Just finished watching “On Any Sunday: the Next Chapter” on YouTube. The original “On Any Sunday” came out in 1974. It was a movie about the exploding motorcycle craze that was storming through the U.S. Bruce Brown, who earlier had come out with “Endless Summer,” made the movie. His surfing blockbuster about chasing the perfect wave around the world had catapulted him to fame and fortune. Being a Southern California dude, which was also a hotbed of this new two-wheeled phenomenon, he decided to make a movie about the craze.
We had just started our motorcycle dealership. We were young motorcycle enthusiasts and part-time racers. A group of us went to see the movie together, owners and employees, and came out with our imaginations on fire.
Now, as an older man watching this movie, made by Bruce’s son Dana, I marveled at how things had changed and not changed. Some of the racing disciplines have evolved in stunning ways. In our day, putting your knee on the ground when cornering on a road racing machine was state-of-the-art. Now, the pros touch their elbows to the ground and have to stick plastic “pucks” to the joint to slide along the pavement. Yet, much of the racing has remained almost the same yet still draws crowds to see the excitement.
What also hasn’t changed is the sense of community, of belonging. In the seventies, we were outcasts, looked upon as less than acceptable. I felt the irony of that attitude as a college graduate and businessman, being considered almost a hooligan because I rode motorcycles. Beyond sticking together in the face of disapproval, there is still the sense of a shared culture, of being a participant in something special, something the “normal” person would not, could not experience.
People talk about the feeling of “freedom” that comes with motorcycling. Many say that’s bull crap, a meaningless statement or sentiment. They don’t understand. It’s the word that best captures what we do, and it’s still relevant fifty (or one hundred) years later.
It’s a rebellion against the safe life, with its rules and requirements to conform. The motorcycle breaks you out of the cage of security for a rawness that can’t be found wrapped up in a car or motorhome. Even the most sedate road-touring rider feels it.
I wonder what the next fifty years will bring. I won’t be around to see it. I wonder if any of Bruce or Dana’s progeny will be around to put together a film record? The powers that want to control us and limit danger in the cause of public safety will try to ban these machines. (They are, after all, revolutionary devices that snub their noses at “safety-crats.”)
Yes, they are dangerous. Some of my racing heroes now sit paralyzed from the sport. One of my employees died on the street, ignoring the admonishments of some of us older racers not to play the racing game on public roads. My best friend and business partner, a three-time National Champion, had his life taken by motorcycle racing. Still, none of them would regret being involved in the sport at whatever level they participated in.
The risks are taken, accepted, sometimes in rebellious response to our age of security, sometimes for the sheer adventure of it. Adventures, by nature, are filled with discomfort and risk. But they beat sitting in front of one’s TV.
If you want to visit this sport, to understand a strange new world, you might want to start with the first movie, now almost a time capsule of the crazy seventies. You may not become a convert, that’s okay. But you might come to have a glint of understanding that this sport reflects in its own way the indomitable, untamable human spirit.
