From "Michael Moore" <mmoore@sirius.com>
Date Sun, 26 Apr 1998

Saturday stuff
 I went up to Sears Point yesterday, sadly sans my Laverda 750 race bike, which Mr. Murphy had ensured would not be ready in time by making every part I picked up require 2-8 hours of unexpected work.

Trials
     I started off at the vintage trials sections.  My friend/mentor Craig Hanson was riding his TL250 Honda thumper and having a fun time.  I saw a number of  interesting bikes. 
     Derek Belvoir's Velo/Ariel, (built for him by Dick Mann).  I'd never seen the bike in action, and it looks to work very well, and Derek is obviously quite a good rider.  Speaking of the legendary Mr. Mann, he was riding a sprung 500 Triumph.  In one section he was clean until about 8 feet from the end markers, whereupon he came to a stop because he thought he'd run over a course marker and thereby gotten a 5 for out of bounds.  It turns out he was close but hadn't actually gone over it, so he picked up an 5 for no good reason.  I guess the lesson here is to press on regardless (unless you've gone seriously out of bounds).  There were also some nice 500 AJS/Matchless trials units, as well as the usual Greeves, DOTS, C15s and Cubs. 
     I finally got a chance to see Rick Yare's (pretty sure that is the last name) Moto Guzzi 125 trials conversion.  I got some pictures of this very pretty little bike that will be posted soon, and I think Rick cleaned the same section (though possibly on a different line) that DM stopped in.  It wasn't competing, but I also got to finally meet up with Byron Woodruff and check out his Hodaka trials special, some pictures of which are on the site.  He has still to ride in his first event, but is looking forward to it after upgrading to real competition trials
tires, adding some more flywheel weight and repositioning his pegs (the first attempt ended with them much higher than needed).

Road Race
     I wandered around the pits and caught a few laps of some of the races (I'm not much for watching other people race).  I first ran into Harold Parks, who let me race his 250 Ducati last season.  I had seen him out on the 250GP warm up lap, but didn't see him during the race.  It turned out that he had changed a plug right before going out, and since the threads felt a bit dodgy (what a wonderful feeling before a race) he didn't torque the plug down as much as usual in case the threads were coming out.  This paid him back by letting the plug back out, and it exited the bike on the warm up lap, taking the plug lead with it.
     I found my friend Peter Johnson perched in a chair near his CR77 and CR93 street bike.  Peter had crashed the CR77 last weekend at Laguna Seca, trashing one side of the new aluminum fairing and breaking three ribs and getting pretty well bruised up.  He's beginning to think doing two all-nighters right before the race may not leave one at the peak of mental acuity, as he lost the cold front tire right after heading out on the track.  He is hoping to ride next weekend at the AHRMA national at Willow Springs.
     Joe Abeyta, a local AFM rider, had a ride on a Spondon/Yamaha 660 in the Supermono race, and I think he got a second place - quite a good ride.
     Brian Filo, another local racer, rode his mildly tuned XS650 Yamaha into 3rd place in the F750 race - his best finish on the bike to date. Dave Russell was out on Fred Mork's Rocket 3 in that race, but didn't seem to be circulating with his usual speed.
     There was a very nice SFC Laverda parked in the pits, ridden to the track by its owner who is supposed to live here in SF.  There was also a street-trim Norton International parked near the trials sections (and Mark Adams told me this weekend was going to be the last track outing for his featherbed Inter racer - next project is a replica Vincent Gray Flash).
Silverman Museum/Racing had their George Beale replica Benelli Quattro on display - such a lovely bike.
     The big problem I see with this two-day format is that you can't ride all three events (MX, Trial and RR).  A lot of the AHRMA folk ride multiple events, and something like Steamboat Springs lets you have a different day for each event.  At SP you can either ride both dirt events, or one of them and one day of the two-day RR national.  What a decision to have to make!

Cheers,
Michael
Michael Moore
Euro Spares, SF CA
Distributor of Lucas RITA and Powerbase products Sole North American distributor of "The Racing Motorcycle a technical guide for constructors" Host of 6 m/c email lists (details on the web site)  http//www.eurospares.com   AFM/AHRMA #364