Dad was terrific. He made the number plates (#22) for my 250cc 2-stroke YDS2 Yamaha, set up his dial micrometer for truing the wheels, generally helped prepare the motorcycle, and he rented a trailer.
Don Vesco was likewise terrific. He got me racing pistons and recommended how to modify them. He gave me a set of Yokohama racing tires.He also warned me about carburetor settings that would likely be needed to compensate for the 2,500 foot altitude at the Willow Springs Raceway. I bought extra main jets for the twin carburetors.
Well before dawn that Sunday, November 8, 1964, brother Noel arrived from his home in Bonita. Then Mom, Dad, Noel, and i climbed into Dad’s car for the long 3-hour drive from El Cajon to the desert town of Rosamond and the racetrack there.
I tried sleeping during the drive but pre-race jitters prevented that. I offered to drive a while but was overruled. They said i should just rest. Did i mention that it was a long drive? It seemed far longer than three hours; probably another symptom of pre-race jitters.
The Yamaha passed inspection without a problem. I suited up in leathers, boots, helmet, goggles, and gloves in time for the 250 Production practice session. Finally after feeling braised in the desert sun, they waved our group onto the track and my jitters evaporated as i spent several laps seeking out the best racing lines and braking points.
Horsepower and torque was wimpy, so as soon as our practice session ended, i stripped off my protective clothing and, with Noel’s help, removed the carburetors, swapped in different main jets, and put it all back together. Since there was a different set of racing motorcycles on the track now, i putted around pit lane looking for opportunities to safely open the throttle to test the new jetting. It was worse.
After two more jetting changes, i ended up reinstalling the original main jets. The loss of power due to altitude was not going to be remedied by carburetion. If every motorcycle suffered similarly, then my Yamaha should be OK.
One big unknown, however, was the Suzuki X6. It was a new model and i had yet to race against one, but from reports, it was a very fast 250 2-stroke. There were two of these Suzukis in the pits.
During the next practice, track officials recorded our lap times. Both Suzukis were an eensy bit faster so i would start in third position for 250 Production.
The day kept getting hotter so everyone sought shade and drank plenty of water. Most of the other racers brought portable canopies. We suffered the broiling sun with hats and sunscreen. My jitters resulted in multiple trips to the nearby porta-potties.
The time came to line up for the 250cc and 500cc production race. My family helped me get into my leathers and roll the Yamaha out into the hot sun. I kept the leather jacket unzipped and donned my goggles followed by the helmet. I started the motor with the kick-starter lever and mounted the bike. My family told me to stay safe and wished me luck. Then i drove to the pre-grid and zipped up my jacket. When the race officials were satisfied with our positions, they waved us out onto the track’s starting grid. It took a few seconds for everyone to reach their grid location marked in white paint on the hot asphalt. In front of the 250cc Production Class were 500cc Production motorcycles. The faster of the two X6 Suzukis was in the row in front of me and the other lined up beside me.
The race official with the green flag walked up in front of us and to the side of the pavement.When he raised the flag every rider popped their transmissions into gear. When he swirled it over his head the finely prepared engines split the air with a cacophony of various pitches and timbre. He then swiftly brought the flag down.
Both Suzukis accelerated away so quickly that for a moment i thought my Yamaha was accidentally in the wrong gear. Nope. They were fast. As we charged, braked, leaned, carved our way through the turns, and charged on, i could tell that the Suzukis were not faster at the higher speeds than my YDS2. By turn 7 i caught up to the slower Suzuki. We rounded turn 8 nose to tail but on exit the Suzuki rider moved to center track as he set up for turn 9. I moved to his outside so that i would have a wider, faster entry. It worked. I carried a bit more speed on the entrance to turn 9, pulled beside him with a good line for blocking him at the exit from the sweeper. I looked ahead and saw that the faster Suzuki had already gained a lead that would be a challenge to whittle down..
My tires gently slid out and we were down. My only emotion was that of disappointment. Moving at 85 to 90 miles per hour i let go of the handlebars. The motorcycle and i slid off the pavement and onto the pebbles and sand outside turn nine. I intentionally started my body in a forward roll since i had heard too many stories of broken bones from racers who choose to slide and were injured when they met with an uneven bit of real estate. Reflexively i closed my eyes as i tumbled. During my first skipping roll across the landscape, i could feel sand stinging the exposed areas of my face but not on my eyelids. My goggles were clearly in place.
I opened my eyes expecting to see my surroundings streaming past faster than any California speed limit. Instead there was no visual cue of movement since i was looking straight up at a beautifully serene clear blue sky. A blue sky with my 350 lb motorcycle cartwheeling at least 15 feet overhead. And then my rolling led to a blurred view of desert sand zipping by.
||**
There was nothing i could do but hope that the Yamaha wouldn’t hit me. Probability was in my favor. I continued rolling, glad that there were no buildings or anything else to collide with.
Ghastly body-ripping pain in my upper chest. My rolling becomes a random tumble. I taste blood. Blood fills my throat; my nose and mouth. I can’t breathe. It hurts too much. I’m tumbling and sliding. Can’t breathe. Choking on blood. My head is wrenched to one side … and then i am no longer bouncing and sliding. I’ve stopped. Can’t breathe. Choking. Chest in unbelievable pain. Don’t let me die, God. Don’t let me die.
“Hang in there. Hang in there.” It’s a guy in red coveralls kneeling next to me. I want him to help me breathe but i can’t talk. Can’t breathe. Help me breathe. My ears are ringing. The guy’s clothes turn grey. I’m losing it.
The racetrack ambulance came to a stop next to the people surrounding the racer. They tried to intubate him but the tube just met obstructions. They unzipped his leather jacket to find large quantities of blood soaking everything. They cut away the t-shirt and saw that skin, flesh, and bits of rib bones formed a blood-filled depression that was once the right side of his chest. His pulse no longer registered. The ambulance crew sat back on their heels, quietly kneeling on both sides of the racer. One got to his feet, fetched a blanket and covered the body.
**||
I ‘saw’ something else. My brain constructed a ‘view’ of the Yamaha center-punching me in the upper chest slightly right of center. Simultaneously my brain constructed the ‘feeling’ of my upper chest being crushed and gouged out. Call it a preview of coming attractions. Call it a preview of a gruesome death. It was as though no time elapsed for this ‘view’ that indicated that to stay alive i had to somehow curve my trajectory to the left.
Then my brain offered up a visual memory. I was 3 or 4 years old, sitting on the livingroom floor in our house on Wentworth Street in Minneapolis. I was wearing short pants over my pudgy legs. The scene was placid and dimly illuminated by outside daylight through drawn curtains. Mother was in the side room, working under a dim electric lamp to make clothes for us on her sewing machine. She had given me an empty wooden spool to play with. I rolled the spool away from me and was fascinated and delighted to see that, unlike the other spools i had played with, this one did not roll in a straight line but in a curve. This particular spool had one end that was larger than the other and when it rolled, it curved toward the side with the smaller end.
Rather than remain simply curled up in a ball as i rolled across the ground, i extended my right leg and right arm several inches while pulling the rest of my body into as tight a fetus-shaped ball as possible. If i could roll like that spool, with my right side a bit larger in diameter than my left, perhaps my path would curve to the left and out from under my hurling Yamaha. I rolled another revolution … my rolling was increasing in rpm as my right knee and elbow registered painful blows with every contact with the hard sandy ground. I knew that the Yamaha was plummeting down out of the sky. Another revolution. Was this a futile attempt? Was my path curving? Suddenly the earth exploded at my right shoulder pummeling me hard with rocks and sand. The motorcycle had lightly brushed my sleeve as it gouged a trough into the baked desert.
I held my lopsided pose for another two or three turns … then i rolled to a stop.
Once again i could hear the sounds of engines as the field continued around Willow Springs. I uncurled and did an inventory of my basic anatomy as i lay there. All seemed well so i pushed myself up into a sitting position and looked around. The Yamaha was lying 3 or 4 feet to the side of me. We had covered the exact same distance. A hundred meters? More? Less? Did my efforts to curve away from the motorcycle’s trajectory really work?
How did my brain know to select that particular memory from a quiet childhood experience? How many milliseconds elapsed during retrieval and ‘viewing’ of that memory? It was as though the entire quiet scene transpired outside of the realm of time. All in all, it was a remarkable demonstration of a brain’s abilities when it seeks its own self preservation.
I got to my feet and removed my helmet and goggles. A course worker in red coveralls jogged up to me and asked whether i had injuries or needed assistance. After assuring him i was uninjured, i asked him to help me get the bike back to our pit. We turned off the ignition and the gas valve and ratcheted the gearbox down into neutral from 5th gear. The exhaust pipes, handlebars, headlight nacelle, number plates, and fenders were smashed and bent. The seat upholstery was badly torn. The course worker insisted that he push the bike and that i should just walk with him.
A woman approached and interrupted us to say she had never before seen such a high-speed incident and had never seen anyone roll like that. “How many times did you roll?”
“Sorry. I wasn’t counting.”
“I’m sure glad to see you’re all right.”
“Thank you. That makes two of us.”
After a couple of photos, Noel, dad, and i secured the bent and bruised bike in the trailer and packed up all of our tools. I insisted we stay around to see the rest of the day’s races. I described my fall with other racers. We concluded that i had suffered the curse of using a less traveled line through a turn. It was likely that a light coating of desert dust and sand had not been blown away in earlier races and practice sessions on my particular chosen line into the turn. It was a rather dramatic lesson for me.
At the conclusion of the last race we joined the crawling line of traffic leaving Willow Springs Raceway and stopped at a nearby steakhouse for dinner. I discovered that i could not eat anything. I felt a little dizzy and food just made me nauseous. I gave up trying to eat the steak i had ordered and just joined the dinnertable conversation with my parents and brother.
After dinner i chose to sit in the back seat of the car and get some sleep. But i repeatedly thought about the remarkable moment out of time of my absurd and rather accurate memory of playing with an asymmetrical sewing spool as a mere tot. I’ve read stories of people who had “their lives pass before their eyes” when faced with near-certain death. Perhaps the brains of those people were searching for some experience that had relevance for that brain’s survival. I, on the other hand, had a single visual memory shoved, apparently unbidden, into my consciousness. It was a memory that had relevance for rolling and for turning. It had relevance in that moment for survival.
Why a visual memory? Would the brain retrieve printed words that ‘it’ read or words that ‘it’ heard and recreate the concepts inherent in them? Would the brain directly retrieve the raw concepts themselves? Or would the brain, in its attempt to avoid annihilation, retrieve visual experiences? After all, the visual cortex is a brain region that is evolutionarily far older than regions dealing with concepts and language; therefore it is likely to be more highly developed, efficient, and speedy than the regions dealing with our brain’s more recently acquired attributes.
Accessing visual memories and visually processing potential outcomes and potential courses of action are perhaps the brain’s standard set of tools for dealing with imminent tragedy or demise. Perhaps my brain rifled through scores of visual memories in mere milliseconds before shoving the asymmetrical spool episode to my consciousness, somehow recognizing that memory held a clue to its survival; the clue of rolling and of turning. But that suggests that the brain has the ability to conceptualize within its visual cortex, quite separate from conceptualization associated with language processing.
Thinking about all of this just made my head feel worse. I let myself relax.
I slept quite well on the way back to El Cajon.
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