The US and Canada are huge. Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, people who wanted to race motorcycles solved the problem of how to get themselves and their bikes, tools, and spares to the races by owning vans. One weekend it was Mosport, near Toronto, Canada. Next weekend it was VIR down in Virginia. And the west coast nationals. And Daytona. That would be a lot of $$$ boarding passes. Put it all in a van. Thirty-cent gasoline plus youthful energy got you there.
These travelers worked in dealerships as mechanics or parts-men, or had the well-paying industrial jobs that were plentiful then. None of those people needed videos to help them operate a screwdriver.

Life in vans. How do you sleep? Scrunch yourself forward, using one fist to save your lower back, so your head has something to rest against? Be a man and with saw, hammer and nails build a proper bed behind the seats? How about not sleeping at all - Saturday at the races was mostly adrenaline-driven anyway. Mixing oil into fuel. Airing up tires. Finding the dreaded bathrooms. Trackburgers.

A submarine vet of WW II described his similar life: “The close presence of unwashed human bodies, the persistence of other men’s farts, and the smell of fuel.”

The driver keeps himself awake by:
1) driving fast enough to scare himself awake.
2) playing his awful music at top volume. Could headphones be the answer? It was worse: he tried to sing along.
3) having dust at the ready—for medicinal purposes only.

We mostly just loaded up, making sure there was no styrofoam to make that awful squeaking, drove to the destination and went to sign-in.

The kitty system. Each occupant puts a twenty on the engine cover. When it’s gone we put twenty more. Divide the remainder equally once home again. Those weekends cost less than $100.

My first van trip was the worst—a well-worn Thames with front wheel wobble at 45 mph. If you stayed on it, speed would creep-creep up until the paint-shaker action died away. The little engine that couldn't. The only way to sleep was to slide yourself in end-wise from the rear doors, between the bikes, and then be shut in. Heat and vibration.

We were trying to get to Vineland, NJ, one of the many oval-plus squiggles tracks.

Stopping at a service plaza on the NJ turnpike we saw Kurt Liebmann and his AMOL Precision entourage, arrayed in a large banquette. We approached in proper reverence and asked the way to the track.

They stared at us.

Among our party was a young fellow who could do nothing in the morning until he'd had orange juice. He let his besties call him Den-Den, and had one of those Salmaggi Parilla 250 singles with the cam half-way up the cylinder, allowing use of shorty pushrods. Arriving at Vineland, the others went to sign-in and I drove Den-Den to a diner for his orange juice.

Remember maps? We'd found our own way. Not so many years later Kurt’s dad Oscar was mounting a Krober CDI on his painstakingly hand-machined BMW Rennsport. Knowing we were by then running the 500 triple with a Krober (early no-good type), he asked me for some clarifications. It was my pleasure to give them.

What was no good was that the rectifier diodes had been molded into the three-armed stator unit, which mounted on the engine. Semiconductors do poorly close to boiling water temperature, and the first evidence would be a single loud POP, generally near the end of the straight, on WOT. Next lap there might be two such pops.

Finally the bike would stop.

This isn't actually a road trip, unless you'd consider it a road to understanding. Also with us that time was Andres Lascoutx (Honda Benly 125 twin). Very fast, apparently without effort. He made up his mind that weekend that the left-over (the buyer had disappeared) Yamaha TD1-B that John Jacobson had in stock (at Boston Cycles) was the bike he should have. It was $1147, plus destination and set-up.

This was the door to the two-stroke world, opening in front of me.