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With my reduced budget for a bike, my options were somewhat limited. I looked through the
newspaper classifieds and didn't see much that I wanted for what I had to spend. I ended up
turning to an old friend who was looking to get rid of one of his old bikes. In retrospect,
this was not too good of an idea. He rode his bike hard and often. He was pretty good about
maintenance, but he would kind of cut corners. For example, if he could get a Yamaha part for
his Honda that was close to what he needed, he would machine it until it fit rather than pay
the extra 2 bucks for the Honda part. He also crashed kind of a lot. By the time he was ready
to sell a bike, it was pretty ragged out. I knew this, but either chose to deny it or simply
realized that this was the only bike that I could afford.
We met at a track on race day to conduct the transaction. I gave it a look over and rode it
back and forth in the pits a little bit to make sure it ran and all the gears still worked,
and then bought it. My first time out was practice for the race. It had been three years since
I rode a MX bike, but even discounting that, this was not an easy bike to ride. This was not
at all like my 83 CR480. The engine could best be described as violent. It had a mid range
surge that would yank your arms out of their sockets. The frame was a bit tweaked, the tires
were worn, and the suspension fluids had not been changed for a long time. All these made my
first few rides of the "hang on for dear life" variety. Towards the end of the second moto,
I started to get used to a it, but it definitely took a lot of effort to ride.
I raced it at three or four other races. There was a spring series and I always wanted to be
able to ride all the races of a series to see how I would do. I had dropped down to B class.
I trophied once or twice and ended up 6th in the series. Of course, the series awards went to
the top 5. One of the races was at the same Elizabeth City track that had bit me three years
earlier. They had added a rhythm section that was very similar to the one that used to double
through on my XL 200. I didn't double through them in practice, but I was pretty sure that I
could do it. I got a pretty decent start and as I approached them, I figured I needed to
double through to hold my position. The thing I didn't take into account was that the
predictable, low HP XL motor made it easy to time it through something like that while the
life threatening, high HP CR motor made it more difficult. I don't remember much about the
crash other than I went in way too fast and hit the face of the third or fourth one. My
friend said I was wide open and went through the whole section with my feet off the pegs
before finally tumbling off the side of the track. I suffered no serious injuries, but
decided that the bike was not going to get any easier to ride (I had freshened up the rear
tire and the shock oil), and if I kept racing it, I would probably get hurt.
This is another bike that I distinctly remember selling. A kid came to look at with his dad.
He was probably 13 or 14. His only previous bike was some kind of dual sport 200. Much as I
wanted to sell the bike, I asked several times if he was sure he was ready for a bike like
this. He thought he was. This bike has an elaborate starting ritual. A combination of lean
jetting, a kick start mechanism that didn't turn the bike over enough, and a piston the size
of a small garbage can made this bike very difficult to start. If you didn't follow the
routine, it would not start, period. Neither him or his dad seemed to be paying too much
attention when I was going over how to start it. I often wonder if they ever got it started,
or if they did, how many times he looped out on it.
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