Scene: People and their motorcycles

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Scene: People and their motorcycles
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Scene: People and their motorcycles

Scene: People and their motorcycles
In the beginning it was the curve

Regardless of whether it’s a classic, racing roll, stubble hop or motorhome ?? for MOTORRAD editor Werner “Mini” One machine is as important to Koch as the other. The main thing is that it hums. A look back over 40 years of racing motorcycle passion.

Werner Koch

06/18/2009

Since this gray, sturdy document with stamp and passport photo wandered over the official’s desk, life has revolved around one topic with a lot of verve and even more devotion: motorcycle. And as so often in life, there was also in this case – in the truest sense of the word – a sparking impulse. Ten meters wide, made of coarse-grained asphalt in an accurate S-shape rolled into the landscape and located less than two hundred meters from his parents’ home in Busnau, the youngster, still without a driver’s license, once sailed through the shadow curves of the Solitude race track with the 24 Rixe three-speed bike with spark-spitting pedals near Stuttgart.

Who does not know that, is the time of fare dodger between bicycle and driver’s license. Olle mopeds, bought for twenty marks or chattered off their big brother for a case of beer, were overturned according to the rules of the art so that nothing was left besides the motor and frame. Bent, baroque mudguards, fat seats, embarrassingly quiet chrome silencers – all in the bin. Today such sculptures pass as street fighters, at that time the massive loss of TuV-compliant material promoted lightweight construction. It was necessary to first outrun the competition and then the local gendarmerie at the Busnau Grand Prix around the allotment gardens. Without a helmet and glasses, your head tilted to the wind, one eye closed, the other flooded with tears and the constant fear on your neck that the coiffed engine will stall or the fuel will run out right now. Or both. With the deadline in March 1970, the lively drifting in the shadow curve was legalized and perfected in every free minute. In wild groups or solo performances, on Saturdays and Sundays, there was a showdown at the Busnauer-S, the spectator seats were well occupied.


Scene: People and their motorcycles


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Raser listens to travelers: when the globetrotters of the Africa Twin Club show their adventures, the evening is long – and the barrel is usually empty.

No wonder, roaring racing machines and their black leather-clad heroes race against each other on the asphalt worm of the Solitude track. Phil Read, John Surtees, Mike Hailwood – for a quickly scribbled autograph, the eaten boys crawled through spiky barricades, skipped school as a collective or forged tickets for the annual racing spectacle with crayons and potato stamps. The daredevils and bon vivants from the paddock surrounded only one wish among the local boys from the small town of Busnau: to ride a motorcycle, as weird, as fast, as loud as it gets. The addiction did not subside, not least because the beloved motorcycle helped one to escape from the musty dump into downright obscene cornering paradises. The obligatory cinema curve in Busnau (two falls with the girl on the back in one week) was followed by rapid excursions into the Black Forest (one fall, one ride into the undergrowth), to the Neuffener Steige (one fall in the hairpin on the left), around Switzerland around the Klausenpass (no fall – praise and praise be to the Lord) and at some point into the nirvana of weird longing: HOCKENHEIM (three falls). Sachskurve, Scheibhauskurve, cross bar. The drug curve made one immune to the serious warnings of the parents, the loving request of the friend, the uncomprehending shaking of the head of inexperienced know-it-alls.

Tightrope walk


Scene: People and their motorcycles


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You can’t do without it: When the knee pads chirp across the asphalt, the world is in balance.

Of course only those who challenged physics and fate with snotty arrogance. Because then and now applies to curves: They are the scene of full joie de vivre and gripping action, only to strike fractions of a second later with brutal cruelty. A cruelty that, with the inconspicuous, small wooden crosses on the roadside, repeatedly admonishes us unequivocally, which is why the cockiness gives way to a healthy dose of humility and respect. Were we stupid? Yes. As stupid as everyone who strikes the fine line between a full life and a bottomless fall. Unfortunately also with the vulnerability shared by the cross-border commuters of this world. Which didn’t detract from the indescribable feeling of weightlessness in an inclined position. On the contrary. The boys wanted to know exactly. What works? What is not working? Even more weird, even faster, even louder, the half-strong Busnauer went on the hunt for a cup and a laurel wreath. With success. Cups in heaps, laurel wreaths by the dozen, they even took three and a half championship titles. From the bitter experience that laurel also wilts, even if it is made of plastic, a whole new perspective opened up: the discovery of slowness, so to speak the U-turn backwards. When the maddening hustle and bustle of the year was lost in the colorful autumn leaves, many a racer and stoker found their way to their senses. One Yamaha DT 125 Enduro carried me through a new world for days.

Tiled by the nose in the tachometer years ago, completely new possibilities opened up right on the doorstep. No stopwatch, no timed practice, no nerve-wracking pre-start, just the purring 15 hp motorcycles, a long way, a lot of time, even more landscape and a silence that could panic the hypermotor in me. And it was fine like that. But as the saying goes: The best way to get addiction and desire under control is to give in to the desire. Today with a trimmed KTM RC8, the uncompromising driving machine par excellence, which proves to be the ideal therapy for the regular attacks of frenzy on the race track. Tire warmers down, visor closed, and the fountain of youth bubbles, the adrenaline even more. Whereby no one should hope for the wisdom of old age. It is better that the slicks give the speed frenzy the necessary grip.

My angular Silver Arrow shares the workshop with a motorcycle that embodies the passion of discovery like no other: Honda Africa Twin 650, first year – and for me the best. Does the weak single disc actually brake without having to help with the heels? Can you get anywhere with 50 hp, or do you look for the slipstream on every truck? Questions that find their answer at the latest when, after a full tank of 24 liters, you put your feet up in the beer garden: What a day! What a motorcycle! What a joy to stalk through the landscape with like-minded globetrotters and to dust every little gravel road, every dirt road with the rear wheel spinning! Exactly for seizures of this kind, the in-house fleet had to pull together a little to make room for the small Yamaha WR 250 R. A first-class Crossduro. Don’t eat hay, transport the pizza, get bread rolls, chauffeur your son to the disco and pepper the weekend on the cross piste so that it splatters. Without constantly hitting the handlebars in your mouth. A motorcycle that continues my love for real off-road enduros in the best tradition. Honda XL 250 S, Yamaha XT 350, Suzuki DR-Z 400 and now WR 250 R..

Curve hunting on one “Wurzelsau”


Scene: People and their motorcycles


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After 40 years, the wheelies finally work – and the fun is still there.

Forty years ago, the true masters showed their skills where the mediocre stumble. On mopeds of the kind that have been tinkered with “Wurzelsau”, With stripped enduros to blaring crossers, the crazy pack chased through disused clay pits, snapped over jumping hills, scrambled through slippery roots or plowed the ground in the local meadows and forests. Now, please, no fundamental environmental policy discussions, we just did that in the 1970s. Despite “Nuclear power? No thanks”-Sticker on the tank, the license plate was smeared beyond recognition with clay. Helmet up and down through the vegetables so that the toads and amphibians ran away. If a large number of GSG 9 were to be expected nowadays, the smart district forester pulled the plug from the ignition cable with a grin – end of the performance. What remained was a walk on a moped and in rough cross boots.When we hear the word moped we like to indulge in old stories, catch ourselves in nostalgic ones “Everything was better before”-feeling.


Scene: People and their motorcycles


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Saturday was handicraft day to repair the damage in the backyard of the past week. Today the workshop is more like a living room.

Don’t worry about nostalgia, everyone feels the same. If you don’t want to believe it, just park a nice old motorcycle on the road and wait. Less than five minutes later you know the complete life story of your otherwise quiet neighbor. Learned how he used to sit on the NSU tank – or was it an eagle? – Cackled through the village with Grandpa. And Karle, the old man from the butcher’s shop, was the first to have a large BMW in the town – but it was green. So a Zundapp. It doesn’t matter when it’s about old motorcycles, it’s primarily about the good old days. A time when neither cable nor internet brought us the collective atrocities of the world into our living rooms. The world at that time was manageable, the technology as well and tinkering with motorcycles was completely normal. That’s why number four in my fleet is a motorcycle with an ignition switch and a fuel tap, a drum brake and a mechanical tachometer. The monument, an old Honda CB 450 engine, built in 1968, oozes out of the delicate self-made chassis like under a magnifying glass. Just beautiful. It drives too, the Honda racing machine. But I don’t drive it, I just look at it. And sometimes I turn a beautiful new part on the lathe, even though the old one would have done it too. As you can see, you can be pretty crazy without driving.

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