The Small Bike Ride (Sunday, May 21)

"Did I see you Sunday riding with a bunch of midget bikes?" the guy at the Harley shop asked. "Yes", I beamed proudly. "When you saw us was I riding a Honda 90 or a Cushman Eagle?" I asked. "You were on a Cushman Eagle when I saw you" he responded. What a great thing to happen I thought. To have someone see you with a bunch of vintage bikes and be on a Cushman Eagle to boot!

Well folks, we had a fine Sunday afternoon and it was like a trip back to the early sixties. We had 14 small bikes at the shopping center and almost couldn't get the ride started for the crowd that had gathered. I don't think the Goodyear Blimp would have created more of a stir. We had Joe Green on his '56 Cushman Eagle, Mitchell Martin on his '66 CL-90, Mike Porter started with his "Aerial" and finished with his mini Ducati, Gene Botter brought his mechanic, another friend and a CB-160, '67 305 Scrambler and CB- 350, Jim Arrington had his Suzuki 125, Carlos Forte and his son had the "Twingle" and a 125, Frank Ford had his Triumph 250, Nigel had his 350 Honda and his friend had a mini Trail 70 I think it is called and I had my CT-90. We even had one big ole Kawi 900, too. We rode about 40 miles with three stops. All the bikes except two came back to the covered dish at my house and we finally finished the bike games about 8:00 PM.

The bike games really told the story as you can see from the winners. The "slow ride " contest is where you have to see just how slow you can ride your bike over a timed course. You can't put your foot down as that disqualifies you. You have to have extremely good balance and a well balanced bike. The winners were as follows:

First, Mitchell Martin 38 seconds
Second, Carlos Forte 35 seconds (Carlos used his Allstate Scooter)
Third, Joe McDonald 30 seconds

Barrel Run. Now this is a highly competitive event and you need a little "Moto Cross" wannabe in you for this one. You have to start, accelerate, grab a flag, make the barrel run and return the flag to the starting point by sticking it in a flower pot. You need three hands and terrific hand and eye coordination for this one. The winners are:

First, Mitchell Martin 20 Seconds
Second, Carlos Forte 21 seconds (Carlos borrowed a 90 for this one)
Third,Jim Arrington 20.5 seconds

Basketball Shoot. All I can say is just because you can ride a bike, doesn't necessarily mean you can shoot a BB. I don't think we had any winners here. We even went to a passenger shoot and still need a lot of practice before the next competition. The only thing we were able to talk about was when Mitchell's partner "Bonked" him on the top of his head with the BB. Thank goodness the ball wasn't hurt!

We missed those of you that didn't come and our thoughts are with Danny Weems as he was unable to attend due to sickness. (Danny, rumor has it that the real reason that you didn't come was because you had heard that Mitchell had been polishing his 90 for two weeks before Sunday and you didn't want him to show you up) Next time, we will beak up into smaller groups so as not to be a traffic hazard. Also we will let the smaller bikes have a head start if they can't ride at say 40-45 MPH. Lets not wait too long to do this again.

Joe McDonald