Two months ago, I raced a Spondon TZ750 in Australia at the age of 54. Why? Why take the risks and make the effort and spend the money? Life is stuffed full of wonderful things and to put your neck on the line racing an angry bike in a far-off land should be left to the young and passionate. Except that argument is forgetting the “older and still passionate,” and Gregg Bonelli’s writing poured fuel on my always-smoldering passion for racing.
One of only three aluminum-framed Spondon TZ750s at NJMP…what a riot. (Photo by Brian Smith)
Here’s how it happened: I had just raced and won on Rusty Bigley’s TZ750 at the AHRMA New Jersey round last summer. There was no competition for the bike and I enjoyed riding that machine through every cell of my body (see article in Cycle World magazine, April). We were packed and ready to leave when Bonelli runs into the garage, hands me his latest book, “Zen and the Art of Racing Motorcycles,” shakes my hand and runs out. I didn’t know Bonelli, but I knew of him. He loves two-strokes and that made him okay with me! 
Up to this point, I had said “no” to the invitation to race Bigley’s TZ at the Phillip Island International Classic. If I never get on another airplane for an intercontinental flight I’ll die a happy man. I wasn’t sure how hard I wanted to push a racebike these days and lining up against Jeremy McWilliams and that gang of world-class former-professional racers participating down under, would be daunting, I’d want to be “all in,” not just parade around. So, "no thanks, I don't want to race at Phillip Island.” And then Bonelli's prose changed my mind. He not only shares my passion for all things motorcycling, but explains it in a variety of ways that speak to all of us who choose this endeavor. He tells goofy stories about girlfriends and jobs and buying bikes. He talks about vagaries like time and Zen, mixed with exactitudes like gear ratios and ignition timing. You're never really sure if he's writing fiction or an autobiography, but what comes through to your riding soul is not just an approval of racing but an understanding of the emotional, mental and physical addiction we have for speed. His book caught me up, reminded me that passion rules all ages, that this is our one-and-only life and nothing I have ever found pleases me as much as riding a bike well. I took this renewed understanding and said "yes" to Phillip Island, "yes" to the risks and costs and hassle and difficulty and fifteen-hour flight. "Yes" to the most challenging occupation I've ever found. Gregg Bonelli put me “all in” (helmet nod to Nicky Hayden).
All-in at Phillip Island with American team captain Dave Crussell, also TZ750 mounted. The competition was world-class and we all pushed hard. (Photo by etechphoto.com)
Since my weekly blog “celebrates a motorcycling life," I asked Bonelli to spin up some words to explain and discuss our passion from a perspective that I hope kindles your love of two wheels. – Nick Ienatsch
Gregg Bonelli defending his AHRMA #1 plate. In real life he’s a lawyer. (Photo from Bonelli Collection)
From Gregg Bonelli: There are just a few of us left. I do not worry about the extinction of the breed so much as I do about the passing of the environment that made it possible. John Long and I raced at Daytona this year, and the one before that, and before that for as many years that there have been races that we both attended. I did not know we were both there until afterward, but it didn’t really matter. If you have raced, and won, and then won more races than anyone in a season and been a champion of any sort, and perhaps set a lap record somewhere along the way showing you were the fastest man to ever be there, what else would there be to prove about your ability to race? If I could play the Moonlight Sonata perfectly do I need to play it again? If I had learned to play the piano to prove I could and then the sonata to show I was able then perhaps I should just record it and be satisfied. But If I got a feeling from playing it that transcended the pushing down of the keys and the manipulating of the pedals that evoked a feeling of being in a peaceful scene of unsurpassed beauty bathed in moonlight, why wouldn’t I want to go back to it as often as I felt like it? If Racing were just about physical skill, then medical science could formulate an exercise regimen that would optimize the human body to be as quick in its movements, possessed of sufficient strength for the task but no heavier than absolutely necessary to be a winner. Adherents would have confidence that their physical conditioning gave them an edge over weaker, less-fit racers they may encounter on the track and that mental assurance could make the difference in taking a position without hesitation when the opportunity arose. It is not a new idea. Ideal traits could be identified and John and I would be disqualified. He is too tall and I am too big, but we still race anyway. Dave Aldana said as much to me recently when he claimed it was his size and physical conditioning that gave him an edge. When he raced for BSA on what we look back on as their “Dream Team” in its glory days, he rode a motorcycle daily over varied terrain and used it as a fitness trainer. He told me that once on the track there is little you can do if some machines are faster than yours and it proves nothing to crash trying to catch them. But if you have the stamina needed to get maximum performance from your machine over the entire distance of a race, then you have a greater chance of winning and he believes that being fit gives him that advantage.
Gregg Bonelli present day with his cat. (Photo from Bonelli Collection)
Better motorcycles to race can be manufactured and improved as mechanical deficiencies are identified, considered, and redesigned for optimum performance. If technical forces can combine to make a machine with superior qualities controlled by signals reacting to sensors that quantify data to transmit to suspension for compliance, and throttle for wheel spin, and anti-lock braking systems faster than humans can react, is it still racing for me if I ride one of those machines? Those are interesting problems, but they are not my area of concern. I am more philosophical than that. I want to know why John and Dave and I still race. It is an inquiry that began for me some time ago but which is at once both real and mythical. In 1969 I painted a two story house bartering for a factory road racer. When I was finished, and the day came for my consideration of cash or trade, the test ride of that CRTT Harley-Davidson changed my life. I knew nothing about it. Its owner brought it down from Chicago on an open one-rail trailer and talked to me like I was stupid. We helped him unload it and he fiddled with the petcocks and primed the float bowl and got it started without explaining anything. It was like watching a caveman build a fire who thought he was the only one who knew how. Once he handed it off to me, I thought I knew what to do. I rode it down to the next town and back, just a few miles. I didn’t really like it. It was very loud and was geared so high that if you didn’t slip the clutch just right it acted like it would die. It sputtered and missed around 9,000 rpm so I kept shifting up and thinking how much slower it seemed than my X6 Suzuki. When I brought it back still running the seller came over and pointed down at a piece of red tape on the Smith’s tachometer. I looked. It was at 11,500 rpm and I shook my head ‘no.’ He stepped out in front of me with an expression of disgust and made a gesture with his hand held up that showed the twisting of a throttle to wide open and then, putting both hands under his armpits, he flapped his arms. Chicken?
Gregg (left) and Richard Bonelli at Daytona Beach, suitably attired. Richard recently passed away, but these two made a habit of Florida in the spring. (Photo from Bonelli Collection)
Up to that point in my life I felt like I had acquired some sense of mechanical things and was defensive about my hard-won intuition. But I was not about to have some big-city guy suggest I hadn’t been man enough to take it to the redline. It was still his bike, after all, and if he wanted bits of it scattered all over the road I could do it. I got it turned around and went back up on the highway, wringing its neck once I got there as I fed in the clutch to keep it moving. It stumbled at 9,000 as before, but I coaxed it past that and wonderful things began to happen. When the clutch lever was finally released it was full-speed ahead and the revs built quickly.
(Pause a beat here before going on. Breathe.) Then it happened–a portal opened somewhere and I was sucked right through it. The machine became another being and took me completely. I was compelled to shift again and again and again to stay ahead of how quickly the tachometer needle jumped up past eleven and before I knew it I was in top gear at maximum rpm rocketing away from my past and into another life; wholly transformed. The motorcycle insisted on things being done a certain way and you had to be right on top of it and completely confident in every move to satisfy it. If you failed in any detail it told not just you, but the whole world about it. But if you got it right, you sensed it clear through. That I could ride it at all was something satisfying; that I could make it sing like that resonated something in me I had never known was there. To race it I thought, well, that must be something altogether sublime. I thought so then and I still think so now. I loved that bike, but I sold it to buy a faster one and a still faster one after that, because it was racing that I wanted, not an instrument of nostalgia.
Gregg Bonelli, hooked young, pauses in the back of his van before a race. His time in race vans figures heavily in his book. (Photo from Bonelli Collection)
There is of course much more to racing a motorcycle than simply making it perform, but it’s a start. I have but a little space to use here and have already filled it so my thoughts about that will have to wait. I have been racing fifty years now and confess that it has never lost any of its fascination for me. That I am still allowed to do it is liberating, that I get to do it in great company is a blessing. There will be racing and seafood in Savannah in a few weeks, then Drive Thru Daiquiris in New Orleans a month later and after that, sopapillas in Albuquerque on the way to Willow and fresh salmon at Sonoma as the gypsy tour continues. The baton is up now, and I must go out to the workshop and prepare. We race again soon and I will be there playing.
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Up to this point, I had said “no” to the invitation to race Bigley’s TZ at the Phillip Island International Classic. If I never get on another airplane for an intercontinental flight I’ll die a happy man. I wasn’t sure how hard I wanted to push a racebike these days and lining up against Jeremy McWilliams and that gang of world-class former-professional racers participating down under, would be daunting, I’d want to be “all in,” not just parade around. So, "no thanks, I don't want to race at Phillip Island.” And then Bonelli's prose changed my mind. He not only shares my passion for all things motorcycling, but explains it in a variety of ways that speak to all of us who choose this endeavor. He tells goofy stories about girlfriends and jobs and buying bikes. He talks about vagaries like time and Zen, mixed with exactitudes like gear ratios and ignition timing. You're never really sure if he's writing fiction or an autobiography, but what comes through to your riding soul is not just an approval of racing but an understanding of the emotional, mental and physical addiction we have for speed. His book caught me up, reminded me that passion rules all ages, that this is our one-and-only life and nothing I have ever found pleases me as much as riding a bike well. I took this renewed understanding and said "yes" to Phillip Island, "yes" to the risks and costs and hassle and difficulty and fifteen-hour flight. "Yes" to the most challenging occupation I've ever found. Gregg Bonelli put me “all in” (helmet nod to Nicky Hayden).
