The Motorbike Archives

But a Harley XR-750 is grumbling around behind the pits like a fighting hull getting ready to gore somebody for lunch. The guy in the old white T-shirt keeps circling the Harley around and around on the dirt waiting for the idle to smooth out—no sumbitch and his rules is going to tell a flattracker what to do. The XR churns its oil, smooths out. It takes five minutes before someone gets around to telling the guy to shut off.

The Orange County Fairgrounds is hushed again. Steel-plated boots clank on hard dirt. The pit area has been filling up gradually for two hours now, Harley after Harley after Harley rolling out of its van and onto a frame-stand. There are other bikes here, a lone Ducati, a lone Yamaha, a lone GTR. But they look as out of place as a beret at a gunfight.

People in hard-worn racing leathers circulate among the vans smiling and exchanging palm handshakes, renewing friendships interrupted by yet another week on the road. They're a grabby bunch, these flattrackers, all patting each other on the back, slinging arms around shoulders. They're in this together and they like each other.

In the pre-race quiet I happen to watch one of them saunter from team to team saying howdy. He's young, so young that shaving probably isn't a pain in the ass yet, but his blue and white leathers are scuffed and tired. He's handsome, blond, grinning, and it's pleasant to watch him mix with his peers, swaggering like a kid among high school buddies before a rock concert. Life couldn't be sweeter.

Minutes later I'm walking along the back row of vans behind the pits when I see the same guy (you'd recognize the name, but he deserves his privacy) standing between two closely-parked vans. There is no one else around. He's bent over at the waist. It takes me a second to realize he is puking his guts out.

He straightens up. When he sees me his eyes dart away. No one else has seen. He takes a few steps, but then he glances back at me, almost sheepishly, as if to say, "You didn't see nothing, did you, buddy, nah nothing." I look away as if I hadn't.

In the same instant I hear Harleys starting. The kid goes back to the pits quickly. It's High Noon.

That is American Dirt. A mad amalgam; easy-going and gut-emptying; grinning terror. You don't puke before races hereabouts. And even if you do, you didn't. After all, nothing much to puke about, except maybe breaking your leg. Or your back. Or maybe getting killed.

American Dirt. They say it's fallen on hard times. They say nobody much goes to it anymore, that all the world has turned to motocross and now that we have our own world-class motocrossers, Americans too think "dirt" means motocross.

Horsedip. Motocross, for all its wild popularity in America, is European Dirt. There is another dirt. It happens on a long, flat oval. It is 750 cubic centimeters of Harley-Davidson under a rider who loves nothing more than to fling his bike sideways at 100 mph four times per minute. No jumps, no whoopties, no prima donna super-riders, just quiet, friendly people with halls like cantaloupes.

American Dirt. You'd almost forgotten about it, hadn't you'? Small wonder. It hasn't exactly been making the Barbara Walters Hour lately. If places like Du-Quoin and Columbus and Santa Fe and Middletown don't sound like places where people get on motorcycles and do something important, I suppose it's understandable. But it's not because flattrack American Dirt isn't important--it's because most of us are flat ignorant.

Time to change that. See, it would he foolish to say motocross doesn't take guts. It does. But it would he equally foolish to say there is motorized competition anywhere on Earth that takes one smithereen more courage than flying an XR-750 into 'Turn One at Middletown. There isn't, not anywhere. So maybe you'd better go take a look. After all, this is your racing, the most uniquely American motorcycle racing there is. They say if more of us don't go take a look at it pretty soon, American Dirt may find its way onto the Endangered Species List. More horsedip. Like the Bald Eagle, American Dirt is just too damn fine to fail.

(But I'd better slow down—I'm starting to hear John Philip Sousa marches in the background.)

There's no better place to see American Dirt than Middletown. The muggy summer air hangs sullenly over the concession stands as they pump out cotton candy and "Maxi-Doughy," beer and clam fritters, popcorn and fried chicken—enough junk food to give God Himself hypoglycemia. You can buy a baseball cap that says "YAMAHA," an orange rug that says "NORTON." The U.S. Army will recruit you. There are lousy leather sandals for sale here and custom T-shirts with lousy jokes on them for sale there. (I never said America was perfect, just perfectly American.)

But the business end of American Dirt is out back on the hard-packed oval. There may be bigger tracks than Middletown and there most certainly are better surfaces. But there is nothing more thoroughly American than this half-mile county, fair bullring. The modifieds ran last night and the dirt has been pounded hard and slick as oiled asphalt. Several of the best riders will find themselves totally out of their element on this uncharacteristic, bermless skating rink. But there was no grousing about track conditions. The track's the same for everyone, it was said. And the AMA-sanctioned Winston Pro Series was offering national championship points today, so if you came to race, they said, shut up and put on your helmet.

They did.

At one minute after High Noon I stood in the rolling thunder of 35 full-race Harley-Davidsons warming up their oil for practice. The officials held them back and held them back and the noise and Castro! fumes and suspense built to an overwhelming, almost hysterical emotion. It's always the same watching racers before things get started, that anxious compound of potential triumph and potential disaster. The thought occurs that it's not too late, that if everyone will just shut off and load up into their vans right now, then none of these good people will get hurt—and we can all have a nice Sunday afternoon drinking beer down at the lake.

Out of the question, of course. But merely thinking it in the midst of this powerful, gorgeous roaring put a lump in my throat I thought I'd choke on.

And then suddenly they were off, released like wolves in a chicken pen. Five or six at a time took their laps, on full throttle from the instant the official's hand flinched. It wasn't three laps before a bike went down in Turn One at something above 90 mph, the rider's left leg caught underneath as it ground across the hard surface on its side, the 'rider squirming and kicking trying to get free. It shattered a haybale and the rider was still squirming. When the corner workers lifted it off of him he got up and walked around slowly. He wasn't hurt, but then, how could he be? Flattrack riders are made of plastic.

The next group came out to practice and by then you began to see differences in style. Some looked fast, others looked violent and, as always, the fastest looked slow. Eklund, Springsteen, Goss and several others came into the turns with such consummate smoothness that, you couldn't believe they were really pressing. Instead of getting off and on the throttle or twitching the front wheel once in a while for the reassurance of more bite, they turned the 180-degree bends into long, constant, terrifying arcs. Still sideways at the apex, their throttles would come on full and the only indication of their speed was the way the rear suspension trembled and chattered under the stress of maximum power. Others wheelied up the back straight, but the fastest simply streaked ahead in a graceful torrent of acceleration. You need see that kind of classic technique only once to recognize why great riders often look slow—every ounce of their ability is directed at but one thing, efficiency. There is no margin for showiness at absolute maximum speed, only the desperate conservation of a minimum of control. Perhaps ten riders at Middletown had that. The rest, brave as they undeniably all were, were only along for the ride.

And the kid I'd seen puking was one who had it. Where a guy his age gets that kind of stylistic maturity is, to me, one of the grand mysteries. On the other hand, the fact that it is so visible and yet so rarely understood by even the most experienced racers tells you all you need to know. Yes, even on lowly, hard-times American Dirt there is genius.

When everyone had taken their warm-ups the eternally confusing business of qualifying and heat-racing began. Like the rules of baseball, either you learn these rules when you're growing up, or you never do. I never did. But it didn't hurt the show in the least, because no matter how or why this or that rider got into this or that heat, here they all were, racing their ids off.

The main grandstands had filled by now and out along the back straight the m/c contingent was getting rid of its excess cherry bombs and M80s at a great rate. Each wham! and puff of' smoke got a loud whoop from whatever gang of people (did I say gang?—call the cops quick!) that was standing nearest.►