Discovered Ed Youngblood's MotoHistory
Great stuff
One piece - Cook Neilson interview
Motohistory.Net - Featured Story - Cook Neilson Remembers - Page 2:
This one on a particular dangerous bike.
I was pitched off of one and manged to collect some nasty scars
Both palms gone, right forearm, right nipple ground down (I was dumb, wearing a work shirt, sleeves rolled up, no gloves)
Front fender shook loose, and grabbed the front tire... I went down ... hard.
"And what we were doing WAS dangerous. It seemed that we were always a staffer or two short; it seemed that we had a charge account at the Westlake Village Hospital. We lost Dave Hawkins for a good long while; same with Dale Boller; same with me. I remember one time, after we'd published a particularly scathing road test of an H2 Kawasaki 750, I decided that I'd show the Kawasaki people exactly what I was talking about with regard to handling instability. There was this one corner on Mulholland Highway that was perfect for testing: fast and bumpy (it was on a section of that highway that became known as Racer Road). The Kawasaki guys showed up; I showed up. So I was whistling this 750 through this one very high-speed turn when it started to wobble. When that happened, the suspension started to oscillate, then the muffler on the left side started banging off the ground, then it high-sided me through a barbed wire fence and I ended up in the hospital ('Charge it!') for a little while. I certainly hadn't intended to be that dramatic, but the point was, as far as I was concerned, Kawasaki was selling a bike to the public that was fundamentally unsound, and we wanted them to either fix it, or get rid of it."
If only Cook was as fast as he thought he was.
ReplyDeletereply to Dean "a legend in his own mind?"
ReplyDelete