Wednesday, January 1, 2014

My post yesterday about the '08 Moto Giro generated a photo and a comment, so I thought I would elaborate.  Dick Hollingsworth sent me this photo:
I believe that's Chris Sidlah in the middle and it's Rob Diepenbroek on the right.  I don't know who took the photo, but I suspect it was Tod Rafferty, the maker of the video.
Tod refers to this incident in the video.  Unbeknownst to me, the oil return pipe from the exhaust rocker box to the crankcase fractured, spewing oil out while I rode along oblivious on fast, straight roads on the last day returning to Monterey, inland.  I came over a rise and found everyone stopped.  A rancher was moving cattle from one field to another and the road was blocked.  It was then that I noticed the oil everywhere.  We were able to preform a decent roadside repair making a splint with a split piece of hose safety wired over the broken pipe, then covered with a quick set epoxy.  David Edwards, then editor of Cycle World magazine, gave me a qt. of oil that he had extra, and I was back in business.  If the rancher hadn't blocked the road, I might well have seized the motor as, not long after this, we ran into heavy headwinds and I did a lot of running full throttle in 3rd gear.
BTW, Rob Diepenbroek is the builder and rider of the 900 bevel drive Ducati featured at the beginning of the video.  He's a fabulous metal worker and made all the body work on his Duke.
Tod points out in his comment that it's 'Barry Porter' not 'Barry Gordon' who I'm joking with at the agility test in Paso Robles (5:48-6:02).  Barry had a number one or two below me, so we did lots of riding together.  He had a very nice Bultaco Metralla and is an excellent rider.  But, he would generally let me go by in the twisties then, when we got out on the open, fast roads, I would tuck in behind him and suck the draft.  We had great fun tag teaming our way through central Ca.
In the video, Tod refers to Steve Flack's bike as a Honda 160, but I believe it's actually a CL 175 sloper.  A few of the purist seemed miffed that lowly 'Jap crap' scored the overall win, but it was mostly popular as Steve is such a great guy and impressive Giro competitor.
Tod has a couple of references and shots of Harley Welch's scooter.  It's worth pointing out that it's a Heinkel 150 with the perfect wicker basket on the back and I was very impressed with it's performance.

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