Although this title sounds a lot like what the world expects us all to do right now (with the pandemic and all), it actually refers to the window sticker on the race vans during our forty or so years of motorcycle racing, particularly when we travelled the A.M.A. Grand National Championship circuit. (One of our other window stickers proudly boasted “We Race Motorcycles and We’re Broke to Prove It”.)
Ah, the good ol’ days! I’d be having a conversation with folks planning vacations, and they’d be estimating how long it would take to get to their destinations. I’d raise my eyebrows and assure them it did not take that long. (Case in point: going from Ohio to California does not indeed take three days. It can be accomplished in thirty hours if you need to be there badly enough.) With my son’s running a shop, manufacturing parts, and doing performance work on motors, getting the van loaded and out of the driveway was always a challenge. Hence, we learned that the amount of time it takes to get anywhere in the U.S. or Canada is the amount of time that exists between when we would leave the shop and when the sign-up window at the track was scheduled to close. (Incidentally, we only ever missed sign-ups once, and that was due to being stuck on a parking lot freeway due to a traffic incident.)
Sleeping on the way to the track was probably my very favorite way to sleep. I packed a supply of pillows and could be snuggled in fairly safely, although there would be the occasional brake-hard-because-the-highway-patrol-was-spotted situation…in which ending up on the floor of the back seat was a distinct possibility. The Ford maxi-van was the least comfortable as the bench seat was stiffer. One of the early race vans had no back seat. We improvised with three metal lawn chairs wedged side by side. We could seat three across and one lying down horizontally underneath the three chairs. And the cooler between the two front seats provided a nice footrest for the middle chair passenger in the back. The box truck was roomy, and its walls were carpeted. But the best sleep was in the Dodge maxi-van. Cushy ride, that! And, not only was the Dodge van comfy, it had some other advantages. It had theft protection in the form of fluorescent paint (experimental from a nearby factory) in neon orange. Anyone trying to get very far would be thwarted by the van’s high visibility factor. Everyone in town knew exactly where that van was and had been! Interestingly, one time we had to get from Springfield, Illinois, to York, Pennsylvania, for 8 am sign-ups…having left Springfield about 2 a.m. due to a rain delay. This involved traversing the Pennsylvania Turnpike where the speed limit is 55 and the highway patrol is plentiful. Thankfully, there was thick fog that night, so traffic was minimal and the Highway Patrol absent. Obviously, it did not occur to them that there would be one vehicle flying through the fog which they could actually have seen to ticket (in vibrant blue and fluorescent orange). Whew!!
I generally got my turn at the wheel for what I called the deer-feeding shift, about 3 a.m. Adrenaline would get the guys that far, and they’d wake me up when they got too sleepy to focus. The one time we had affixed deer-whistles to the front of the van (to warn the animals and prevent them from running out) was the one time a deer walked right out in front of the van. Fortunately for all concerned, we missed! And we removed the deer whistles since they were apparently ineffective (and perhaps even summoned the deer).
In the early no-money days we used to camp for many of the overnight stays, so there were some adventures there, too. One year at the KOA Bulow in Florida (Bike Week), we had a severe storm that had me trying to dig a hole in the bottom of the tent to get underground. In the morning the wind was still strong enough to inflate — yes, inflate — the 8×10 cabin tent like a hot air balloon! Wow!! (We had a photo, but I can’t find it. Would love to share!) We also spent a week camping on-grounds at the racetrack in Barberville, Florida. I had called ahead and was assured there were restroom and shower facilities available. What they failed to mention, however, was that only the men’s restrooms were open overnight as the women’s restroom was located inside the chain link fence under the grandstand. So I had to have husband and son guard the door to be able to use the facilities. It seems like the few other female campers were with the big teams that travelled in motorhomes. (At that early stage of my son’s racing career, we didn’t know those folks that well yet. Darn!)
Storm and restroom stories abound in regard to the racing years. Stay posted for more adventures.
And if anyone tells you to get in, sit down, shut up, and hang on — trust me! It’s fun!