When the Checkers show up at a race, they pit together, away from other clubs. They hang around with each other, line up on the starting line in a group, and party together. THE CHECK CHASE "The novices will hate it; the
amateurs will have their eyes yanked wide open
and the experts will love it." Those were the
words said about the famed Check Chase. MORE STORIES! To
un-nerve the competition, the Check-ers have
gone to some extreme lengths. Once, at a
hare scrambles in the late '60s, Doyle Fields
and Marvin Steele were no- Then, mere minutes before the banner was raised, two figures lit-erally dropped out of the skies, with para-chutes billowing out above them. Fields and Steele had just parachuted out of an air-plane and landed right next to their bikes. They dumped the chutes and hopped on their bikes, leaving stunned riders gasping. The story is told of more "air support" in the early '60s. For a period of about two years, a Checker who was a pilot would fly over the course and find the "good lines." Then he'd fly down over the racers, spot the ones with a large fluorescent "X" on their helmets and buzz down low, then dart off in the "good" direction. The "X" riders would follow the plane and allegedly save quite a bit of distance in the process. The only problem was that often the plane would fly so slow that it would scare the riders half-way into the next county. At a national TT race at Ascot in the late '60s, Eddie Mulder and Skip Van Leeuwen were having a great race, when Skip's motor blew up. Eddie, in keeping with the purest tradition of the Checkers, stopped on the last lap, told Skip to hop on the back of his bike, wheelied across the finish line … and won the race in the process. Eddie
Mulder was always a wild one. Once, he ran
a desert race with a huge question mark on
his jersey, and burned donuts around each
and every check worker during the race, and
still won. The race was the leg-endary Big Bear run in 1960, and Eddie was only 16 years old at the time. It was a weird race. In his own words, "I was sitting in the outdoor [outhouse] and the race started. My old man went nuts. I jumped on my Royal Enfield and rode sort of nuts. I was com-pletely over my head, but won the race overall." THE STANDARD OF EXCELLENCE FOR
DECADES Since 1951, the Checkers have been the dominant force in District 37 (AMA) desert racing. They've won numerous club cham-pionships and many #1 plate holders have been members. A few of their accomplishments:
The list goes on... SO YOU WANT TO BE A
CHECKER... First off, you better be fast. You make your intentions known, and if everything works out, you get placed on a probation period. If this works out, you can then be-come a prospective member. To become a full-fledged member, you'll have to wait around until one of the regular members be-comes inactive, or quits, or dies; then they vote on you. One
dissenting vote means you are not a member.
The Checkers say they do it this way to keep
a tight-knit attitude. During your prospective
period, you'll be expected to ride a certain
number of events and earn a minimum of points. EVEN MORE STORIES! Ted
Lapadaikis, the old DKW distributor for the
West Coast, was a Checker, and he used to
field the fastest Deeks in the world. Once,
he challenged Jimmy Camaret (another Checker)
to a drag race. Jimmy laughed. He was riding
a brutal 400 Husky and Ted was on a 200 DKW. The Deek simply blew the Husky away, and Ted just laughed. Rumors had it that Ted had figured out a way to make the Deeks close to 350cc, or maybe even more. He also had access to all the trick Six Days parts. Small wonder, then, that the "small-bore" bikes started to get overall wins. Remember
the scene from On Any Sun-day where the camera
is on J.N. Roberts as he's streaking across
the desert at a high rate of speed? Well,
right on his tail was Jimmy Camaret, riding
a big 650 Triumph. Jimmy was getting ready
to put the pass on J.N., because J.N. had
his Husky all wound out, and Jimmy had just
slipped into top gear and was closing fast. Out of the clear blue sky (literally), a heli-copter dropped down to film J.N. and threw up a giant cloud of dust that made Jimmy drop back. The chopper was only 15 feet off the ground, and every time Jimmy went left, the chopper went left, and when he went right, same-o. Jimmy finally had enough of the airborne dust and was forced to fall back. NEVER SAY QUIT! During
the '69 or '70 (dates are fuzzy) Barstow-to-Vegas
race, Rich Thorwaldson was leading the race
on his BSA/Rickman/ Westlake, and pulled
into the pits for gas. The
gas vapors curled over the edge of the tank,
and the bike suddenly went up in flames!
Rich jumped off the bike and it fell to the
ground. The crew put the fire out with their
bare hands, literally burying the Beezer
under the sand. When the fire was out, the bike was a crispy critter, and Thor figured it was all over. No way. "Kick it over and get going!" yelled Heron. Thor booted the BSA and it lit off. He took off, promptly got two flats, and still somehow managed to finish and salvage a third overall. Early '70s. Stoddard Wells Road in the Mojave Desert. There was a five-mile run to the smoke bomb, but the crafty Check-ers had thoroughly scoped out the terrain, and found a smooth, fast fire road two miles off the course. They all lined up and blitzed it off to the bomb via the fire road. At the bomb, an estimated 15 to 20 Checkers were there before anyone else, adding immeasura-bly to the legend. MORE FAMOUS NAMES Howard
Hawks, the movie director, was also a Checker,
and was good pals with John Wayne. Once,
the Checkers wanted to have a race go across
some land that was on a Ma-rine base in the
desert. Hawks called Wayne, who rode a few
times with the Checkers, and The Duke placed
a call to some friends in the Pentagon. Legend has it that Clark Gable was a Checker. Famed flattracker Gene Romero also wore the black-and-white colors.
THEN CAME BILL Bill Saltzman has been under fire off and on for a few years for "bending the rules." I raced against Bill for many years, and can tell you that he is a rocket, and does not need to cheat to win. Once,
however, at the SoCal grand prix, I was part
and parcel to actual course cut-ting with
Bill. It was a LeMans start. We ran to the
bikes and my KTM oddly took about 20 kicks
to get fired up. I was last off the line
and furious with myself for not putting in
a fresh plug before the race. I
wailed down the pavement section lead-ing
to the dirt, and saw Bill picking his bike
up off the ground and banging his bars straight.
I clutched in and waited until Bill got going
again, and followed him. A few miles later, he darted off to the left, picked up a sand wash and flew! Ten minutes later we crested over a rise, and there were the leaders. We pulled in about fourth or fifth, and proceeded to ride as hard as we could. Bill won and I got second, I think. Yes, I "bent" the rules a bit. Sue me. Bill recalls his early days with the Checkers. When he got his prospective jumper, he found two pockets on the inside of the jumper. The left pocket had some pills in it, and it was labeled "To go fast, take these." In the right pocket were some more pills. This pocket read: "Get hurt-take these." By the way, all of the "pills" were common aspirins. Bill recalls the times when they would rib-bon the course on a false trail. Riders would sneak out the day (or night) before, and scout the course. At pre-dawn, the Check-ers would pick up the false ribbon and re-lay the correct ribbon. Then, when the race started, numerous riders would zoom off on the wrong trail, leaving a cluster of Check-ers in the lead on the right course. Good fun! Then there was the time the Checkers held a race, and Bill decided to have a real twist on the start. The banner was raised, and it sat there and waited to be dropped, signal-ing the start, but instead of dropping the banner, they ignited a fuse which in turn lit off a bunch of dynamite under the banner. The banner blew to smithereens, and the en-tire line of racers sat there, stunned. Except for the Checkers, who charged to the bomb like mad dogs after a pussycat. Bill was under heavy fire for cheating, and the club decided to do something weird to counteract this. So, about ten riders all put on jerseys that had "SALTZMAN" emblazoned across the back. This drove people nuts, as Bill was seen everywhere, doing ev-erything. Bill says he has more fun working the races than anything else. Once, he was work-ing a check and an exhausted rider pulled up and asked, "How far to the finish line?" Bill responded, "About five miles." The guy roared off, refreshed. Thereby the legend of "five Checker miles" was created. The ac-tual distance left was 48.5 miles. Thus, five Checker miles is equal 'to 48.5 real miles. BITS OF HISTORY Red Ludford told us about the early days. The Checkers started racing in 1951 but were not much of a force. Then, about three years later, the top ten finishers in a big race were all Checkers. The legend started. FAST EDDIE Eddie Mulder typified the wild and row-dy attitude of the Checkers. While most of the Checkers were desert racers, Eddie did it all, and specialized in flat-track and TT racing. Eddie loved to blow people's minds. Once, during a TT race at Irwindale, he stopped during the main event, while his mechanic handed him a hot dog. After a bite or two, Eddie continued onward … and yes, he did win the main event. Eddie says he did this to tweak his buddy, Skip van Leeuwen. In
'66 or '67 (again, dates are subject to lapses),
a slew of European riders were in-vited to
Ascot Park to put on a riding dem-onstration
for the packed stands. The entire CZ and
Husky teams were there in force, as well
as several English riders on Greeves and
Triumph Metisse machines. A.J. Agajanian, the owner of Ascot, turned to Eddie, and said, "Here's a spare bike from Torsten Hallman. Why don't you go out and kick their butt?" So Eddie lined up against Roger DeCoster, Joel Robert, a bunch of Swedes and Englishmen, and let them all go into the first turn. By turn three, Eddie had slipped by all of them to take the lead. Like he said, "They didn't know how to slide on hard-packed surfaces." Eddie went on to win the exhibition race by a land-slide on the borrowed Husky. Later, he noted: "They're nice guys … good racers … and they invited me to race a motocross next Sunday." That next Sunday, they "put a squish on me," said Eddie. "I pulled the holeshot, and then when they hit the bumps I might as well have parked it. Those guys were rockets!" THE BOTTOM LINE They've been accused of being
cheaters of bending the rules to win … of be-ing
elitist … of being arrogant. However, the true
bottom line is this: The Checkers exist to win.
They know the desert better than anyone else … and
do their home-work. Who
was the fastest Checker ever? Some say that
Bob Ewing was the best during his time. Few
will argue that J.N. Roberts was the King
of the Desert during his reign. Now? There's a fresh crop of Checkers, and all of them run up front, in the tense air of the leaders. They race to win, live to win and ride to win. They are a tight-knit group, driven by the need to be the best. You can accuse them of bending the rules, but you cannot accuse them of being slow. It's estimated that ev-ery charge of cheating leveled against the Checkers is based on 99 percent envy. Bob Heron put it all into perspective: "Be-ing a Checker is like being a member of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table." |
