The Strange and Terrible
by Roland Bosma
Inside of every timid, well preserved body is a loathsome monster, an animal lying in the shadow of sanity. Otherwise, why would anyone bolt a hopped up motor to a wobbly bicycle with weak brakes then fly it sideways at 40 miles per hour around a track designed solely for the Gods of the AMA if they were not tormented by some inner demon. And there it is, the starting line in the first heat of Death Race, a mash up of men from every corner and caste of the country over-revving, beating their tiny bicycle engines to death in the hot desert sun. Beasts atop their garage-made bastard machines all of them, waiting baitedly for the flag to drop on this year's race.
There is nothing polite about a filthy re-purposed backyard engine with no exhaust fitted to a 10 dollar thrift store mountain bike; spokes ripping with the first crack of throttle. These are not your fashionable, store-bought, gay electric bikes seen on the boardwalks of California. These are queer perversions of the mad. The mind of a manic tinkerer is only ever able to find inspiration for this type of machine in brief squirts and always at 4am with cups of coffee and cigarette packs littered across a garage floor. With Philistines sleeping all around, his true nature awakens him from the exigencies of existence. And the race worthy motorized bicycle is born.
I met Tim in Madrid, NM. I was riding an old motorcycle on a long back road to Santa Fe. When I first met him he came across as a surly freak, a dusty beat down punk, a bum halfway to crazy with a glare that could cut you open if you forgot to speak with redeeming honesty. He was squatting in a barn buried deep in a motorcycle junk yard south of town with his hot young gypsy wife who was just a kid when he pulled her off the streets of Albuquerque. She was an uncontrollable tramp as fast and fiery as the crotch rocket between her naked legs. Of course that would be the one that Tim had stripped and painted checkerboard flat black just for her. It turns out in a former life, Tim was a hillbilly savant from Kentucky with a big dumb straw hat and bib overalls wrenching in the pits of the AMA Grand Prix motorcycle race circuit. His team was winning too. It was the bike, no, it was the mechanic. Now he was a recluse, a desert rat living on the fringe of society. There was an unspoken bond between us in all of my trips out to see him. We always knew there was something bigger to come of our friendship. That something would become Spooky Tooth Cycles
In 2005, a year after making our first motorized bicycle, I called up the few customers we had at the time and we all rode out 20 miles into the desert mountains outside of Tucson. It was a wild time when no one knew, or even cared, about the legality of a motorized bicycle. To be honest we kind of liked it that way. Who in this dirty old town would mind if we tested gear ratio configurations on nitrous powered bicycles scaring drunks on the street with our strange and terrible machines? So someone whips out a pistol and fires it clean in the air, this is Arizona after all. Our clutches drop like the crack of a whip. We race downtown faster than our wheel bearings can hold passing cars and street lights hitting 50mph downhill. A battle to remain on two-wheels, follow the line and not succumb to the gravel shoulder leading off into the grave arms of a waiting saguaro cactus. I pass my way to the front with the loud drone of mosquitoes close behind. My girlfriend “Disco” and I are shoulder to shoulder until I slow for a traffic light. She won, beating me that first year by seven seconds. Since then, we have been finding ways to make our bikes faster and the race track safer. P1 Race Track in Tucson is a hairpinned dream. Off the starting line the confusion of corners simultaneously fires excitement and nausea as the first knee-slider narrowly wipes out the starting pack.
To win you must find the edge. There is no honest way of explaining where it is because the only people who really find it are the ones who have gone over. And when you do go over the handlebars, it's nice to know that you are on a professional track with medical crew and bright red wavy flags warning others not to run over you. The next motorized bicycle Death Race will be held October 29th, 2011 at the P1 Race Track
- Musselman Honda Circuit – The Roadracing Capitol of the Southwest!
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