Odd-Ball Picture of the Day

LOL. I get a text from my boss last week that says if you're going in to the shop this weekend I changed the alarm code to ####. He's had the same code for 18 years, but some guys can't seem to remember it, and the alarm company bugs him when it goes off. Any way, when I got to work that Saturday morning I laughed as I typed in the new code. Why bother.

 

Hood is already popped for you to start things off like normal!

 

It's kinda funny looking back at it now. The STOP board was literally a piece of 1/2" plywood probably 3'x4' with the word STOP and a large arrow pointing down. I was told that I would be the last line of defense to get him stopped in the pit box and it was even suggested that I might want to wear a MX boot as I was to plant my foot behind the board to brace it.

I'm not sure that the physics would have worked in my favor even with a boot on (I stayed in my tennis shoes). Fortunately it never came to that.

All of us MX guys, for whom roadracing was something completely foreign, just thought that KS was a crazy young Texan who had already ground down one of his pinkies trying to save a lowside and liked going insanely fast.

I don't know whatever become of him after that...

 

Eric Burdon declares we need to pray more.

 

GSXR750 was introduced in 1985 to much of the world, but not the US. Cycle Tech won the 1985 WERA National Endurance Championship on them, besting John Yurejefcic's Speed Boys FZ750. https://riderfiles.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/cycle-tech-pits-for-repairs/

 

Pass the hash oil.

 

Today's Eric...

 

One of your teammates? That's the best description I rate? I thought I meant more to you than that....

 

No, it wasn't me

 

I wasn't going to name names, but ok, my buddy TODD!

 

1985 0or 1986? He was an unknown when he qualified on the front row in 1985. Remember the quote from Freddie Spencer? "Kevin WHO?" Unfortunately, he fried the clutch at the start of the race and only got 2-3 laps in.
He did better in 1986, finishing second to Eddie Lawson.

 

It must have been '86 then. I do know that he finished the race with his l/s grip stuffed up into the gap between his tank and the frame because it had been accidentally splashed with some fuel during the second pit stop and spun loose on him. I also got invited to the post-race party where the Suzuki peeps were pretty happy about the results. That's where Kevin was giving me shit about holding his STOP board. At a Holiday Inn kinda almost across the street from the speedway if memory serves me right.

So long ago but still so many memories, right or wrong.

 

...

 

More KS stories...

I was part of a crew that took the first GSXR-750s up to Laguna Seca for the worldwide press debut. We actually borrowed a box van from Yoshimura with a lift gate to bring up most of them. KS was there and, just incidentally, I got to ride a few laps on one of those GSXR-750s the day before the international press showed up to take their spins.

I was also at a Suzuki dealer show at what was then the MGM Grand in Reno where KS was signing posters. Also signing posters was a hot young Playboy model who I believe may have had a thing with him after that.

Finally, I was tasked with delivering two brand-new RM-250s to KS and a buddy of his (the name escapes me but I seem to recall it being a flat-tracker or somebody that I had heard of but didn't know) to a house in Monterey, CA.

Good times!

 

2 more bannings? *Mongo