PERSPECTIVES MAGICAL. MINIBIKE. MOMENTS.

BY MITCH BOEHM

As I write this, contributing editor John Burns is down at Barber Motorsports Park at a minibike-themed event called Small Bore, which I strongly doubt will have even a single strand of boredom in its DNA. Ditto the feature piece Burnsie will be writing for these pages.

Of course, thinking of him at BMP surrounded by a sea of production and customized minibikes got me thinking of the minibikes that have affected me over the years, especially the ones that launched yours truly on this fine two-wheeled journey back in 1969.

Mom and Dad had moved our family from rural Illinois to a similarly rural neighborhood just west of Cleveland during the winter of 1968-’69, and if I had to pinpoint the moment for me (which most of you will understand as the exact point in time motorcycles entered one’s psyche in a measurable way), it’d be that spring.

As my soon-to-be-8-year-old mind dealt with life-altering subjects such as ice melting on the local ponds (no more ice skating!) and a flat tire on my Schwinn Sting Ray (gasp!), I began to notice motorized activity in the fields behind our home, and on the trail that ran beneath the high-tension wires that ran through them.

It’d be a while before I’d recognize the nirvana that existed back there, but the action soon came into focus: people — kids, really — riding motorcycles, and most of them minis: Rupps, Bridgestones, Hodakas, tubeframed Briggs and Strattons, Benellis, some early Hondas, what have you. I began riding my Sting Ray back there to watch, and what I witnessed was simply life-altering.

And then it began in earnest; kids on my street began getting minis. First it was Mike Starr and his silver and red Honda Mini Trail. Then Donny Hebebrand’s Techumseh-powered minibike. And later, Jeff Tower and his blue and white Suzuki Trailhopper, or Greg Lanham’s orange Suzuki TS50 Gaucho.

When a neighbor offered to let me ride his Trail 70 one day, I could scarcely believe my luck. It was an H-model CT70, a 4-speed with a clutch, so I looked like a dork trying to figure out shifting and clutchwork as I left his backyard and motored into the fields. But that 45-minute ride changed my life.

But it was the red Honda SL70 that appeared in the garage Christmas morning a year or so later that really cemented things. Finally, a bike of my own, and a quite functional one, too. I basically lived on that thing, disappearing after school and on weekends, learning how to ride better every day and exploring trails with friends along that powerline road miles from home. My parents had little idea where I was in those days, and the freedom was, as most of you know, simply intoxicating.

And then came the coolest mini of all, a first-year 1973 Honda XR75, which Dad got me late that year and which we began racing in 1974. We’d go on to a handful of full-sized Yamaha 2-stroke motocross bikes after that XR, and onward to streetbikes from there once I got to college. But that SL and XR laid the groundwork for what would become a 50-year (and still-in-play) love affair with motorcycles.

And that’s the main reason I still have an SL70 and a couple of XRs in my garage. The SL and one of the XRs (another ’73 model) are stock, which take me back both visually and physically. The other XR is a highly modified racebike, a little like the one I campaigned during ’75, and which came from XR master-builder Alex Jud of XRMiniRacer.com. Just looking at the things brings me back to those early days in North Ridgeville… Time machines, for sure.

We’re fixin’ to do a good bit of minibike celebration and history in the coming months (check out this issue’s Last Page for some cool images, too!), and if you feel like contributing, feel free to send your minibike-based photos and stories to the editorial team at submissions@ama-cycle.org. And enjoy your summer! I know Mr. Burns is.

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S“Someone’s doing something stupid,” I thought as I heard an engine revving and tires squealing while sitting at my desk at home.

But the ugly sound of metal crashing and sliding on asphalt had me jumping out of my office chair to see what exactly was going on.

What I saw sent adrenaline coursing through my veins. There lay a Harley on its side, its rider face down on the pavement…and he wasn’t moving.

Although it’d been years since I worked in a Level 1 Trauma Center in Virginia, that experience pushed me into action.

By some twist of fate I’d updated my first-aid kit and medical supplies the previous week, so within seconds I had the kit, a box of gauze pads and extra towels in my arms as I rushed to the rider’s side. I saw no helmet in sight, and breathed a prayer that he wasn’t dead, as he wasn’t moving.

There was a lot of blood…not unexpected when an unprotected head smacks the pavement violently. People were gathering, and someone called 911 as I assessed the young man. Forgetting the blood for a moment, I fell back to my training — the ABCs of first aid: Airway, Breathing, Circulation.

He was unresponsive, but he was breathing…that was good. He had a pulse, so I could start dealing with the blood. As I tended to the multiple areas of bleeding, he started to come around. Not surprisingly, his first words were a mumbled, “What happened?”

The confusion — common after a head injury — quickly made him agitated, and I tried to soothe him with a lighthearted response. “Well, you had a bit of a mishap on your motorcycle. What’s your name?”