There are motocross guys and there are desert guys. You are either one or the other. I’ve given this subject a lot of thought over the years, and with the recently completed world famous Baja 1000 in mind, this is as good a time as any to recount some of the random incidents along the unusual path that led to my one and only Baja racing experience.
Before I got my first bike, J.N. Roberts was my biggest hero…heck, he still is. I faithfully read all of his riding tips in Popular Cycling magazine and I knew how to go through whoops before I ever owned a bike. I was lucky enough to meet J.N. when I went to the Barstow-to-Vegas hare and hound race in 1971 with my cousin, Jim Hansen, who was working for Hooker Headers at the time and picking up J.N.’s Husky after the race. As we drove up Interstate 15 towards Vegas, I will never forget looking out the passenger window and seeing J.N.’s trademark white helmet with football mouth guard pass us, dodging pucker bushes on his big Husqvarna. I remember thinking someday that would be me.
But it was not to be. I got my first bike a few months later, then entered and won the first motocross race ever held at Corona Raceway. From then on, desert racing didn’t enter my mind. Sure, I rode out in the desert every once in a while, but even then I usually ended up making a track of some sort and just did laps while the others went trailing.
I was a moto guy, pure and simple, and motocross was exploding in Southern California. I raced three, four, even five times a week at tracks like Corona, OCIR, Ascot, Irwindale, Indian Dunes, DeAnza, Saddleback and Carlsbad. Being one of a handful of fast guys from the “Inland Empire”, I was able to rack up shitloads of wins at Corona and DeAnza, and hold my own at the ultra-competitive CMC races held at Saddleback and Carlsbad, which were like an AMA National every Sunday.
I was also lucky enough to be around for the high school motocross phenomena that swept SoCal in the mid-1970s. What could be cooler than all of a sudden racing for your high school at a track where you are already dominating the pro class? One of the guys racing HSMX in our division was Bloomington High School’s Larry Roeseler, who was already well on his way to becoming an off-road legend. I’d met Larry once before through my neighbor, the late Bruce Ogilvie, another off-road legend. I was a little surprised when I was able to beat L.R. pretty easily out at Corona Raceway during the high school events, because anyone who read Cycle News (and we all did) knew he was dominating in District 37 desert races and down in Baja.
After high school graduation in 1976, I continued racing locally and was winning quite a bit, in between injuries. Every once in a while I would run into Larry at a Corona Grand Prix, or a motocross race at DeAnza. I loved those Corona GPs because they were like a six-mile long motocross track, and I liked it when any of those “desert guys” would come out to race. Guys like Ogilvie, Roeseler, Chuck Miller and Jim Fishback showed up every so often and I would beat them every time they did. It didn’t seem to bother them much, and the impression I got was that they were there to sharpen their skills and weren’t going to risk getting hurt at a local motocross race.
Sometime in early 1978 Larry and I started hanging out and became pretty good friends; playing racquetball and going riding, usually in nearby Reche Canyon, where he had a buddy who lived near the store. We loved to go riding, rain or shine, the snottier the better. Larry was fast, controlled, and he almost never fell. His skills in the technical sections were incredible and he took me on some ridge runs that scared the fucking shit out of me…I’m talking about six-inch-wide trails with 200 foot near-vertical drops on both sides, no exaggeration! I think it was payback for all those times at Corona…
I had never forgotten my hero, J.N., and still envisioned racing Baja or some Six-Day stuff when I was done with MX, so I asked a lot of questions. Larry is a super easygoing guy and is good about giving up information regarding bike set-up, or riding tips, but he was pretty tight-lipped about money. I assumed he was making pretty good bank and didn’t feel like it was any of my business, but it turns out that wasn’t it…he wanted to become a motocross racer! I was shocked! Here was the number one off-road racer in the country, fresh off winning the Baja 1000, telling me that he felt like MX was where the money was and he didn’t want to be left behind. I know he felt frustrated because the Huskies were too slow for MX. Ultimately, he made the right choice to stick with off-road, because two years later he was on Factory Yamahas…more on that later.
I finally got a chance to race those guys on their own turf at the 1978 Soboba Grand Prix. This was a race put on by the pre-casino tribe of Soboba Indians, the same ones who 25 years later would pull the rug out from under the feet of the promoters of the Motocross des Nations, humiliating the USA to the world…but that’s another story. Back then they put on a great event, with an epic 15-mile course that started in a riverbed and meandered through the San Jacinto foothills and ridges. It had a white-knuckle section of single-track switchbacks that was sick and another part where we rode upstream, hydroplaning on a half-foot deep layer of water. I think Malcolm Smith was involved with laying out the course and I know he still hosts a dual-sport ride out there.
As we drove onto the Soboba Reservation, we couldn’t help noticing that some of the tribal members looked like they were still hammered from the night before. Another unusual thing (for me) was that we had to leave my bike at the parc ferme, sort of an impound area, before taking it to the starting line, which was in a big sandwash. As I sat waiting on my trusty RM 250C for the dead engine start, I ran through the mental checklist of things that Larry had taught me, such as scanning my eyes far ahead (he called it LR-dar, LOL), slow down to avoid drowning the bike in the river crossings and, most of all, be patient. He said the race was four or five hours long, so there was no need to hurry. WTF, how can you not hurry at a race? I pretty much disregarded that last one, much to my demise.
I got a decent start and was in the top ten as we headed up into the hill section. I must have been in a hurry, because I was passing guys pretty easily…then BAM! I overshot a turn, and crashed hard, then had to drag my bike back up the ridge to the course. After that I was pushing pretty hard and eventually caught the leader, Bob Balentine, at a water crossing about three hours into the race. I made it through without drowning out my bike, but then literally ran into the back of him like a goon and crashed.
That was the only glimpse I ever got of the leader, as I repeated the process of hauling ass and crashing, until I eventually threw my chain and it lodged between the countershaft sprocket and the engine case. I remember that I sat broken down in that sandwash for at least five minutes before seeing Jim Fishback cruise by on his way to winning my class. Bob Balentine took the overall win, LR got second and Fishback won the 250 class. It was the first time I raced against Jim, who would later become one of my best friends. I also now understood what Larry meant by, “Don’t be in a hurry, let the race come to you”. Although I didn’t finish, I vowed to be back.
In mid-1978, I bought a couple of bikes from Gunnar Lindstrom at American Honda and went on a pretty decent tear, racking up some wins, including the AMA 250 Western Regional Motocross Championship, the precursor to what is now the East/West 250 Supercross Series. Near the end of the year I got the break I’d been working for all those years, or at least it seemed that way.
I had ridden for aftermarket powerhouse DG Performance Specialties for many years, watching as my teammates Broc Glover, Bob Hannah and Mike Bell moved on to Factory Yamaha and illustrious Hall of Fame careers. Gary Harlow (the “G” in DG) had confidence in me and contacted Ken Clark, the Race Teams Manager at Yamaha and “called in a marker” for giving them Hannah, Glover and Bell, and next thing I knew I had unlimited bikes and parts from Factory Yamaha for 1979. They partnered up and worked out a deal to send me out to do the 250 Nationals and Supercross Series. Everything was wonderful except for one thing: I hated the bikes.
The YZ250F was the worst bike I had ever raced and no matter how hard we tried, we could not get that thing to work for me. I tried every combination of suspension from every shop in the industry, to no avail. I won a lot of races locally, but struggled on the brutally rough National tracks. I think my best moto finish on the Yamahas was an 11th at the Racing World National. I also didn’t fare any better in my second try at the Soboba Grand Prix, crashing a few times before running out of gas out in the boonies.
In the meantime, the works Yamahas were killing it and Yamaha swept all three National MX titles, plus the Supercross Championship. It was pretty discouraging. My performance on those Yamahas was so poor that hallway through the season, at the Pontiac Supercross round, I approached Gunnar and somehow talked him into hooking me up with a couple of Hondas. We drove straight from Michigan to California and dropped off the bikes, parts, and everything at Yamaha. I knew that I had let Harlow down and Ken Clark wasn’t too happy about it, either. Even Ed Scheidler, who was the technical wizard at Yamaha and someone I’d known forever, would barely look at us the day we returned the bikes. I felt like a total douche, but knew in my heart that I’d tried everything to make them work for me.
Things turned around immediately as soon as we picked up the Hondas. I got some works forks and other parts from Gunnar and Brian Lunnis and with Works Performance shocks on the back I was back to hauling ass again! Because I was already out of the points contention, we decided to skip the remaining east coast Nationals and Supercross races and concentrate on regaining my speed, confidence and momentum. We did race the 250 Support class at the Carlsbad USGP and got 6th overall against a stacked field. Things were looking up, for sure.
It was about that time that I met Orange Show Speedway promoter, John LaDouceur, who was looking to begin promoting CMC Friday night motocross races at the stadium next door to his speedway track in San Bernardino. He hoped to draw some of the fans from his wildly successful Wednesday night speedway races over to his upcoming MX races, so he asked me to do an exhibition race on a makeshift track during the Wednesday night show. I’d just come back from the Nationals, where I had roomed with factory Suzuki rider, Scott Gillman, so I invited Scott to do the exhibition with me and it went very well. We put on a decent show and John was pleased, handing me a couple of season passes for speedway.
Speedway racing was at its peak during the late 70s and early 80s, packing the stands in Ventura on Tuesday, the Orange Show on Weds, Ascot on Thursday and Costa Mesa on Friday nights. I showed up the following Weds night and John gave me the nickel tour of the speedway, answering all of my questions about this crazy form of racing. I became even more interested when he mentioned that the riders shared a percentage of the spectator gate and there were at least a dozen riders earning decent money during the speedway season. The guys who were winning hauled in a couple of grand for a night’s work! One of those guys was a name that I recognized, Jim “The Animal” Fishback…the famous desert racer and winner of my class at Soboba in 1978. I mentioned to John that I’d like to try racing when I was done with MX and he suggested I could do both, since speedway season only ran for a few months. He said he would find me a bike and sponsor for 1980 and I agreed to give it a try. The only thing better than being a guest of the promoter is when he asks you to go recruit a couple of trophy girls for later that night. Those Wednesday nights at Berdoo were quite a party!
I was in the best shape of my life and riding better than I ever had. My Hondas were dialed in and I had already begun talking to them about a contract for 1980. I had a deal to race speedway on the side and I was sponsored by the promoter! What could possibly go wrong?
End of Part 1
Before I got my first bike, J.N. Roberts was my biggest hero…heck, he still is. I faithfully read all of his riding tips in Popular Cycling magazine and I knew how to go through whoops before I ever owned a bike. I was lucky enough to meet J.N. when I went to the Barstow-to-Vegas hare and hound race in 1971 with my cousin, Jim Hansen, who was working for Hooker Headers at the time and picking up J.N.’s Husky after the race. As we drove up Interstate 15 towards Vegas, I will never forget looking out the passenger window and seeing J.N.’s trademark white helmet with football mouth guard pass us, dodging pucker bushes on his big Husqvarna. I remember thinking someday that would be me.
But it was not to be. I got my first bike a few months later, then entered and won the first motocross race ever held at Corona Raceway. From then on, desert racing didn’t enter my mind. Sure, I rode out in the desert every once in a while, but even then I usually ended up making a track of some sort and just did laps while the others went trailing.
I was a moto guy, pure and simple, and motocross was exploding in Southern California. I raced three, four, even five times a week at tracks like Corona, OCIR, Ascot, Irwindale, Indian Dunes, DeAnza, Saddleback and Carlsbad. Being one of a handful of fast guys from the “Inland Empire”, I was able to rack up shitloads of wins at Corona and DeAnza, and hold my own at the ultra-competitive CMC races held at Saddleback and Carlsbad, which were like an AMA National every Sunday.
I was also lucky enough to be around for the high school motocross phenomena that swept SoCal in the mid-1970s. What could be cooler than all of a sudden racing for your high school at a track where you are already dominating the pro class? One of the guys racing HSMX in our division was Bloomington High School’s Larry Roeseler, who was already well on his way to becoming an off-road legend. I’d met Larry once before through my neighbor, the late Bruce Ogilvie, another off-road legend. I was a little surprised when I was able to beat L.R. pretty easily out at Corona Raceway during the high school events, because anyone who read Cycle News (and we all did) knew he was dominating in District 37 desert races and down in Baja.
After high school graduation in 1976, I continued racing locally and was winning quite a bit, in between injuries. Every once in a while I would run into Larry at a Corona Grand Prix, or a motocross race at DeAnza. I loved those Corona GPs because they were like a six-mile long motocross track, and I liked it when any of those “desert guys” would come out to race. Guys like Ogilvie, Roeseler, Chuck Miller and Jim Fishback showed up every so often and I would beat them every time they did. It didn’t seem to bother them much, and the impression I got was that they were there to sharpen their skills and weren’t going to risk getting hurt at a local motocross race.
Sometime in early 1978 Larry and I started hanging out and became pretty good friends; playing racquetball and going riding, usually in nearby Reche Canyon, where he had a buddy who lived near the store. We loved to go riding, rain or shine, the snottier the better. Larry was fast, controlled, and he almost never fell. His skills in the technical sections were incredible and he took me on some ridge runs that scared the fucking shit out of me…I’m talking about six-inch-wide trails with 200 foot near-vertical drops on both sides, no exaggeration! I think it was payback for all those times at Corona…
I had never forgotten my hero, J.N., and still envisioned racing Baja or some Six-Day stuff when I was done with MX, so I asked a lot of questions. Larry is a super easygoing guy and is good about giving up information regarding bike set-up, or riding tips, but he was pretty tight-lipped about money. I assumed he was making pretty good bank and didn’t feel like it was any of my business, but it turns out that wasn’t it…he wanted to become a motocross racer! I was shocked! Here was the number one off-road racer in the country, fresh off winning the Baja 1000, telling me that he felt like MX was where the money was and he didn’t want to be left behind. I know he felt frustrated because the Huskies were too slow for MX. Ultimately, he made the right choice to stick with off-road, because two years later he was on Factory Yamahas…more on that later.
I finally got a chance to race those guys on their own turf at the 1978 Soboba Grand Prix. This was a race put on by the pre-casino tribe of Soboba Indians, the same ones who 25 years later would pull the rug out from under the feet of the promoters of the Motocross des Nations, humiliating the USA to the world…but that’s another story. Back then they put on a great event, with an epic 15-mile course that started in a riverbed and meandered through the San Jacinto foothills and ridges. It had a white-knuckle section of single-track switchbacks that was sick and another part where we rode upstream, hydroplaning on a half-foot deep layer of water. I think Malcolm Smith was involved with laying out the course and I know he still hosts a dual-sport ride out there.
As we drove onto the Soboba Reservation, we couldn’t help noticing that some of the tribal members looked like they were still hammered from the night before. Another unusual thing (for me) was that we had to leave my bike at the parc ferme, sort of an impound area, before taking it to the starting line, which was in a big sandwash. As I sat waiting on my trusty RM 250C for the dead engine start, I ran through the mental checklist of things that Larry had taught me, such as scanning my eyes far ahead (he called it LR-dar, LOL), slow down to avoid drowning the bike in the river crossings and, most of all, be patient. He said the race was four or five hours long, so there was no need to hurry. WTF, how can you not hurry at a race? I pretty much disregarded that last one, much to my demise.
I got a decent start and was in the top ten as we headed up into the hill section. I must have been in a hurry, because I was passing guys pretty easily…then BAM! I overshot a turn, and crashed hard, then had to drag my bike back up the ridge to the course. After that I was pushing pretty hard and eventually caught the leader, Bob Balentine, at a water crossing about three hours into the race. I made it through without drowning out my bike, but then literally ran into the back of him like a goon and crashed.
That was the only glimpse I ever got of the leader, as I repeated the process of hauling ass and crashing, until I eventually threw my chain and it lodged between the countershaft sprocket and the engine case. I remember that I sat broken down in that sandwash for at least five minutes before seeing Jim Fishback cruise by on his way to winning my class. Bob Balentine took the overall win, LR got second and Fishback won the 250 class. It was the first time I raced against Jim, who would later become one of my best friends. I also now understood what Larry meant by, “Don’t be in a hurry, let the race come to you”. Although I didn’t finish, I vowed to be back.
In mid-1978, I bought a couple of bikes from Gunnar Lindstrom at American Honda and went on a pretty decent tear, racking up some wins, including the AMA 250 Western Regional Motocross Championship, the precursor to what is now the East/West 250 Supercross Series. Near the end of the year I got the break I’d been working for all those years, or at least it seemed that way.
I had ridden for aftermarket powerhouse DG Performance Specialties for many years, watching as my teammates Broc Glover, Bob Hannah and Mike Bell moved on to Factory Yamaha and illustrious Hall of Fame careers. Gary Harlow (the “G” in DG) had confidence in me and contacted Ken Clark, the Race Teams Manager at Yamaha and “called in a marker” for giving them Hannah, Glover and Bell, and next thing I knew I had unlimited bikes and parts from Factory Yamaha for 1979. They partnered up and worked out a deal to send me out to do the 250 Nationals and Supercross Series. Everything was wonderful except for one thing: I hated the bikes.
The YZ250F was the worst bike I had ever raced and no matter how hard we tried, we could not get that thing to work for me. I tried every combination of suspension from every shop in the industry, to no avail. I won a lot of races locally, but struggled on the brutally rough National tracks. I think my best moto finish on the Yamahas was an 11th at the Racing World National. I also didn’t fare any better in my second try at the Soboba Grand Prix, crashing a few times before running out of gas out in the boonies.
In the meantime, the works Yamahas were killing it and Yamaha swept all three National MX titles, plus the Supercross Championship. It was pretty discouraging. My performance on those Yamahas was so poor that hallway through the season, at the Pontiac Supercross round, I approached Gunnar and somehow talked him into hooking me up with a couple of Hondas. We drove straight from Michigan to California and dropped off the bikes, parts, and everything at Yamaha. I knew that I had let Harlow down and Ken Clark wasn’t too happy about it, either. Even Ed Scheidler, who was the technical wizard at Yamaha and someone I’d known forever, would barely look at us the day we returned the bikes. I felt like a total douche, but knew in my heart that I’d tried everything to make them work for me.
Things turned around immediately as soon as we picked up the Hondas. I got some works forks and other parts from Gunnar and Brian Lunnis and with Works Performance shocks on the back I was back to hauling ass again! Because I was already out of the points contention, we decided to skip the remaining east coast Nationals and Supercross races and concentrate on regaining my speed, confidence and momentum. We did race the 250 Support class at the Carlsbad USGP and got 6th overall against a stacked field. Things were looking up, for sure.
It was about that time that I met Orange Show Speedway promoter, John LaDouceur, who was looking to begin promoting CMC Friday night motocross races at the stadium next door to his speedway track in San Bernardino. He hoped to draw some of the fans from his wildly successful Wednesday night speedway races over to his upcoming MX races, so he asked me to do an exhibition race on a makeshift track during the Wednesday night show. I’d just come back from the Nationals, where I had roomed with factory Suzuki rider, Scott Gillman, so I invited Scott to do the exhibition with me and it went very well. We put on a decent show and John was pleased, handing me a couple of season passes for speedway.
Speedway racing was at its peak during the late 70s and early 80s, packing the stands in Ventura on Tuesday, the Orange Show on Weds, Ascot on Thursday and Costa Mesa on Friday nights. I showed up the following Weds night and John gave me the nickel tour of the speedway, answering all of my questions about this crazy form of racing. I became even more interested when he mentioned that the riders shared a percentage of the spectator gate and there were at least a dozen riders earning decent money during the speedway season. The guys who were winning hauled in a couple of grand for a night’s work! One of those guys was a name that I recognized, Jim “The Animal” Fishback…the famous desert racer and winner of my class at Soboba in 1978. I mentioned to John that I’d like to try racing when I was done with MX and he suggested I could do both, since speedway season only ran for a few months. He said he would find me a bike and sponsor for 1980 and I agreed to give it a try. The only thing better than being a guest of the promoter is when he asks you to go recruit a couple of trophy girls for later that night. Those Wednesday nights at Berdoo were quite a party!
I was in the best shape of my life and riding better than I ever had. My Hondas were dialed in and I had already begun talking to them about a contract for 1980. I had a deal to race speedway on the side and I was sponsored by the promoter! What could possibly go wrong?
End of Part 1
12/10/2013 5:07pm
View replies to: It's a Long Way to Mexicali: A Cautionary Tale (Part 1)
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