Just like Suzuka but Smaller...
Motocross was cute when my kid had the 6-year-old bobblehead thing going on, but now that he’s 14 and faster and taller than me, the cute has left the building, and it’s actually a little frightening to see your spawn sailing through the air like a pubescent Wizard of Oz monkey complete with cackle. In fact I think it scares him a little too, so the Suzuki RM85 I bought him a couple years ago mostly gathers dust. Still, I’d rather spend a day at the track telling other people how to ride while nursing the cooler than just about anything. Hmmm, what can we ride that’s fun and non-threatening?
Turns out my friend Kristi had been riding NSR50s a lot with some people at various local kart tracks, and mentioned they were putting on an 8 Hour Endurance race at Grange, a cute little shrunk-down kart track out in the desert outside LA. I rode an NSR exactly once for a few laps, just long enough to find out they’re a lot of fun—all the thrills but not so many of the chills of roadracing at about 60 mph, and no “sick air” at all if all goes well. Naturally my boy Ryan had zero interest when I broached the idea of him doing the 8 Hour. Maybe I pushed him too hard to ride motorcycles? Maybe it’s all my fault he only wants to watch YouTube all day and shoot things with his best friend, Mr. Solid Snake? Damn the guilt…
But his best moto-pal Rylan (whose parents added the “L” to differentiate him), whose teen angst is not as advanced as my own child’s, was way into the 8 Hour idea when I threw it out there. Peer pressure rules. Rylan twisted my kid Ryan’s arm, and the race was on.
The kids seem to be in it for the accoutrements here in SoCal, so I said I’d try to get them some matching leathers and cool gear in time for the actual race, knowing of course that was highly unlikely. But the lure of swag set the hook—and in the meantime it was shocking to learn that my old leathers fit them not so bad—lengthwise anyway. We went out to practice one Saturday not knowing what to expect, and was surprised and giggly with glee to see the kiddies take to “road racing” like ducks to water their very first time out. After a couple of 15-minute sessions, they were dragging their little knees around and running lap times competitive with adults who’d been on NSR50s for years, no doubt helped out by their 50
-pound weight advantage over most of them; “Team Motostorm” was born. The next Saturday they were begging for more, and the one after that too, until finally it was May 17, race day.
I was a little disgruntled to learn there would also be a couple of full-sized motard bikes in the race, which I was worried would have way too much closing speed down the straights, but the “race officials” assured us it was no big deal since there were only a couple big bikes, just one shortish straight--and the little NSRs actually do corner just about as fast as a CRF450 Honda on slicks. Motorcycling being a cozy little world, one of the guys riding one of the big Hondas turned out to be former World Endurance Champ Doug Toland. The kids gave each other the sideways smirk when I told them to wet themselves down before going out on the bike so as to stay cool (it was 100 degrees plus in the Mojave that day), but when Toland strode mightily over later and suggested the same thing, they nearly knocked each other out trying to stick their heads in the cooler simultaneously. And it boosted 
our confidence a little more to have DT adjust the clickers on our NSR50, which surprisingly enough sports a fully adjustable shock.
Promptly around 11:00ish, give or take, 18 NSRs and quite a few other bikes screamed and thumped slowly away from the grid as planned, a few serious teams including Tokyo 1 and Team MAX, also a team of really fast kids at the ripe ages of like 9 and 11. I was stoked to see little Rylan come around on the first lap, ah, third of the 50s (kind of hard to tell, really, because there are about five classes mixed up out there, including modified 50s). Lucky for us, the organizers had provided transponders to keep track of who was who was doing what when. Kristi had used her feminine wiles to recruit both a male NSR team—the Tarzans—as well as a female team—the Janes, and my team of kids was s
panking both of them. (Please don’t bring this up to Kristi: Who knew she was so competitive?)
Things were going absolutely swimmingly. We’d got a little digital clock at the quicky mart to stick on the top triple clamp, and Ryan and Rylan were pretty much pulling into the pits to swap on the hour and half-hour, which freed me up to keep hydrated instead of messing with a pit board, even though an NSR is the perfect bike for long messages including footnotes. We’d started off on fresh tires that morning, which on an NSR should last until at least Christmas. And our bike was burning a gallon of pre-mix about every hour out of a tank that holds two.
Then tragedy struck: Baby (I still call him Baby, sniff) ran into the back of a crasher in a tight right-hander and slud off the track. That wouldn’t have been a big deal, except the hot setup is to not bolt the tailsection plastic on an NSR because if you do it’ll just break; better if it flies off, then you just stick it back on the subframe and keep going. This we did not know at the time, however, and my child looked—over there on the far side of the track with the tailsection in his hands—like one of the monkeys in the experiment where they fit sections of stick together to reach the bunch of banan
as. Eventually he did figure it out, bumpstarted the bike and got going again. But it cost us a couple laps dammit.
The kids put their heads back down, rode their own race, were doing very respectable lap times, and we were right back in the thing. Then tragedy struck Baby again: Going through a fast left with a supermoto on his tail, he lost the rear and actually managed to highside himself (leading me to believe me he had some help losing the rear from the supermoto on his tail dammit). This time the bike was jacked, with a stuck throttle and a snapped-off right footpeg and possibly even a mild concussion for my offspring judging from his even-greater-than-usual detachment--and the gouge in my favorite Nicky Hayden replica Arai helmet DAMMIT!
Quick and skilled work by our buddy Rey got us back on track, but by the time we pushed young Rylan back out we were down a bunch of laps, and even worse Baby was suffering a crisis of confidence and had lost his will to go on.
“I’m not going back out,” he croaked from his folding chair, “I’m done.”
“What? You’ve gotta go back out there, we’ve got three hours to go.”
“I’m skeered, Dad…”
“You don’t want me to have to take off these shorts and put on those leathers do you?” I asked him, “because I frankly can’t remember if I’m wearing underwear.”
It really was bloody hot out there. I wandered off for awhile to let him contemplate that and to check if I was wearing underwear (yes!), and when I came back he said, “I just feel bad, like I’m letting Rylan down.”
At last, a chance to swing into Ward Cleaver mode (a solid `50s American sit-com father). They don’t come around so often.
“Listen kid, you’ve gotta get back on the horse that bit you,” I told him. “What are you gonna tell the kids at school Monday when they ask `how was the race’? If you don’t get on that bike now you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow… but soon, and for the rest of your life…”
An orchestra swelled someplace. A few minutes later, after another Monster energy drink (product placement!) the kid pulled himself out of his lawn chair and pulled on his too-big leathers, and when Rylan V pulled in, he did get right back on the little NSR, and I was seriously about as proud of him and happy as I can remember being as I pushed him back out. Ah, the sporting life….
As in most forms of racing, the top few teams were seriously competitive. After 7 hours and 48 minutes, Team Japan1 and Team Max were on the same lap, putting on an endurance-racing clinic worthy of Suzuka, running ironman (and ironwoman) long stints and seamless pit stops. Then the beautifully smooth and fast Jason Takamoto (Team MAX) ran into the back of a slower bike exiting a fast corner, actually launching himself spectacularly heels-over-head into the air (against a lovely setting sun) and earning a broken scapula on the dismount. The humanity...
That left Team Japan1 to take the win, with veteran racers K. Kagiya, A. Takeichi, Y. Sato and cute and way-fast girl racer/piano technician/marathoner Yoshi Nakamura. Team PDF, the bunch of fast pre-teens, took second. (Team MAX was DQed for hopping back on their bike without returning to the pits first.) In the end, Team Motostorm wound up 5th out of 14 50cc Stock teams that began the race, not too shabby. The kids were stoked to finish, felt like they’d accomplished something big and I think even decided I am maybe not that big an idiot after all, just like in the old bobblehead PW50 days.
Good training? I think so. Last time I was at Grange a few years ago, a kid named Ben Solis won one of the best motorcycle races I’ve ever seen—on a pocketbike. Little Benny is currently running up front in the Red Bull Rookie Cup. Also a cute kid named Tommy Aquino, who finished seventh in his first AMA Supersport race last May in
At the end of the 8 Hours, there was still a splash of pre-mix in bottom of my five-gallon jug. If we’re looking at Peak Oil, minimoto is definitely the wave of the present if not the future. And when it comes to getting in a little practice, a day at Grange is $30. Hello. We’re busting the RM85 out of the shed and rounding up some slick tires. Look out world. We are back in this thing dammit.
most fotos: Brian Reynolds, Caliphotography.com
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