Riding With My Heroes!

One of the great thrills of attending the ISDT Reunion Ride is the opportunity to meet, talk and ride with some of the guys who I looked up to when I was a teenager in the early 70s.  When I was banging my 125 Suzuki in the first years of NETRA’s Junior Enduro series, I never thought in a million years I’d get to meet and be on a first name basis with the top enduro riders of the day…guys like Jack Penton, Carl Cranke, Don Cutler, Charlie Vincent, Dick Mann, Preston Petty.  Likewise, I never thought that, thanks to my continued involvement with the ISDTRR, I’d actually get to ride with these guys.  Fast forward 40 years, and my wildest thoughts have become reality.

At this year’s ISDTRR at the John Zink Ranch in Oklahoma, I got to ride on the same minute as Carl Cranke (10 ISDTs), Fred Camerson (7 ISDTs) and J. D. Hammock, Oklahoma native Six Day rider.  I turned 55 this year, Carl is 64, and Fred just turned 70.  Shouldn’t be too hard to keep up with some “old guys”, right?  After all, we all slow down as we age and get to the point where we all remember when we used to be fast.  I’ll start out by saying that these guys have aged gracefully….which is putting it mildly…and let me put this into perspective for the doubting Thomas folks out there. 

First of all, I’m an admitted B rider for life.  Some guys just “have it” in the woods, others have to work for it.  I never really “had it.”  Oh, I did OK in the junior enduros and even in my 40s I could manage to place well at the end of the year depending on how many events I rode, but I always had to work for it.  On my best day of riding, where you and the bike are one and everything is working great, I can sometimes hang with an A rider who’s having a crappy day.  Needless to say, I wasn’t courted for factory rides or spots on America’s Six Days teams.

Still, we all like to think we can hang with guys 10 or 15 years older than us, even if they were way better riders than we were back in their prime.  Age is the great equalizer…yeah, keep on telling yourself that.  Here’s a snapshot of reality….

Fred Cameron is a really cool guy.  He just turned 70 but you’d never guess it by looking at him as he looks easily 20 years younger.  He’s always been a small bore guy and he was riding a YZ125 at the Reunion.  I spent most of the weekend riding with him and here is what it takes to keep up with him on the trail.  You know how it is in the woods when the rider ahead of you is someone you need to beat for points for this enduro or maybe to wrap up your series championship.  You’re doing a good job hauling down the trail and you catch that whiff of 2-stroke in the air and you know it’s “that guy.” 

All of a sudden you go into special test mode…you’re up on the tank, charging all the corners, heavy on the throttle and taking chances you know you shouldn’t.  You attack boneyards you’d normally slow down for and pray your bike doesn’t go wacky underneath you.  You blow over blind hills and into blind corners with reckless abandon and pray some sort of stopper doesn’t materialize in front of you.  In short, you’re going for the gold with every bit of adrenalin-infused energy you can muster and hoping that you don’t auger in before you catch your prey and put the pass on him

That pace, that “going for the championship” speed, is what it took for me to stay on Fred’s back fender on the trail sections between the special tests.  I had to work my tail off to stay with him and hope I didn’t do something bone-headed, while Fred just motored smoothly along ahead of me like it was just another day in the park.  Smooth, effortless, no wasted motion, and an uncanny ability to read the trail.  Don’t get me wrong, I was having a ball but I spent most of the weekend moments from disaster.  Lady Luck was on my side and I didn’t do anything really stupid, but Fred just impressed the heck out of me, especially when I considered that he wasn’t really pushing it or riding over his head….and he was fully capable of doing this all day long for 6 days if he needed to.  Impressive to say the least! 

Fred and I were pretty close on special test times, but that was more a matter of terrain and displacement.  On the wide open stuff, I had 400cc to play with and bested Fred’s times by a few seconds.  In the tighter stuff his 125 gave nothing away and his superior ability gave him a decided edge that my extra horsepower couldn’t overcome, and he topped me in every one of the technical tests.  Again, one bobble on my part and it was all over.  Fred held plenty in reserve and for the most part toyed with me.

Carl Cranke was also on the same minute with us, and one minute behind were Jack Penton and Guy Cooper.  Those guys kept up the same wicked trail pace on the transfer sections, but when it came to the special tests it was a different story.  At the first special test on Saturday, I was quite ready to let Carl go into the test first, but he was over talking to Jack and Guy and Guy’s brother Chuck, and motioned me to go on ahead.  When the starter’s arm dropped, I hammered into the test which started out on a long, gradual, fast  downhill along a fence line with several dropoffs before turning into the woods for a bit and then emerging again onto the fast downhill. 

At the bottom of the downhill, probably ¾ of a mile, the test took a 90 degree left turn and went out across some lightly treed pasture.  Like I said, I was on it hard from the start, but when I hit the left turn I heard a whistle behind me.  I pulled slightly to the right and Carl went by me like I was dragging a boat anchor.  I’ve got a Rev-Loc clutch in my 400, so there’s no missed shifts, no clutching the corners,  no worrying about stalling out or being in the right gear, you just gas it and go, go, go.  I kept Carl’s fender in sight for maybe 10 seconds, then it was nothing but dust and I never saw him again until the checkout.  

A half mile later I heard another bike coming up fast on me.  This time it was Jack Penton, riding a ’99 250 KTM.  He flew by me and proceeded to nearly float across a rocky creek crossing that had me puckering up big time.  I wish I could hang with them just to watch them ride….they make it look SOOO easy!  Next to pass me was Guy Cooper who was riding a 1974 Penton 400 with 4 or 5 inches of suspension travel…but he might as well have been on a 2012 bike because he was flying faster than Jackie or Carl and beat them both when the special test times were posted.  

These guys are nothing but throttle or brakes, nothing in between in those special tests.  No wasted motion, no wasted thought.  When the trail opens up and you make the conscious decision to drop a gear and hammer on it, they’ve already made that choice and are on the gas before you finish the thought process.  They’ve put 20 or 30 feet on you just that fast, in a couple of split seconds, and when they do that on every turn and every obstacle it doesn’t take long before even their dust cloud is gone and you’re riding alone again.  Some of that comes from riding thousands of miles in hundreds of events over the years, but a lot of it is just uncanny natural ability that I know I’ll never have.

I wrote a few years ago about riding with Don Cutler who is the master of smooth riding.  I rode behind Donald for the better part of two days and never saw him pick a bad line.  He stayed up on the pegs 95 percent of the time and the only time he put his foot down was when he came to a stop.  I could hang on his fender so long as I rode hard and didn’t make any mistakes.  One bobble and he was gone and I was playing catch up.  It is easy to see why these guys were so successful at the Six Days and every other type of event they entered.  I’m just humbled that they let me eat their dust and I thank them for a great and fun ride!

Jeff Debell

2013 ISDT Reunion Ride  August 24-26  Cheshire, Massachusetts 

The 2013 ISDT Reunion Ride will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 1973 International Six Days Trial held in Dalton, Massachusetts.  Included in the weekend activities will be a 2-day AHRMA-sanctioned cross country competition, a non-competitive Legends Backroads Tour...a dual-sport style event for those wishing to enjoy a relaxing weekend with their pals on two wheels, and a Saturday evening banquet and awards ceremony. 

The Reunion Ride will be headquarted at Jim Hoellerich's Ayr Hill Farm in Cheshire, MA and will feature historical displays including Jim Hoellerich's personal vintage enduro and ISDT motorcycle museum.  Jim's museum contains dozens of vintage competition motorcycles, all of which have been restored to showroom condition, as well as tons of memorabilia from the golden age of enduro riding in New England and the 1973 Dalton ISDT.

All vintage motorcycle lovers are welcome to attend and participate in the Reunion Ride weekend, with a special invitation extended to all former and current ISDT and ISDE competitors.  Information on the Reunion Ride and registration can be found on the AHRMA website, www.ahrma.org, or email Jeff DeBell at jeffdebell@aol.com.