The good old days

Great pic.....

wow i had not seen that one...thanks...what got melted on the kerker emblem his knee area on his leathers in a rolling/tumbling crash????

Yup, the Kerker is the foshizzle......thats Road Atlanta....1980. I wonder where that bike is today ?

Notice the WAY OVERSIZE rear tire. I love that picture, wish the bike was mine. :woohoo:

Man, I REALLY miss those days!! Looking back, even though those bikes were tricked out, they still were remarkably stock looking compared to today. For example: notice the passenger strap on the seat. How would you like to be sitting back there when he was approaching Turn-1 at speed or when he was blasting through the chicane? Yahoooo!

i was gonna post this just now and your thread was on top so no jacking intended...it kinda goes along with good old days....when the yanks would go over and race the brits....look how young mamola is and wes cooley on a two stroke.... sheene...name a few more

(youtube)

WOW! That brought back memories - my dad used to take me to Mallory Park as a kid - usually to club car races, but once or twice to see bikes. Fritz Scheidegger, who won the sidecar TT several times, was killed at the hairpin at Mallory in 1967. My dad and I saw a local driver killed at the esses when his MGA rolled and caught fire!

I also saw Sheene and Kenny Roberts in a special "superbike" race at Donnington Park in the early '70s. Pretty amazing race - I think they swapped the lead several times/lap!

It is still a popular "club" racetrack - but has been modified a little to slow bikes and cars around the long "Gerrards" bend and through the esses up to the hairpin. The off-camber "Devils Elbow" onto the front straight is still there - you can see them going through it in the video clip!

Very cool - thank you!

arai59 wrote:

Great pic.....

1980 US model MKll, the bike Eddie rode just before Kawasaki built the ELR S1's. Love that bike and the blue 79's he and Freddie Spencer & Mike Baldwin rode as well...good old days indeed.

That picture provides a glimpse back to a time before everything got so specialized. Note Eddie's gloves. They look like something from the farm store! These days any privateer who doesn't show up with all the trick gear would be laughed off the grid. It may not have been the safest time period but I think it was much more honest.

Perhaps that's the reason we find these bikes compelling, they're honest. If we start going too fast, they'll let us know. They don't lie to us by making acceleration to light speed so smooth and effortless that we don't know we're there. Instead they let us know as we approach Warp 0.1 that if we're going to get to Warp 0.5 we're going to have to wring its neck pretty hard and probably still suffer a consequence.