When to quit racing and track riding?

I did most of my racing when i was in my late 30s. By then I had stopped crashing. Because my ex had no interest in what I did, on occasion I loaded the bike and drove to race meetings at 4 in the morning, on my own. I did not race the Seeley 850 until 2002, at Mount Gambier which is about 400 Km from home. But my mate lived halfway there, so that made it easier I was in my 60s then and won a couple of races. When I was in my early 70s, my mate came this way, and helped me race about 3 times at Winton. The last time I raced I was better than ever, but that was probably due to my heart and stroke medication. I have a need to do it again, but my mate has died and my wife does not want me to race. I have never been scared of dying or afraid of pain. I used to work where I could be instantly vaporised. When you adjust to that, nothing much worries you. You just sometimes feel a bit uneasy.
Another of my faster friends said to me 'you idiot, you have left it too late'. For me racing has only ever been about the bike - my interest in building it and developing it. I am surprised that it turned out to be so good.
Norton's 850 Commando motor is excellent. In a Mk3 Seeley frame, it is a whiz.
I still intend to do some on-board video to document what it is like. So I will have to start exercising again.

There is a thing about the 850 motor in the Seeley frame. I increased the trail when I changed the fork yokes to stop the bike from mishandling. While I was riding the bike, I found it was much better when I got back on the gas halfway through a corner. But I did not suspect I could just flick the bike into a corner while braking and get straight back onto the gas and power all the way through the corner. That is very difficult to beat. It is not something I would ever have tried to do with a featherbed frame.

It's not only when to give up racing, knowing when it's time to give up riding/driving as well, as people get older the mind goes a bit funny and start to do strange things as they age, many years ago I was teaching my oldest daughter how to drive it was her first time so we were driving around the local entertainment centre car park when a car parked beside the railway station at the end of the car park we were doing a U turn when a old gentleman waved us down, he was completely lost and was heading up the coast, the main highway was beside the entertainment centre so we phoned the police and they ran his number plate and got in contact with his wife, she told them he suffers from Dementia and had found the hidden car keys, told her he was going to the shops for milk, they lived way over the other side of town.
The police phoned me up and told me the son will come over and pick him up and asked if I could stay with him which I had no problem at all, we both sat with him for a few hours before the son and his family turned up, it was interesting as he told us about some of his life in the army during the war he was being trained to drive tanks but the war ended before his training had finished, after 2 hours the family turned up, they wanted him to jump in their car but he said no and he would follow them home, talking to his son they been hiding his car keys for some time now because of his Dementia and I said well maybe it's time to get rid of the car.
What really got up my nose was the time that my daughter and myself spent helping the old gentleman out we didn't even get a thank you from the son or the family, but later that night the police phone us up to thank us and told us he made it home OK.
It will come a time when we all will have to give up, but it will happen to some a bit quicker than others and sometimes the brain will keep telling you it's still OK but everyone around you think otherwise.

Ashley

Dementia sucks. Trauma or heart failure are better options (IMO)

TomU said:

Dementia sucks

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Yeah you not wrong there seen my dear old dad go through it went down hill real quick.

acotrel said:

I have road raced when I had influenza. Nothing could be worse than that. My silly mate still rides At the Broadford Bonanza and wins some. The other day he had a breakdown. I told him 'you cannot expect to go on forever. He asked 'Why not ?' and I could not think of a reason.,
I can still drive my car, so I can easily road race a motorcycle - it is all automatic.
None of us want to die of cancer in a hospital bed.

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i tell people i want the last ten seconds of my life to be at 140-plus mph. not a morbid thing, just a preference if i get to choose.

dorset said:

i tell people i want the last ten seconds of my life to be at 140-plus mph. not a morbid thing, just a preference if i get to choose.

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Problem is sometimes you just won't know when your time is up, it's out of our hands.

Unlike the salt racers at Bonneville I used to do Land Speed Racing on tarmac over a standing start measured mile at various venues here in the UK. I had one mishap when I collided with a piece of track furniture on my modded road bike and ended up writing the bike off and booked myself a brief visit to a local hospital. That didn’t put me off and I was rebuilt and racing again in 3 months.

However, one occasion I was now racing my turbo Hayabusa and slowly acclimatising to trying to wrestle well in excess of 500hp where it would either wheelspin, wheelie or a combination of both at over 210mph. I’d had an exciting run and the bike was now parked in the paddock cooling down, and to allow me to collect my thoughts. I stood at the end of the straight at the finish line to watch some of the bikes come through, talking to the wife of one of the riders, when as he approached the line his rear tyre delaminated, the wheel locked solid and he was thrown off and slid rolling down the runway. Luckily he was found to be alive and kicking when the ambulance did their thing, although he needed to be extracted directly to hospital where he spent rather a long time recovering, needing extensive plastic surgery to repair him.

I felt then that was my wake up call, quit while I was still able, and that was my last race.

I never worry about getting dementia. With your brain, it is a matter of 'use it, or lose it.
When I was a kid in high school, we had 6 o'clock closing at out local pub. I think my father only ever came home from the pub, so he could argue with me. In those days I always had two jobs after school, which paid for my hobby of building old motorcycles. THe result was I failed half of my Matriculation exams and spent the next ten years at night school studying chemistry, while working in laboratories as a technical officer. I moved onto jobs in defence factories where I was involved in developing materials and processes, and in quality and safety, mainly in leadership roles.
So my whole life has been devoted to development. I always have plenty to think about. There days I spend a lot of time helping my grandkids learn to think logically. I also spend time on social media getting political.
In Australia, we will never get back to manufacturing hardware, but that does not mean we cannot have fun.
There is one other thing I would say - I know how lucky I have been to live when I have lived. We have probably seen the world at it's best
My 3 baby grand-daughters are going to be formidable. I know what my achievements have been, so I am happy.

The most precious memories I have are of motorcycle road racing. Get as much of it as you can. The more of it you do, the less likely you are to die. The only time it is really dangerous is prior to your first crash. For me crashing is not an option - it simply cannot happen - I have too many ways of surviving - all learned from experience. My wife does not understand that - she worries too much.
Always make sure the tank on your bike is securely strapped down onto the frame. If you get into the lock to lock tank slapper, you need to grab the tank immediately and wait until it is safe to put your hands back onto the bars. There is usually plenty of room in front of you when you are racing.

acotrel said:

I never worry about getting dementia. With your brain, it is a matter of 'use it, or lose it.......

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While there is a lot of truth to that statement, there are also plenty of other factors that can come into play as we get older, so just writing dementia off as happening from lack of use is inaccurate and a little callous. My mother ended up with Parkinson's (no history of it on either side of the family), it ravaged her body before it was done and it definitely affected her mind. Cj

Neighbor in San Antonio Texas whose father lived with them in a separate small house on their property, drove out for coffee in San Antonio one morning. After two days of searching, he was found approx 400 miles away in Oklahoma! OK state trooper had stopped him for "driving erratically." He told the trooper he had just left the house and was trying to find a place to get a cup of coffee...

He had been a life long motorcycle rider but his daughter had taken away his bike a couple of years earlier. Of course, she took away his car keys following the OK incident. He was in his early 70's.

To correct my first sentence in post #72:

Neighbor in San Antonio Texas whose father lived with them in a separate small house on their property, told me that her father drove out for coffee...

It seems that I have been giving up passions for some time now. I am only in my 60s but having COVID twice has done a number on my strength and stamina. It has been coming back but I fear that the strength I took for granted might just be gone for good.

I recognized the issue of "giving things up" several years ago when I was playing bass for a cover band. I love playing out but it requires load-in and load-out of a lot of heavy equipment, three hours of stage time followed by a drive home at 3 in the morning and a last load-out of my own gear. I remember the gig when it came to me that I just couldn't do it any more. I miss it but it's just not possible.

My days of riding on the track ended when I took my doctors advice earlier this year that with osteoporosis in my spine a fall , even a small one , might not end well. No regrets, I started racing in the mid sixties including ten Manx Grand Prix with no serious injuries but lots of good memories.

Big_Jim59 said:

It seems that I have been giving up passions for some time now. I am only in my 60s but having COVID twice has done a number on my strength and stamina. It has been coming back but I fear that the strength I took for granted might just be gone for good.

I recognized the issue of "giving things up" several years ago when I was playing bass for a cover band. I love playing out but it requires load-in and load-out of a lot of heavy equipment, three hours of stage time followed by a drive home at 3 in the morning and a last load-out of my own gear. I remember the gig when it came to me that I just couldn't do it any more. I miss it but it's just not possible.

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I suggest we probably all need to think about what keeps us alive. Since my wife told me she does not want me to race again, I have found living has become more difficult. I have 3 lovely young set-grasnd daughter who love me, and they will never see me race. So they will never really know what I am about. Racing for me was never about winning races. Only ever about improving the motorcycle. I have succeeded in making it the best in it's race class, but they will not see me prove that.
If I can convince myself it is a minor issue, I might become happier. But I have spent my whole life convincing myself to believe bullshit.

Al put a normal Norton gear box in and set your bike up for the road and you could ride your bike to visit the grand kids anytime.
There is aways a way without stopping riding.

Ash, I cannot think of as good reason to do that when I can drive my car and stay dry. We all have reasons for doing things. When I wad 14, my uncle whom I had helped rebuild his Triumph Thunderbird, took me to see Geaff Duke race the Gilera 4s at Fisherman's Bend. From that time on, I was obsessed. When I started road racing, I bought a bike one of my mates had built and raced. It almost killed in at Bathurst in about 1958. I raced it for about 12 years from late 60s onwards. I was fairly successful in All-powers races when I started to get sense out of the bike. I sold it back to the mate who had built it. Then I started to develop the Seeley 850. In all those years, I only won two races - in both I was riding two-strokes - that was easy stuff. Getting a twin cylinder four-stroke going, is much more difficult, but gives a greater sense of achievement. That sense of achievement is addictive. In every job I have had in my professional career as a scientist, I have always achieved. If you look at what Molnar Summerfield and Hemmings do - most of it is definitely not about making money.
The fastest G50 Matchless in Australia was 4 valve and built by Alec Henderson. If you bought a 4 valve Jawa Speedway motor and a featherbed frame, you would be there already.
My Seeley 850 would make shit of a road bike. I'd be better-off with .a Honda CT110. it would handle the traffic better.

MY problem is that when the fuel line came adrift in my last race, I had learned the way to use the bike's handling, and I had accelerated under and past the three leaders and was well in front with all the tight parts of the circuit in front of me. I had them cold. There is no way thy could ever have caught me. 1100cc methanol-fuelled CB750 Hondas do not have the necessary 140 BJHP to get down the straights fast enough.. I know they must have got a shock. But Rex Wolfenden is worth beating properly. Just getting in front does not prove much even if it really happens quickly. At one stage there were 14 of those Hondas in Period 4 Historic Allpowers. They dominated and killed the class.

When you race, speeds are always relative. But there usually two types of parts to every race circuit. What you lose on the merry-go-round, you pick up on the hurdy gurdy. There is usually a choice - handling or top speed. I would not ride my bike at Phillip Island. I don't think I could gear it high enough, and the corners would be frightening. If I could not keep it pulling, it would never get around.

acotrel said:

Ash, I cannot think of as good reason to do that when I can drive my car and stay dry.

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Well that is where you and I deifier Al I live to ride and have always had a bike since I was 15, dirt bikes and British road bikes and not afraid to ride on the road, I am old school and have been out on the bikes in all sorts of weather, I prefer riding to driving anytime even in winter, I clock up more miles on the bikes than I do in my Land Rove or the cars I have owned as well driving trucks for my job when I was working, I couldn't go a week without being on a bike, at lease I ride without thinking about riding, I still ride hard and fast (out of the way of course) on my powerful dirt bike and my road bikes, nothing better than the freedom of the road and the bush, racing around a circuit to me is not good enough to get my fix,
So how long has it been since you been out on your Seeley, it would make a great road bike as your motor is basically stock and in a great frame, my hot 850 Featherbed with a stock Commando GB is great on the road and works well.
A lot of ex racers have turned their old race bikes into great road bikes when they have decided to give up racing and they get to ride anytime, but most race's also ride on the road.

Ashley