Makes Relay Team Challenge • EACH RIDER of the WINNING TEAM RECEIVED a brand new tire for his race machine. This Relay Team Challenge was sponsored by University Honda, Seattle

( note that Kelly has taken the bike from a Star Wards Sand Person)

HONDA
Charlie Branstetter
Bobby Gravely
George Down
Gary Down

HUSQVARNA
Bill Grubin
Blake Landon
Kelly McKiernan
Carl Schuur

All can tell you is about my third leg. First I just got my turkey sandwich and coke from the the snack bar and Bill said they needed a amateur to ride. Hey I came a long way to ride so why not? What am I going to ride.

A 400 Husky. Great: I ride 125, and the race is about to start.

So Bill would start, hand off to the other guy, and I will take his bike for the 3rd leg. Since I do not now anything about his bike he will start it at the right time and I will be off, this all went right but we forgot to turn the petcock on. Right as I took the hand off it died, no gas, Bill jumped on and kicked about 5 times and it fired at the same time the Honda and I think KTM guys were pulling out. We bumped a little but I pulled out ok and held them off for my lap.

Riding the 400 was a blast on this track but the pipe kinda burnt my ass for some reason, some new pipe Bill put on. Anyway I had a blast w/you guys that I met at Hodaka Days, Steve Mitchell let me ride one of his cool Hodakas, Bill Grubin I hung out with on Saturday and let me ride his Honda 250 for a while. Thanks for your hospitality. I will be flying up from San Diego for Woodland this year,

see ya . Kelly

KTM
Thom Green
Jon McLean
Matt Sulllivan
Dale Walter

Jon and I had been talking for some time about the forming of a team but I wondered if we would have enough riders period to form a team with out worrying about having two amateurs and two intermediates or experts. As it turned out we did quite well. Jon and I notice that most of the teams were made of young guys. Unlike some makes of bike we did not have the luxury of picking from a wide assortment of riders. How many Honda teams were there anyway? As for our team we spanned four decades. Matt I think is in his late 30's, Jon in his mid 40s, I in my early 50's And Dale in his early 60's

In addition to this we had one 125, one 250 and as it turned out 1 400. Jon had a problem with his 400 and Jon and I shared my bike. Dale started off the race and did a great job even though he had trouble with the bike miss shifting and then loading up. The Type "A" Sachs motors were legendary in there shifting problems but Dale hung in there and showed himself to be a worth team mate. Jon was suppose to take leg three but because of his problems with his bike we had to do a last minute switch and he took leg two. Jon put in a solid ride and handed off to Matt.

Matt as well did a great job but managed to miss the exit and ended going over the steep berm to get to Jon and Dale waiting to do the hand off. I waited thinking that we just might pull this thing off but we were just too far behind and to my amazement the riders in front of me were just too fast for me to catch. Some one told me that the Bultaco team finished almost a half a lap in front of us. All in all we put in a good race and finish 6th, not bad for a bunch of old guys...

Thanks CJ and the rest of the team it was a great idea and I hope we do it again. every one on the team had a great time too. It was a mixture of anxiety and exhilaration. you did not know if you were having fun until it was all over and when you stopped to think about it, the more you realized just how much fun it really was. The track was amazing, I loved it. It reminds me of racing at Brentwood and Carnagie in northern California when I was less than half my current age. (early 20's) The track Sunday was fast but it was fun too. Terry asked me why I was catching so much air and I told him it was not my fault, the bike just seemed to want to fly. I can hardly wait for Ward Creek!

- the Rev