Round Up

ROUND UP

JOE PARKHURST

NEARBY IS a photograph of what appears to be the crew of some huge construction company, each member standing happily next to the machine he runs. Not so. Happy, true. But, it’s the full operating crew at Saddleback Park, posing with the fortune of equipment required to keep the park in top condition. Saddleback Park has something to offer that few other parks do: over $100,000 in machine equipment, used to maintain the hundreds of trails in as near perfect condition as possible. Not that other parks don’t take care of their area. They do, at least some do. But Saddleback was the first; it is over five years old now. Vic Wilson, my partner and director of the park, has even had a hand in building several of our competitors’ parks.

The equipment you see here and the permanent facilities in the background represent a considerable investment. Saddleback survives because people come back to ride. I’m very proud of Saddleback, and even prouder of what Vic has done with it. We just resurfaced the entire motocross course with thousands of cubic yards of sand, only one example of how we try to improve riding conditions and make the park better. Most of the soil at the park is what is called adobe in the West. It’s just like clay. It hardens after wetting and takes huge and massive dirt ripping, moving and grading equipment to make it soft and more resilient. Rocks are another problem. Dynamite has been necessary to move some of them.

The crew at Saddleback continuously work the trails and race tracks. Not always are they perfect. It is almost an impossibility to make them so. But I ride there at least three or four times a month and the CYCLE WORLD test staff is there almost as often, and the conditions are usually incredibly good.

We assembled the crew and equipment for a photograph to be used in a new series of advertisements in the local newspapers and motorcycle papers. On seeing it all in one place, I was impressed. We’ve nursed the park through several lawsuits, a couple of them out and out attempts to put us out of business. A couple of others, several of which aren’t settled yet, are attempts of several people to enrich themselves by sueing us because we didn’t provide foam rubber trails with stretch material guards to keep people from hurting themselves.

The photo of our great crew of maintenance men, mechanics, sales staff, rental staff, clean-up crew, etc., brought a point home to me very strongly—they’re a nice bunch, working hard to make the park as right as they can. Most of the gang has been with us for several years, a couple of them, like Bruce Fever, from the day the park opened in March, 1968. It has not been an easy business concept to make work.

We are called on constantly from all over the country and asked how one builds a park—what are the problems with such things as insurance, land maintenance, liability, operating costs vs. income, equipment needed and its care, etc. We started something that is working. At last.

On some weekends we have as many as five events going on simultaneously. There might be a motocross (we have one almost every Saturday and Sunday), a professional hillclimb, a trials, perhaps a mini-bike race, often a trials or motocross school, or hillclimb drags (another innovation begun at Saddleback). We all realize there is no substitute for the endless terrain of woods riding, the desert, or Baja California. Things are limited at a motorcycle park by the basic limitations of the available area. For a dirt rider we offer a lot of varied terrain, some easy, some not so easy.

We are near the homes of a lot of people. We sell bike parts, rent bikes, sell food and beer, and take care of the overzealous riders with the best first aid team anywhere. They have 3 vehicles at their disposal, designed to get the injured out of any spot in the park and to a nearby emergency hospital if their wounds are beyond the range of our Red Cross trained experts. That’s a lot of self praise I guess, but not really for myself. I just wanted a few more people to know how hard the crew at Saddleback tries. Thanks to tens of thousands of riders and racers, we’ll be around for a long time to come. Like the bumper sticker says: “Do it in the dirt.”

FOUR-STROKES FOREVER

I realize the average age of CYCLE WORLD’S readers is a minute or two less than mine. I’ve been riding for over 30 years, most of it in the dirt. Wj^ learned on four-strokes. We didn’t a^^ for it that way. Dirt bikes were converted street bikes, mostly English. They were heavy, and handled something awful when compared to the marvelously sophisticated dirt bikes of today. We tricked them up as much as we could. Webco, which will be 25 years old this month, was among the early companies that helped. So was Steens, and several others like Cooper Motors, the Flanders Company, Lamoraux & Milne, Ab LeBard, BSA dealership, etc. They were on the West Coast where I was raised, which is why I mention them.

A dream I had years ago recently became a reality. My favorite mounts in my early days were 500cc Matchless, BSA, Velocette and Ariel Singles. We lightened them up a lot, using allra^ engine plates, ripping off all the roa^ equipment, adding alloy tanks and fenders, smaller air cleaners, and a few other things regarded as sophisticated at the time. I whittled my 1954 Matchless down to a featherlight 365 lb!

Now comes Eddie Clews. About 20 years too late for me, I’m afraid. But he’s here, anyway. I finally bought one of his modern day marvels, the CCM. It’s built of a few BSA bits and pieces. Mostly it’s Clews, 608cc, 50 bhp, trick as hell and weighing only 219 lb., dry! We will test it shortly for CYCLE WORLD, as soon as a new piston arrives. I stuck it. You know...hot day, too lean, too much Joel lurking in the back of my head...and a bike set up absurdly tight the day it was built. Nevertheless, what a thrilling bike to ride. Lots of magnesium, like engba^k cases, barrel, head, fork clamps, etc. T^^ important thing is that it pulls, absolutely flat, from idle to maximum revs, with a wonderfully flat torque curve. It’ll slog its way through anything. I’m climbing hills I wouldn’t even attempt before. Old habits die hard. It’s kinda nice to have a bike that runs like my old ones, but handles like my new ones, and does things both do, and did superbly Rave on, old man, rave on.