The first thing we did when we reached Daytona Beach was find a car wash and hose everything down. It had taken nearly 30 hours to get there. Four guys in a Pinto towing a snowmobile trailer with three motorcycles on it sounds insane now, but in 1987 it was a dream.

I think it took 33 hours.

Back then, Daytona Beach and the Daytona 200 were Mecca for racing enthusiasts who lived near the Canadian border. Every year we said we were going to go, but it took until 1987 for the planets to align and a plan to finally fall into place.

Four adult men in a 1970s compact car was a brutal way to travel, but we laughed and talked and slept our way through Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. In north Georgia we ran into a bad weather system that soaked us, the car, the bikes—everything. In the middle of the night someone hit a pothole and tore most of the exhaust system off the sacked-out Pinto. We found a hotel and holed up until morning, then found a shop willing to weld it back together and were back on the road just in time for the rain to find us again.

None of us had ever seen an ocean, so there was no turning back. We rode the storm out, windshield wipers clacking tens of thousands of times as we drove south into Florida. Our bodies were twisted into Neanderthal shapes by that tiny car. The bikes and our luggage were soaked. It sounds like a nightmare now, but the moment we hit Daytona Beach and saw Daytona International Speedway, every one of us agreed it was worth it.

We unloaded the bikes at a car wash and started spraying everything down, using vending machine chemicals to polish the motorcycles.

A friendly, thin man with a box van was in the next stall, washing the wheels of his van. It had California plates, and once he saw our tundra plates and snow tires (one a white wall), he wandered over and struck up a conversation.

He let slip that he was a professional racer. He sat on our bikes, pumped the forks, checked tire pressures—which he noticed were frighteningly low.

I can’t imagine how we must have looked to him. Four guys who had driven 30 hours in a Pinto from the top of the country to the bottom, bikes strapped to a snowmobile trailer with hardware-store ratchet straps. At the last minute someone had tossed a piece of thin plywood on the front of the trailer, and I’d spray-painted Daytona or Bust on it.

To him, we must have looked like clueless farm kids. It would have been easy for him to cruelly point that out. Instead, he politely suggested we stop using chain lube on our throttle and clutch cables. After pulling the clutch lever on the FZ600, he walked to his box van and then handed us a proper can of cable lube.

Every detail about how good he was as a racer had to be pulled out of him like molars. He didn’t brag. It took ten minutes to learn that he'd won professional races and was at Daytona to race in the 250 class.

He was thin, like most of us were in 1987, but he walked like a cat and never looked down. Lantern-jawed, overwhelmingly friendly he didn’t flinch when someone pulled their wet jeans from a suitcase and hung them over the car wash sign to dry.

He’d raced at places we’d only read about in magazines—Willow Springs, Riverside, Sears Point. He never volunteered results. We asked the usual dumb fanboy questions: What’s it like to drag your knee? Have you ever crashed? Do you know Kenny Roberts?

His mechanic needed to change wheels, so they unloaded one of the two 250s from the van. Once it was on the stand, we swarmed it and our new friend. Slicks? What are they like? Two-stroke? What premix ratio do you use? He answered every question patiently.

He was an incredible ambassador for the sport. Anyone else might have found another car wash once four Minnesota guys emerged from a Pinto and started hanging wet clothes everywhere. He stayed.

His mechanic—who we’d later learn was probably the great Roland Cushway—had been asleep in the passenger seat and finally climbed out. He took one look at us and got back in the van.

Our new friend invited us to watch him race at the Speedway.

His bike wore a number one plate. That didn’t strike us as odd. Anytime we drag raced or slapped numbers on our bikes, it was always a number one—even if it was just white shoe polish.

Fifteen minutes later, he mentioned almost casually that he was the reigning 250 national champion. That number one plate was as real as our wet jeans.

As his bike was loaded back into the van, someone offered him their name. Only then that our new friend mentioned his.

Donny Greene.

We were almost struck blind to realize he was a three time national 250 champion.

We were stunned. A three-time national champion whose exploits we’d read about in Cycle News for years had just spent a chunk of an afternoon talking to four soaking-wet Minnesota rubes in a Daytona car wash parking lot.

Years later, when I worked in the paddock and interviewed Donny Greene, I never had the nerve to tell him I was one of those guys who crawled out of that Pinto in Daytona. He was always smiling, always enthusiastic I didn't want to spoil his day.

Donny Greene passed away a few days ago. He was a rider and a champion—but more than that, he was an ambassador for roadracing when he had absolutely no reason to be.

Godspeed, Donny.