Motocross racing
When Mike started racing it was rough scrambles in Northern California, then he heard about this new kind of racing in Europe called motocross. By the mid 60’s he was traveling to Southern California to ride this motocross and in 1966 they were having motocross races in Northern California too. Mike really liked the motocross style of racing because you got to race a lot more, they were riding 45 minute moto’s plus one lap and in some events they would have time for three 45 minute moto’s, what fun! The other nice thing Mike liked was that you could work your own bikes over, the early bikes had very little suspension 4” rear max. and 6” to 7” in the front, Mike was hard at work making his bikes run fast and handle better then the other bikes, helping him to win. The other thing that Mike liked was that you had to keep in very good physical condition or you did not finish the long moto’s, a lot was learned in the early days on the type of training that was needed for this new sport of motocross. This earned Mike the #6 blue plate in the 70’s, he kept that plate for over 2 years!