When Kevin was about 9, in the Los Angeles area, he began his career
in motorcycling. One of my friends at work did some dirt bike riding
and one weekend he invited me and Kevin to a local off-road motorcycle
park to mess around with his dirt bikes. Although I had been riding
street motorcycles for a long time, I had never tried a dirt bike.
After tooling around a little on my friend's motorcycles, however,
Kevin and I were both hooked.
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I immediately went out and bought a used
Suzuki 120. At the time, we couldn't find a motorcycle small
enough for Kevin and the best we could do was a used "tote-gote".
It looked like a small motor scooter with a Briggs and Stratton
lawn-mower engine. This picture looks exactly like Kevin's.
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Kevin, of course had never driven anything with a
motor, but he was an expert with a bicycle and soon was wheeling
the "tote-gote" around like an expert.
After a few days of tearing up the back yard, we
loaded up the 120 Suzuki and the "tote-gote" into our pickup and
headed for the motorcycle park. Kevin was a natural and was soon
tackling hills with the best of them.
One day while we were riding, I momentarily lost
track of Kevin and when I finally located him, he was in a line
of motorcycles waiting to take on a deep "U" shaped gully. The gully
was about 50 feet deep - 100 feet across the top - and 20 feet across
at the bottom - very steep sides. The trick was to go over the edge,
down one side, hit the gas at the bottom, and come up the other
side with enough speed to leave the ground. Some made it just right,
some crashed, and some just barely made it. Before I could stop
him, Kevin was poised on the brink - and without hesitating for
a second, down he went. When he hit the bottom, he turned on the
power, and came roaring up the other side. He came shooting out
like a pro - getting about three feet of air and landing perfectly
- not a bad trick considering the "tote-gote" had absolutely no
suspension. Everyone was amazed - this was more than a routine trick
even with a real off-road motorcycle. Of, course, I had to try it
also. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough power to get up the other
side, and I wound up crashing and sliding to the bottom. I then
had to ride about half a mile down the bottom of the gully to get
out. Pretty embarrassing.
