The rest of the story: this is not a race story but a riding story. As we all know each of our nicknames have come from memorable episodes while racing, riding or just from life in some cases. Most of you know my friend Brian ?Cactus? Jones, but some of you may not know he has another name
. Those of us who know and appreciate his riding ability know him as Brian?Two Turns? Jones
. This is how he achieved this name.
A few years back we were riding with the Sneakers MC here in Bishop. Cactus and myself were riding Honda CR 500?s at the time, and we were not very good at it
. Another friend, Chad Banta was leading a ride through Fish Slough. Chad reminds me of Travis Livingston, just plain scary fast and he doesn?t even ride all that much 8). Chad was well ahead of us and showing no signs of slowing down. Well Chad?s day ended abruptly when he attempted to make a turn he was going way to fast to make
. The road (yes road) we were on was lined with a salt grass burm about two feet high. You know the kind around a dry lake bed or salt marsh area. The vehicles had burned the road in deep while the clumps of grass line the edge. As we came into the area we could see Chad sitting in the salt grass holding his wrist and looking a little to white. Chad explained he knew he was not going to be able to make the turn he was approaching and attempted to use the lip of salt grass on the edge of the road to jump out of the road and bypass the turn
. Well it didn?t work and he went a$$ over end, breaking his wrist for the second time in as many years. Cactus, myself and several other riders all stopped to check on Chad. Chad had plenty of help and some other riders were on their way to get a truck. The ride continued and since Chad didn?t need us Cactus was the first to go and had a lot of catching up to do on the mighty CR500. So Cactus takes off and I hear the 500 ripping through the gears as I am talking to Chad. For no real reason I look up to check on his progress down the dirt road only to see the mighty CR 500 doing a front flip into the salt grass and my buddy Cactus flying in the air and into the salt grass as well. Astonished
, I jumped up and got on my bike to ride over to Cactus to check on his condition. Yep, you guessed it I rode exactly two turns to get to his position where he had launched the edge of a rock (not intentionally) and went head over heals into the terra! He stood up immediately with a puzzled look on his face, covered in silt
. Looking back on it, I think this is where he first started learning to crash on his right shoulder leading to the surgery needing to be performed recently.
It all worked out, Chad had another surgery on his wrist, Cactus earned another nickname and I get to tell another story, life is good.
So I know I started it, let?s hear from the rest of you. How did the members get their nicknames or tell us a story about giant Viewfinder men lifting bikes above their heads!
Viewfinders MC
