Today in motorcycle history, October 6, 1956

  
  

  Speedway fans pack Manchester's Hyde Road Stadium to watch Peter Craven win the 2nd leg of the 1956 British Match Race Championship, the coveted "Golden Helmet" Trophy.

  Belle Vue Aces legend Peter Craven defeats Wembley Lion's Brian 'Nipper' Crutcher to take a step closer to his first Golden Helmet in front of over 38,000 fans.



  Peter Craven competed for the Golden Helmet British Match Race Championship every year from 1956.  He would end the 1959 season as the holder of  'The Helmet', taking it against Sweden's Ove Fundin. 1959 turned into his banner year as he would win the Northern Cup at Belle Vue, the Internationale Derby at Ipswich, the Pride of the East at Norwich, the Tom Farndon Memorial Trophy at New Cross and Pride of the Midlands at Leicester. 


  Peter Craven’s final race was against the Edinburgh Monarchs at Edinburgh’s Meadowbank Stadium on September 20, 1963. As he closed in on the race leader, Monarch George Hunter, Hunter’s engine failed. Craven ran into the fence rather than hit the fallen Hunter. Rushed to the hospital, he did not regain consciousness and died later that night. Speedway lost one of it's most well-liked and well-respected riders. He was 29 years old.

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Today in motorcycle history, October 5, 1975

   




  

  Elvis is photographed leaving Graceland on his then favorite toy, a VW trike.

  Elvis owned/rode two one-off Volkswagon trikes. Both built by another legend, Ed Roth. The first one was nicknamed 'American Beetle' and powered by a 1600cc EMPI-powered VW engine, custom molded body, must-have white seat and 4" over springer front forks. 

  The second trike (top pics) was built around a 1957 1192cc Beetle engine, the three-wheeler featured a four-speed tranny, VW independent rear suspension, rear-mounted drum brakes, Honda front-forks and 5lbs of lead to keep it balanced.

 






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Today in motorcycle history, October 4, 1970

  Janis Joplin dies.

  Check back tomorrow to read about Janis Joplin and her biker connectiion with 'Freewheelin' Frank' and 'Sweet William'.  

    


  

  

  Part II

  Janis Joplin was a favorite of the Hells Angels since her Big Brother & the Holding Company days. The HA put on numerous shows in San Francisco with Big Brother that also included The Merry Pranksters, Blue Cheer, The Diggers, etc. And let's not forget their 1967 album "Cheap Thrills" with 'Approved By Frisco Hells Angels' on the front cover. The first public appearance of her band Full Tilt Boogie in 1970 she played a show for the them for only $260, Janis exclaimed to the journalist Al Aronowitz "Two hundred and sixty fucking dollars! Man, I could make $260 a minute but the Hells Angels are friends of mine." 

  From the bands relationship with the Angels two other relationships were cemented - Janis and her sometime, on-again, off-again boyfriend Frank 'Freewheelin' Frank' Reynolds and Bill 'Sweet William' Fritsch, both San Francisco HA.

  According to Aronowitz... "Janis was Sweet William's idea of a lady. 

  I don't know whether they ever shared the same motorcycle seat but the way people talk, you'd think that Sweet William always bowed with his hand over his heart every time Janis walked by.  

  Sweet William had a lot of style, even if it was the kind you picked up working 12 years on the docks as a longshoreman.  Otherwise, Sweet William had all the tenderness of a dump truck.  His hair was long and black. There was a satanic goatee on his chin.  His face had a way of making you think there was a knife clenched between his teeth.  Sweet William was a Hells Angel.  Janis loved them all. 

  They'd met a long time before, after Janis first came up to San Francisco from Port Arthur, Texas, hanging out in Haight-Ashbury, looking for a band to ball.  Sweet William was busy helping organize the Diggers then, a band of hippie thieves who used to rob the wholesale commission markets of beef and vegetables so they could give free meals to all the freaked-out kids roaming the streets. Later he joined the Hells Angels and became vice president of the San Francisco club. 

  "Oooowwhheeee!" you could hear him saying after watching Janis sing.  'she's so beautiful and loose!  She makes her voice sound like a Harley-Davidson Seventy-Four tear-assing a warp in the continuum.  Pearl's always in fourth gear and don't give a good goddamn whose nickel-dime mind she bombs."   


  To Sweet William, Janis was a lady.  The last I heard of him, he was shot in the back of the head during a gunfight after stopping in for a drink at a friendly neighborhood bar in Fresno.  He had parked his bike outside. He wasn't looking for trouble.  He was alone with his girlfriend but he was wearing his colors. He was paralyzed afterwards with the bullet still in his brain.  It happened on the very day that they scattered Janis' ashes from the Golden Gate Bridge."


  And then there's Texas biker, Rick Fairless, who has done both panhead and shovelhead pscychodelic Janis Joplin Full Tilt Boogie bikes based on her 1965 Porsche 356C Cabriolet.

   Today in motorcycle history proudly supports the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD). www.nabd.org.uk

Today in motorcycle history, September 28- October 3, 2015

  

  

  One last 2015 vacation, 'Today...' taking in an early Fall swapmeet in Connecticut.  Searching for cheap parts and good beer.

  Today in motorcycle history proudly supports the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD). www.nabd.org.uk

Today in motorcycle history, September 25, 1940

  


  

 
  

  AMA Grand National Champion Mert Lawwill is born in Boise, Idaho.

   Inspired by watching Portland's TT racer Eugene Thiessen ("I worshipped the ground he walked on.") and with help from Harlan Woods and his Boise BSA shop, Mert began his racing career on local Northwest TT tracks.

  He moved to California in 1961 and after tasting success in the amateur ranks, he turned pro in 1963. Harley-Davidson recognized his burgeoning talent and in 1964 they signed him to a factory contract. With the factory behind him Lawwill's career took off.

  After finishing on the podium numerous times in 1964 and 1965, the 'Boise Scrambler' finally won his first AMA National at the famous Sacramento Mile on September 19, 1965. That Sacramento Mile victory would be the first of 15 Grand National wins for Lawwill.

  In 1969, Mert was crowned the AMA Grand National Champion plus, voted the AMA's 'Most Popular Rider of the Year'. But, he is perhaps best known for being one of the featured riders of the 1971 Steve McQueen movie, "On Any Sunday". The movie chronicled Lawwill's bid to defend his AMA Grand National title during the 1970 racing season.

  By the time Lawwill hung up his racing leathers in 1977, he had amassed an incredible 161 career AMA Grand National finishes during his 15-year racing career.

  Mert Lawwill was inducted in the AMA Hall of Fame in 1998.

  Today in motorcycle history proudly supports the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD). www.nabd.org.uk

Today in motorcycle history, September 24, 1960

  

  After trying all their patience, drawing both blood and gasps, the strength-sapping 35th International Six Day Trials (ISDT) race at Bad Aussee in Austria comes to an close. 

  After 1200 miles through swamps, streams, rockbeds and forests, the six-day race against time known as the "Olympics of Motorcycling" comes to a close.

  England's hard-riding ISDT legend Eric Chilton straddled, stood on, pushed and pulled his Triumph to a Gold Medal as member of the British Trophy Team.

  Eric Chilton, "A quiet man from the south Midlands" rode in the ISDT from 1954 to 1965 winning five Gold Medals, one Silver and one Bronze. The first three years as a privateer then riding for Great Britain from 1959 to 1965.


 The biggest yearly event in Bad Aussee occurs on Faschingsdienstag (Shrove Tuesday), when the Flinserln dress up in sequined costumes and parade through town to announce the coming of spring. Children recite old rhymes to the Flinserln and are rewarded with nuts or sweets. The Flinserln are accompanied by the Zacharin, who keep spectators in line by waving pig bladders on sticks and occasionally rapping people on the head with them. The celebration is rounded off by the Trommelweiber (Drum Women). The Trommelweiber are a group of men dressed in women's nightgowns, who go from inn to inn banging on drums, pots and pans, and enjoy the free food and beer. Really.





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Today in motorcycle history, September 23, 1973

  

  

  Chas Mortimer wins the 125cc Class Spanish Grand Prix at Circuito del Jarama in Madrid, Spain.

  Charles 'Chas' Mortimer has his hand's full in Madrid as he wins the 125cc, comes in third in the 250cc and barely misses the podium with a fourth place finish in the 500cc Class.

  Chas began his racing career at Brands Hatch in 1965 at sixteen on a 250cc Greeves borrowed from his dad's racing school (Charles Mortimer Race School) based there.

  In a racing career that would span twenty years Chas Mortimer would win FIM Grand Prix races in the 150, 250, 350, 500 and 750 World Championship classes.

  His maternal grandfather was the chief test pilot for Vickers Armstrong in Weybridge and flew the first test flight on the Spitfire. He was also the pilot who did all the tests with Barnes Wallace on the bouncing bomb, a weapon that succeeded in destroying the Ruhr dams (Operation Chastise) with the No. 617 RAF Squadron in 1944. 

  Today in motorcycle history proudly supports the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD). www.nabd.org.uk