A Day In the Time Machine
A DAY IN THE TIME MACHINE
THIS IS A MONOSHOCK.” THE OFFICIAL AT TECH inspection said, sounding half surprised, half annoyed.
“Yep,” replied David Edwards proudly. “It was the very first one, a 1975 Canadian model.”
“Sorry, no monoshocks. No bikes later than 1974, and no bikes with over four inches of suspension travel, either. You can't race this thing here.”
Edwards looked at the official in disbelief. He had just traveled over 400 miles to attend Dick Mann’s Vintage Dirt Bike Rally, armed with the old YZ to do battle in the vintage motocross. Now they wouldn’t let him race.
“The whole point is not to let monoshocks race here,” Dick Mann later explained. “The cut-off point is more than just a certain year. This is a race for a different era of motocross bikes.”
Mann believes that the old YZ, like all the longtravel, single-shock, liquid-cooled, disc-braked bikes that followed, belongs to a different chapter in the history of motocross—perhaps even to an entirely different sport. And he had dedicated this day at Sandhill Ranch in Northern California to that earlier sport.
For that matter, the day was dedicated to an earlier version of motorcycling in general. Along with the vintage motocross, there was a vintage trials, a vintage hillclimb exhibition, and a vintage dirt-track exhibition, plus a swap meet and an area where people just parked their old motorcycles to share them with everyone else. A walk through the pits was like a journey through time. But no particular time period or type of motorcycle was dominant. There was a pre-war Norton right next to a 1978 Maico motocrosser, an Indian Scout side-by-side with a Greeves trials bike. If you had been involved with any aspect of motorcycling at any time within the last 40 years, there was something at the rally that would strike a sentimental chord.
By and large, though, most of the people there came to dust off their old rides and flounder around a motocross course or plonk through an incredibly easy (by modern standards) trials section. The reason was pride. This was the only place where it was forgiveable, even fashionable, to show pride in what most of the rest of the world would consider so much junk. Others just came to see, gather, talk and be a part of a sport that didn't exist anywhere in the world that day outside the confines of Sandhill Ranch.
If you wanted to see any of the participants light up with delight, all you had to do was ask him about his bike. There was Mike Bungay, who took obvious pride in his two absolutely perfect Monarch 125 motocrossers. He had recently stumbled across one at a dealership where it had been sitting in a crate for over a decade, and then tracked another through several owners. He rode the fresher of the two at the rally, and called up former Monarch teamster Danny Turner to ride the other.
And then there was Robin Crockett. He had been a trials enthusiast for years, and in fact owned what he claimed to be the first Bultaco trials bike imported into the country. He and his father didn't compete, but worked as scorers at the trials. They just wanted to be a part of the event.
There were hundreds of other riders and enthusiasts at the Dick Mann rally. And they had hundreds of different tales to tell. But all the riders, spectators and diehard motorcyclists there had something in common: a love of a sport that no longer exists in quite the same form. They also shared a profound desire that it not be forgotten.
On at least one day in Northern California, it wasn't. —Ron Lawson
