I've been riding dirt bikes since 1970. I have read m/c magazines since then also. I used to read every motorcycle magazine that was published. Cycle, Cycle Guide, Modern Cycle, Popular Cycling, Dirt Bike, MXA, Dirt Cycle, Dirt Rider. I read from cover to cover. I lived, ate, drank, slept motorcycles. I realized real fast that what they, the mags, said really depended on how much advertising was in that mag.
I literally didn't pay attention to what they said and by that, I mean, I bought some real exotic bikes for back in the day and where I lived. I lived in a small town in central Kentucky....90 miles from Louisville, 80 miles to Bowling Green.
We had one motorcycle store in town and it was a Honda/Bridgestone shop in the side of a hardware store. I bought my first new "dirt bike", a Yamaha DT1C from a dealer in Jeffersonville, Indiana. This was the first bike I raced MX on...it beat me to death. I needed a real MX bike. My buddies and I would make the trek up to L-ville/Jeffersonville just about every week. On one trip the dealer in Jville (Greenrose Sports Cycles) had a bunch of Euro MX bikes.
The one that caught my eye was a 71 Rickman Metisse Zunndapp. I decided I was going to trade my Yamaha in for the Rickman....got up there with the Yamaha and they had sold the Rickman. They also had Pentons and Huskys. I opted for the Penton which was, looking back, the smarter choice. But there was no one in my city or even surrounding counties that had a Penton. I won my first MX on that bike. Lots of my friends then bought Pentons.
About 8months later, I stopped by a different bike shop in Louisville and this guy had a DKW with the leading link forks...traded the Penton for that. I had seen pictures of them in races but never had I read a test on one. I was probably the only person in the frickin' state of KY to own one. I raced it for a season until I got a sponsorship on Yamahas and went "mainstream" for awhile. I got tired of mainstream and went to a 73 Bultaco 125 Pursang. Again
I was the only Bultaco rider at most of the races I went to.
So I guess what I am getting around to, is I have always liked exotic bikes and never really paid attention what the mainstream thinks. I like to be different, not one of the masses. When I bought my first GG, there wasn't really even a "dealer". The guy I bought my GG from had been a dealer but had stopped when his son stopped racing. I had heard about GGs, mostly the trials bike but I had never read a test on one of the enduro bikes. I have to say, while I have had some pretty damn good bikes, the GGs I have had have been the finest. KTM would be the last bike I would consider buying and that would only be if there were no GGs, Shercos, Betas, TMs.
I hate to hear that the test that DR did hurt Clay's sales. I've been in this sport for over 40 years and have been around the block a time or two but there are a bunch of young impressionable guys that need to be "accepted".
....and one more little story about California riders.
A few years ago, just before Daytona Bike week, a riding buddy of mine who had ridden in Baja with some guys in Calif. got a call from the same bunch of guys. They would be coming thru Alabama on their way to bike week. They wanted to trail ride here. My buddy asked them how far they wanted to go.
They said "we need at least 85 miles to get a decent workout...." Well my buddy tells me about this and we're thinking "Hell, we don't have 85 miles of trails!" The most we had was maybe 30 miles. Anyhow, they came and we took them to our primo riding area and we hit the trail. We had gone maybe 8 miles and we stopped to wait on a few of them. When they caught up, they were huffin' and puffin' and one of them said, "God, I've never seen so many trees and the trail is so narrow!" They never lasted to see the full 30 miles.
Okay....I'm done
. Things would have been different for the past 4 years ...
