Hey this intro thing looks like fun...Sept' 1963 a little Kiwi who later ended up named Eno was born, Father a sheep farmer - yeah mock away!, mother of Swedish descent.
The first inkling that something was wrong was when (I still remember this like yesterday!) I asked my Dad if he could put a motor in my tricycle, so he manufactured a "motor" from a bake bean tin & old spark plug & a few other bits. Mums brothers worked her family dairy farm, they had motorbikes...this must have been late 60's/early 70's those old Yamaha trailmaster things. Riding around the farm etc...I even remember the uncles rolling up my first smoke, wow! I was hooked. Pop(grandad) took me to my first "Scrambles" meeting, it was so long ago, I remember it didn't have the same bright colours of later years & there was lots of 4 stroke noises, the sound of the "500's" exiting the start or destroying their way up a steep hill forever etched in memory - later that night I could still hear them as lay in bed dropping off to sleep!.
Dad had little time to be troubled with motorbikes, he blamed my obsession on my mums "irresponsible" brothers. Then one day he surprised us all by turning up with a new CT90 - strictly intended for farm use...Heehee, yeah right!. That little bike served to teach myself & my brothers all how to ride.
Now dad was never burdened with too much disposable cash & I've made a fine job of carrying on the tradition and family tradition at the time was to go to the local Lions auction (charity thing). Here was this old partly together CZ175(type 450), well dad always surprised ya when you least expected it & forked out $10 for the remains of this finely crafted Czech machine. I remember spending hours piddling around with it & felt possibly what a monkey would feel like if asked to fix a wheelbarrow, but never under estimate a small boys will to go for a ride. More old CZ's were aquired untill sufficient numbers of spares were available to make runners, so eventually myself & my brothers all had CZ's but nothing like the MX ones.
Dad had a fairly well equipped workshop, arc welding, oxy/gas, grinders, lathe...hacksaws. My older bro "Spok" was much braver than me & I used to watch with watering eyes as he would hack into these old bikes & lay-down the shox, chop up old fridges for their precious sheet metal & re-craft into expansion chambers, Geez he even made a coffin tank. I reckon he crossed the line one day when he found an old scrambles Jawa 250 & took to the cases with hacksaw & chisels, with the intent of a reed valve conversion. I can only imagine the looks dad got when Spok got some of his creations prepped up enough to haul off to the local engineering shop for alloy welding.
The howls of laughter & derision from my teenage colleages over our ancient steeds was truely character building. When word got out of our CZ stronghold it lead to more dump & shed finds. Eventually evolution took hold & we drifted towards more contemporary Japanese bikes and Dads farm no longer could contain us. The vast ribbons of tar seal trails beckoned, bad & nationwide. As the sun set on the early CZ & Jawa phase I picked up a CZ400 '73 wreck and to fill in the time whilst healing from road racing induced gravel rash, I set about to sorting out the CZ. It all got filed in the too hard basket eventually...twenty years later (2001 a CZ odysey) I thought of my unrealised dream gently weeping in her box. Well not all of it was boxed, so I set out to sift thru all the folk's stuff & finally the 400 came home - a pile of shit in the back of my truck, how I wish I'd taken a photo then.
Now round about this time someone said to me, "have you seen VMX magazine?", I said "Huh?, hey cool you mean to say that there are other people already doing this?".
I've since done 4 seasons of championship racing in New Zealand & made some of the best friends of my life.
