I

Prelude

Prelude—Jeff

Three of us took a long motorcycle trip during early summer in 1973. Brian Franzen and I both had 1972 orange and black Yamaha 350 R5Cs. They were standard except for a luggage rack or small bar behind the seat. Brian had fabricated some highway pegs for cruising comfort. Mike Newlun was set to roll on a purple and white “chopped” 1970 R5 350. The bike had ten-inch fork extensions, Z handlebars, and a cool sissy bar.

In the summer of 1973, I had just finished my freshman year at York College, and I was living at home. Brian had attended Nebraska Technical College in Milford the past six months, and he was working that summer for a bee keeper, Roger Bailey, out of McCool Junction, Nebraska. Mike was located down in Beatrice, living with our friend Dennis Osborne on 4^th Street (Mike lives on 4^th Street to this day.)

We left on our trip on June 15, 1973 and returned to Nebraska July 4^th weekend. Or at least Brian and I did. Mike came back on July 2^nd, but that’s another story to be told later. Several bizarre incidents happened that spring which could have caused us to cancel or at least delay the trip. As I indicated earlier, I was attending college, worked a little bit for Roger Bailey the bee keeper, and I also worked as a carry-out at the Grand Central Super Value Grocery Store.

Sometime in late March or early April, at night, I was riding my Yamaha 350 home from the grocery story about 9:15 pm. I rounded the curve on Highway 81 as it wandered north through downtown York, dipped down to go through the underpass, and then slammed on the brakes and dumped my cycle to avoid hitting a car that was stopped in the roadway. To this day, I do not know why the AMC Gremlin was stopped at the bottom of the underpass.

The result is that I broke several small bones in my left foot. I wore a cast for about six weeks and hobbled on crutches around school till the semester concluded. Some of the female students felt sorry for me and carried my books occasionally. The professors probably thought I was out of my mind for riding a motorcycle. Mike has a memory of one of my crutches going out the window of his 1967 orange fastback Mustang as he was making a left turn. He says I laughed like crazy.

It never occurred to me to postpone or cancel the trip.

The damage to my motorcycle was minimal: a broken turn signal cover, a bent clutch lever, and a slightly-bent metal foot peg stub. (The foot peg contacted the pavement after breaking my foot!). That bike damage was all easily repaired by my good friends Jerry and Charlie at iconic Hurlbut’s Cycle north of York. But I had to shift with my heel, rather than with the top of my foot like normal, for a while, once I got back on my machine. The foot was tender for most of the trip. Perhaps I was a little slower, a little more cautious. Maybe not. Seems like I pushed to get the cast removed a little early, so I could go on the bee work trip in late May before our motorcycle ride….

Prelude—Mike

That summer of ‘73 was transitional for me. I had quit college. My school, Kearney State, was a teacher’s college at the time. But I didn’t want to be an educator. I didn’t have a clear vision of my goals. I had enrolled in a Criminal Justice class with juniors and seniors and was asking myself, “What am I doing here?” That was the end of my college career.

Regarding our cross-country trip, I’m sure my family was worried about me. My grandfather told me they purchased an insurance policy on me to bury me in case I was killed during the trip.

I bought the Yamaha a few weeks before we left. I bought the bike from Ron Sawtell. He lived only a few blocks from Jeff in York, Nebraska. The night I got it, sometime in April 1973, there had been rain throughout the area. I borrowed some white coveralls from Jeff’s dad. Then, I rode the motorcycle back to Beatrice in a light drizzle. The trip was eventful.

When entering the intersection in Dorchester on Highway 6, a driver or rider had to come to stop and turn right. There was a gap in the pavement from one surface to another. Since it was raining and there was a big puddle of water, I couldn’t see the bottom of the gap. As I went to make the turn, I discovered the water was deeper than anticipated. Suddenly, the Yamaha slipped out from under me. I managed to place myself under the bike to protect it. I was lying in the puddle, thoroughly soaked, but the bike remained unscathed. I was okay but very cold and wet, so I gathered the bike up and limped into town to see a friend and to dry off and warm up. He wasn’t home, so I borrowed his truck to go on to Beatrice. Turned out he was already in Beatrice. I told him what happened, and we returned his truck, and I rode my R5 home, all early the next morning.

Soon after, on a suggestion from Jeff, with only the tools under the seat, I pulled the cylinder heads, cylinders, and pistons, and took them down to the Yamaha dealer, Hurlbut’s Cycle. I asked Charlie Hurlbut to bore them .010 over and to install new pistons and rings. When I inquired how long the process would take, Charlie said, “Just a minute.” When he returned to the counter, he had a set of cylinders and matching rings. He said, “These have been done for another customer for a long time. Maybe by the time I get yours done, he will have the money to pay me.” So, I put the Yamaha back together. It ran great immediately.

Next, I took my ride to Jericho Cycles in Lincoln, Nebraska. There, I had ten-inch longer fork tubes and Z bars installed. That kind of sharp-point handlebar could gut you, but I didn’t worry about such things. When I got the R5 back, the mechanic said, “You have ruined a good bike.” Nice. He sent along a new brake cable, but I didn’t have the right hardware to hook up the cable to the drum brake. Pretending to be a mechanical engineer, I used a coat hanger to finish the linkage. (It never let me down, but I sure thought about the brakes heading down through the mountain passes later in Arizona!) Anyway, we left for California one week after I chopped the Yamaha.

Prelude—Brian

How did we ever come up with “Team Black Rock” as a name? We joked about that term most of the late winter and spring of ’73. But the name stuck. I had our shirts made at a t-shirt shop in Lincoln. They cost about twelve dollars apiece. None of us saw the movie until much later in life, but that phrase, “A bad day at Black Rock”—well, we seemed to use it quite a bit that spring as we prepared for the big bike trip. Sort of a linguistic gem of the seventies, perhaps.

Something happened to me in April of ‘73 that might have affected the trip. One afternoon, for some reason, I let Judy, the girl from York College I was dating, “drive” my Yamaha. I was seated behind her, showing her how to work the throttle and clutch and brakes. And hanging on.

Well, somewhere near York College, we were making a right turn when she accelerated too hard, taking us wide, and hit the front of a car parked on the north side of 12^th Street. The impact, plus me sitting behind her, pushed her over the handlebars. The wreck resulted in her going to the ER to get checked out. She had big bruises on her thighs and lots of soreness, but nothing was broken.

My Yamaha’s front fork tubes were bent back into the engine, and the bike was completely out of commission. Our crash happened about three or four blocks from my house. At home, my dad had a plywood dolly with little wheels that I procured, and I eventually carried it back to the accident scene. Then I loaded up the machine and rolled it back those three or four blocks to our house. Not long after, Hurlbut’s Cycle Shop replaced the bent tubes with new ones and I was once again good to go. I was so concerned about that Yamaha—and visiting Judy in the hospital. Of course, later, on the trip, I would see her again.