Wheelyin' With the King

WHEELYIN' WITH THE KING

by Doug Domokos and Len Weed

Cleansheet Enterprises

P.O. Box 241

Tarzana, Calif. 91356

144 pages

$9.95 plus $1.50 postage

Fascinating fun, wheelies. Motocross stars and road racing champions carry the front wheel under power and unicycle over the finish line. Wheelies are a display of skill and bravery and control. Even those of us who say the uplifted front tire costs you speed and requires taking chances that you don’t need to take and may even get you pitched into the weeds or written up by the police know, deep in our secret hearts that yes, common sense is all well and good but it would be neat, now and then, to be able to wheelie.

Comes now a book on that very subject. The credentials are impeccable. Doug Domokos bills himself as the Wheelie King and gets away with it because he is the best known and most professional rider in his field. As seen on television and at all the big races. Domokos knows how to do wheelies and Len Weed, himself a good trials rider and also an experienced magazine writer, knows how to spell and take pictures.

The sum, though, is less than the two parts. The book has tips on physical fitness and training, physics as involved with balancing a bike, Domokos’ career and best performances. There are what seem like countless pictures of Domokos doing impossible things.

But the actual instructions are sparse. Readers who are there because they want to learn how will wade through page after page of padding; what Domokos’ show bike is, how he built it, color photos of him flying the flag and standing with Burt Reynolds. The text is as difficult. Weed doesn’t think people will care for just facts and the writing is overdone almost beyond description. Okay, one example only: rather than say you need to use the throttle, Weed writes “Hey wrist twister the throttle is the main man in the lift plan.” He does something like that once per paragraph, 15 paragraphs per page, maybe 70 pages of text. Extracting useful information is work.

This is a hero worship book. If you’re just crazy about Doug Domokos, if for you he’s the Shaun Cassidy of Motorcycles, the picture and poses and puns are maybe what you want. If not, if you get this book so you too can wheelie, be prepared to suffer for it.

Allan Girdler