Kaya Mawa Sailor: Mountain Bike Thoughts

Writing is not an every day event.

But I try to ride everyday except lately it has been hard to do with the hot weather. Temperatures in the shade here can reach a hundred and it doesn't cool down much until the sun starts to set.

Many moons ago I was living in El Toro, California which now is called Lake Forest. After I moved from Huntington Beach to El Toro I was involved with motorcycles and didn't do much bicycle riding although I still had my old Schwinn Paramount that I did ride in Huntington.

There was a bicycle shop in El Toro on Muirlands called Bicycle Etc.

It then was a small shop ran by a husband and wife. I did buy a Motobecane Road Bike with sew-ups with Stonglite cranks with 10 speeds. Getting a pair of leather shoes for riding was a chore and I think I remember getting the cleats mounted at a shoe repair shop. The nearest bike shop of any size then was a really nice place in downtown Santa Ana.

I did buy a set of rollers there and later a mini ten speed for Beanie (France Jean). I also later purchased a nice Motobecane ladies bike with clincher tires. There was also a bunch of Stingrays left over from the beach. Several times we would pile into van and drive to Newport and ride along the beach. My riding then never got very serious and I started running and playing tennis almost everyday and sometimes twice a day.

The running became nuts and I was running twice a day too. Every Tuesday and Thursday myself and three others would meet at the tennis club and play doubles. One fellow was a perfume salesmen and worked for Bonnie Bell. He would bring me Runners World magazines (they were in black and white) and that fueled my running addiction.

The four of us all lived close and Tony later decided to start running also. He then became interested in Iron Man but he didn't have a decent bike so he came to my house and I gave him my Motobecane for training. He kept it and for repayment bought a new Schwinn mountain bike for me. I rode it but it wasn't a big thing. I took the Schwinn to Bonneville to ride around the pits during the week of racing. When I returned home I set it in the garage and when I went to ride it again the chain was frozen solid with rust. I took the mess to the bike shop and had it fixed,

The Schwinn never got much use then and we even had a horse/trail behind our house. Then the county opened up a wilderness park called Whiting Ranch in Foothill Ranch. At this time mountain biking was exploding and El Toro went from one shop to 5 shops. With one placed next to the entrance of Whiting. I started riding by bike up to the park and back and it was fun but I never went overboard.

There are some jumps and gaps in this blog so please bear with me. I never stopped the running and on Saturdays I would go to Laguna Niguel and run around the park (10k) with several other runners. Then to help with the training I started riding a bike to the park, run and ride back. A good friend of mine who worked at Hughes in Fullerton and lived on Balboa Island blew up in weight and got to 220 pounds. He saw me at a 150 pounds and decided to loose weight. He changed his diet and started jogging at lunchtime at the Hughes rec park. We had a party went Hal reached 200 pounds, He kept on with the program and was soon running marathons with me.

One day I had to go to work in Santa Monica and stopped at a bike shop just to look. The next thing I was doing was loading my new Bob Jackson into the rear of my Corvette. Then I was living next to a golf course at the top of a hill. Hal decided that we should enter a Iron Man Contest as a team. I was the bike rider.

We were in the 40 and over class and finally after a few tries finished first,

I couldn't decide where to live and moved back to El Toro. My office then was in Laguna Hills and I would ride or run at lunch time. The Iron Man races got me interested in bike racing again and then riding in Southern Orange County was too bad.

Santa Ana College had a few instructors that were interested in starting a bike club with racing but at a different level that older established bike racing. They had races for free at Hof Mile Square in Fountain Valley. It was a lot of fun racing on the old Marine Corp. runways. They even had a century semi-race from the college to San Diego that was a blast.

At the Saturday races I met an old friend named Rudy that had worked with me at Autonetics in Anaheim. Rudy after the riding at Santa Ana College also got serious and moved to sanctioned racing as I also did. Rudy went over board and actually quit working in electronics and got a job working at a bike shop.

My attempts at a higher level of racing wasn't that great as I was training enough. I was fit enough to win motocross races but not hang with the fast roadies.