A thread like this one always takes me back to a time that I can hardly believed ever happened.
I was lucky enough to grow up in SoCal back in the Saddleback Park days, pretty cool for a ten-year-old kid to visit and ride there.
I even got to go back there and ride a beat-up rental KX125 as a teenager on one occasion, several years after having moved to upstate NY.
We built many off-map, onofficial racetracks on the various NYC aquaduct pumphouse properties and at abandoned airport and utility properties. Teenagers spending too much time riding dirt bikes but we learned to be resourceful in keeping the bikes running right and keeping the tracks under control.
During my final years in college while already working as an engineer, I built my fantasy bike when a suitable project bike came up for sale. I raced it for three years under the the AMA/Prostar and other sanctions, by which time I had finally pretty much gotten the speed bug worked out of my head. Had three close calls on it but never hit the ground at the track. Learned a lesson each time!
Finally moved back to SoCal after graduating and quickly rediscovered bicycle riding after my knee tendonitis finally cleared up. Have done very little motorcycling since then, other than that first year back in California riding through Calabasas every Saturday morning.
I bought a stock vintage TS185 last year from an elderly gent. It's a first-year bike so named "Hustler" not "Sierra". It gets about 80mpg no kidding.
This was at my final visit to Atco Raceway in NJ, had the bike well-sorted by then running consistent 9.9s runs with 60-ft times at 1.4s.
And here's the RD400 that I still own, and rode a lot in my early 20's. Bought it used in 1980 and ran it in a few different configurations over the years with an E.C. Birt motor.
