Saw one of these yesterday…

And it brought back some fond memories… It was on a trailer, going down the road, but somebody had done a LOT of work on it to restore it! It looked as good as this one does!

Early 70s YZ 250… Sigh…

Fun little off road bikes, and ran like a scalded dog. We used to run Hare and Hounds with them at various bases (well, actually OFF base, they weren’t real thrilled if we played on base). One of the first motocross tracks/playgrounds I ever saw was off Atlantic Blvd in Jacksonville, where the Mayo Clinic now stands. It was, I think, $3/day to come play in the sand and on the course they had laid out. There ‘might’ have been a few races…um…competitions… Ah screw it, we were racing, and the statute of limitations ran out long ago.

One of the BIG no no’s for aircrew was any kind of racing. The funny part was when we deployed to Misawa, they had an actual motocross course ON the base. And I managed to get my hands on a YZ 125 in 1976. Even brought it back to the states from deployment, and found out they were ‘technically’ not being imported yet. Sold it for a nice price, and picked up one of the YZ 250s pictured above.

Fun times…

Comments

Saw one of these yesterday… — 21 Comments

  1. Might have been a later model, but something like that was what one … acquaintance.. had.. and the fool took it out on the highway (withOUT telling me was doing such a damnfool thing..) and we wound having a cop chase us… until he went into the no-cars-can-follow backwoods trails. My.. range.. was rather limited for some time after that. So I started reading Elements of Radio to see about bypassing such limits in those pre-Internet days…

  2. Came back from Yokosuka with a street bike and a (I IRC) YZ-250. Sold the dirt bike after I realized A) I couldn’t keep the front wheel on the ground and B) I was gonna kill/maim myself. Bought a Trials bike which was more my (very, very) slow speed.
    Yup, fun times.

  3. A dormant memory woke up and yelled, “What about the moped races in Bermuda?”

    When I was on the Willy R, USS William R. Rush (DD-714), we had steamed on a show the flag cruise to Bermuda and we were tied to a pier at the US Navy Base Annex located at Morgan’s Point. We had three days of liberty in Bermuda.
    This all happened somewhere around the middle of 1977. (IIRC)

    Some of us rented mopeds because we were young, indestructible and in the Navy.

    I had the duty on the second day in port and I was topside taking in the sunshine and watching the action on the pier.
    The action was a recreation of the chariot races in the Ben Hur movie.
    The enlisted sailors were playing the parts of the chariot racers, and the mopeds were standing in for the chariots.
    There was some sort of low structure in the center of the pier, and that created at sort of natural racecourse.
    We were the only ship there, and we found that we could race down one side of the pier, then make a tight turn around the center obstruction and race back using the other side of the pier.

    During a lull in the action, The XO, LCDR ******* came out on the pier and said “Want to race for the pinks?” Well, game on XO. The race lasted about one half of one lap and the immediate result was the XO veering off course, off the pier and the XO and his moped made a nice landing in the water. The ricochet off of the fuel barge prior to the water landing did not help him or the moped.
    A second of stunned silence ensued and then QM3 Sutter, (if I remember right) with the instincts and skill of a Labrador retriever, dove into the water and rescued the XO. Our bosun’s mates used our ship’s boat and a grappling hook to salvage the moped and the XO was off to sickbay.

    I hadn’t thought about that for a very long time.

    Good post!

    • Man, you small boat guys had all the fun! All we did was steam-catapult launch a pickup truck- your XO launched himself.

      • Robert. I transferred to the Willy R. after two years on the Forrestal. What a world of difference.

  4. I tried getting one of these before going into the Army, but couldn’t accumulate the $250 necessary.
    And shortly before I ETS’d, from Stuttgart, my CO had an old BMW he was selling. I was in the process of buying it, when I was informed by another biker that what I was riding was a valuable antique. I’m not positive, but I THINK it was the R-24. I passed the info on to my CO, and he used that info to persuade his wife to let him ship the bike back home to Upstate New York.
    Finally got my first bike when I made it to Civvie Street in September 1975: a 1972 Honda CL 175. It was essentially a street bike, but with the exhaust running UP, instead of DOWN, so it could burn the heck out of your legs instead of interfering with trail riding. It was a good bike to learn on.

  5. Yah. I was on the USS Constellation CV-64 and spent a little time helping out on a DD(?). OMG, it was claustrophobic. You know your’re not in Kansas anymore when you see the sign “No sleeping in this area due to radiation”.

  6. Hey Old NFO;

    I never got on Motorcycles until I was older, now I ride on one. I do miss the silly crap we did while we were in the service, I don’t think they do stuff like that nowadays. too many careers can be “damaged” by the “zero defect” mentality that seems prevalent nowadays, nobody has a sense of humor anymore.

  7. Orvan- Ouch!!!

    Robert- You HAD to get up over the handlebars to keep the front wheels on the ground. Learned THAT the hard way… sigh

    John- LOL, Bermuda was good for that… AND being on the wrong side of the road to boot!

    Pat- Nothing wrong with that. Smarter than the kids that ‘start’ on a Hayabusa today (And usually end up in the hospital)!

    Robert/John- CV/DD berthing wasn’t that much different as a squadron guy… Sigh

    Bob- Smart, but no way in hell I’d ride today. Too many idjits out there trying to kill you!

    • ONFO: Yah, I have four wheels and metal around me nowadays.
      RE: Berthing. I “found” a new Officers’ mattress that inexplicably made its way into a supposedly-air-conditioned equipment space of classified gear so as to better babysit said gear. For a better response time just in case I was needed, y’see.

  8. My dad had horror stories of the days around 1953-54 of valiant Air Force pilots fighting off the scourge of inhuman Navy pilots on the back roads of Japan while on souped-up moped-like bikes. All in fun.

    Dad said he realized he needed to stop when he was doing around 60 on a bike with a 12″ front wheel and foot brakes (like, you put your feet down…) on the down-side of a steep, twisty mountain road.

    Seems two-wheeled death machines and military personnel seem to go hand-in-hand.

  9. LOVE stories like John in Phillys!
    A friend had a DT2 250 and I got a chance to ride it now and then. Fun as HELL.
    Was this pretty much the same bike, but with lights and a license plate?

  10. Robert- Snerk… Good job!

    Beans- Ah yes, I’ll bet that was fun! And yes they do…

    GB- Oh yeah! Us Navy pukes get crazy on deployment… LOL I”m not sure. The YZs were the first with the Reed valve induction, so almost ‘instantaneous’ throttle response.

  11. I got out in ’76 and bought the DT400 version.
    Eventually I got/built a cafe racer.
    It was safer than being on the trails with kids who didn’t care who they ran into.

    But I remember suiting up in a blizzard and riding an hour to my brother’s house because my car failed me.

  12. Started out on my brother in laws Indian when I was about 16YO. Joined the USN at 17 and wound up in NAF Naples Italy. They were all riding, Moto Guzzi’s, Gilera’s, and other local bikes in the 350 cid range.
    Well I got the bug after I had seen an ad for a Triumph T-120 650cid Bonneville! Took 15 days leave and went to merry old England, right to the factory, had them bore it out to .020 oversized, stroked it just enough so that the piston would not hit the valves! Found out later that I had to put in double springs to get that valve out of the way!
    Broke it in on the way back to Italy. It was probably the fastest bike on the European continent. The Italian State Police only had 350 Gileras so they could never catch us speeding. Only problem was that they were authorized to shoot to kill if you tried to run away from them! They would find us parked outside a bar and they would come right in and hand us an ticket for !0,000 Lira and we were expected to pay it on the spot . That was $16 back then.

    Got to be a game after awhile and we never carried more than $10-12 in our pockets.. They would take whatever you had in your pockets and be satisfied. So we would wrap our other $$ around our ankle and pull the socks up over it. After awhile you kind of got used to having fat ankles!

    When I left, I gave it to this older (65) guy and his wife whom I had been living with for the last year of my tour. Also gave him my 28″ day sailer boat. and four cases of peanut butter from the commissary that he loved. At that time they had no such think in any markets.

    I Brought back my 6 month old VW Bug that I had recently brought back from Germany. Wound up buying another Triumph, same model et al and still have it. Now the kids are fighting about who gets it when I’m gone! I told them ,mostly in jest to take it apart and put it in the casket with me so I’d have something to do for eternity!

  13. Duh! That was supposed to be a 28 foot daysailer, NOT a 28 INCH one!!!

  14. 1967-1969 one was my sole transportation, in Denver, year around. Married into a Volvo P-1800 but still rode the Yamaha to work.

  15. Ed- If it works…

    Ev- Why am I NOT surprised you’d pull something like that… LOL

    WSF- That had to be a ‘tad’ chilly in the winter!

  16. Nice, but it reminds of every Saturday morning here at the Compound. Leafblowers. Like living next to a dirt bike track. But whatev, nice little bike!

  17. oh yes, bike thread… Back in the late 70’s I was heading back home down I-275 south coming off night shift at the Sperry facility where I was testing Mk-92 radars.
    Riding my 350 Duc café racer built by Sid Tunstall(one of, if not the Gods of the Ducati in the states). No traffic; had never twisted the bikes tail; so what the heck. Up to an indicated 125 with some throttle left, but here comes my exit. Pull off, waiting at the light, bike going thump, thump, thump. Noticed a red flashing light bouncing off the berm of the exit overpass. Took off the helmet as two local po-po’s walk up. Did I mention I had my white Polish racing-team coveralls on?
    One stands at the front of the bike and the other walks around looking at it. Finally the one in front says to me, “We know you were speeding, but we couldn’t get you on our radar. So please just slow down.” I told ’em it wouldn’t happen again. Made my turn and went on home.

    Wife never liked that machine. We lived about four blocks off the highway and she swore she could hear me/it coming home a night. Good times.
    Last bike Sid sold me was a red 750 Paseo(sp?). Bike was scary fast(5 speed, 9K rpm red line, 55 in 3rd at 3K) and I was a lot older – and smarter. Gave it back after a year of not riding it much.