81 Speed, Fame, Sand And Sweet Magnolia
Speed, Fame, Sand and Sweet Magnolia
DAYTONA'81
Peter Egan
Upon arriving in Daytona Beach from a cold climate, as much of the crowd does every year, several things are immediately apparent. First, the air is warm and there is no snow. In the daytime you can see palm trees everywhere and at night you can hear their dry rattle in the soft tropical breeze. The water along the shoreline is not frozen. In fact there are people right in the water and some of them aren’t very heavily dressed. The water is blue rather than slate gray because the sky is blue rather than slate gray.
Gulls and pelicans glide up and down the beach in formation and above them an old Aeronca Chief labors slowly into a headwind, chugging up the coast trailing a sign that says, “Solarcaine for Fast Sunburn Relief.” Motorcycles, alone or in twos and threes, idle along the broad white beach while others stop and their riders go wading, pantlegs rolled up and dark clumps of castoff boots and socks behind them in the sand.
On the streets motorcycles are everywhere, cruising or parked in numbers at every restaurant, bar and hotel. The sounds are a mixture of four cylinder snarl, two-stroke crackle and Harleys going cha-chuffa cha-chuffa. There are cafe racers with clip-ons, mom and pop touring rigs with twin American flags and matched helmets, choppers done up in Basic Stark or Postwar Fringe for the aviator hat and tankshift crowd; there are British Singles restored to look better than they did new, silver metallic boxer Twins with riders in costly doeskin leathers, college guys in worn Addidas with $300^conobikes, legendary and salt-of-the-earth machines all mixed together in two-way traffic.
Everywhere people are clumped around parked bikes, discussing and looking, or riding by and being looked at. The drone of passing motorcycles is occasionally broken by a short tire chirp and the random irrepressible wheelie, but mostly the bikes are just cruising and no one is in a hurry. The weather is too nice for hurrying. No matter where you are it’s as pleasant as wherever you’re going.
Just beneath the relaxed magic of the sun and palm trees is a special tension that keeps people alert, their eyes moving. Daytona is full of famous people, at least if you follow motorcycle racing. At the hotel coffee shop you hear the rapid ups and downs of a British accent and turn to see Mike Hailwood sitting at the next table with a friend. He is engrossed in conversation, fortunately, and doesn’t notice the forkful of grits and melted butter you’ve just dumped on your lap.
At a crosswalk on Beach Boulevard a van pulls up and its driver turns out to be, on second take, Gary Nixon. While dining on sweet and sour shrimp at the Hawaiian Inn that night our perfect view of four hula dancers doing a floor show is interrupted by the entire Yoshimura family filing in, led by Pops himself. Wes Cooley joins them a few minutes later and Rich Schlachter drops by to say hello, or whatever very fast, famous guys say to one another.
They are everywhere. No other art, sport or craft brings its finest participants together in such concentration as Daytona. Oscar night in Hollywood doesn’t attract show business people as thoroughly and completely as Daytona does motorcycle people. Anybody who is, was or would like to be something in the motorcycle firmament in there. Tuners, sponsors, ex-World Champions, hot young riders, helmet, tire and oil people; motocrossers, road racers, and dirt trackers are all there to compete.
The crowd in Daytona is truly international. The British arrive in droves, escaping the same lousy weather as the Americans from the north or the eastern seaboard. Lots of French; in the hotel lobby a French reporter with a fistful of notes is shouting a race report long distance to Paris or somewhere (“C’est Coooleee! Non, non, Cooo-leee!”) while a blonde woman who somehow escaped from a designer jeans commercial clings to his arm and pouts and generally looks French. Canadians are everywhere, with plenty of red maple leaves on their luggage so no one mistakes them for Americans. At the International House of Pancakes a group of Italian men wearing Meccanica Ducati T-shirts argue among themselves over the meaning of Cheese Blintz or Buckwheat Strawberry Delight and a man behind us in line says, “By God, this really is an International House of Pancakes.”
The city of Daytona Beach is Florida at its best, a crazy combination of beach resort, small town and Old South. The architecture mingles beachfront posh, done up in Tiki Hut and Ponce de Leon chic, grand old Southern homes hidden in the willows and Spanish moss, needing paint in that slightly dissolute tropic colonial tradition, like sets from a Faulkner story or a Tennessee Williams play. There are country boy bars, Skunk Hollow homesteads back in the pines at the edge of town, new ranch house subdivisions, retirement communities, trailer parks, and even a proper Main Street with small, nicely kept shops. And a few miles in from the coast, just off Volusia Street near the airport, is the speedway.
When you approach the speedway Daytona is transformed from a beautiful but sleepy Florida beach town into an exciting Florida beach town. No matter how many races you’ve been to, the hardest part is waiting in line at the gate when you can hear bikes screaming around the track, but you can’t see them. The sound of three or four superbikes wailing around the banking gets the heart going and drives patience away. A friend walks over to chat, but it’s hard to concentrate on what he’s saying. You just want to get into the track and see the machines that are making all that wonderful noise. After parking on the infield it takes adult restraint and false dignity not to break into a run on the way to the nearest corner.
Cooley, Crosby and Spencer are out on the track practicing with their Superbikes. They come around the banking in a tight knot, drafting and jockeying for position, brake for Turn One, and throw their bikes into the curve like one large inseparable raft of noise and machinery. When they are gone another man leaning on the fence shakes his head and says “Damn!” in a low reverent tone.
Damn indeed. The sun is shining, fast bikes are on the track, the beach is three miles away, the air smells of Castrol R and Coppertone, the town is full of motorcycles, the soft tropical breeze is still rustling the palm trees and there’s no snow and the nearest trace of frozen water is in the Margueritas back at the hotel bar where the four hula dancers do their nightly floor show in the Tiki Room. And if that isn’t being in the right place during the Ides of March, I don’t know what is.
