In 1978 I was one of the first people in the north end of Seattle to buy one of the new Suzuki GS-1000s. This was the bike that the magazines were raving about back in that day.  It was smooth, had (for then) world class handling and turn an 11.8 second quarter mile. The same year Yamaha introduced the shaft drive XS-11 which was perhaps a touch quicker in the quarter but was big, heavy and could be scary to ride.

Not too long after the 1000 was released, Cycle World magazine’s cover story was “Taking it to the Tens.” They had the Yoshamura crew modify a GS-1000 and a well known builder modify Kawasaki’s Z1-R then ran them off to see which bike could turn a ten second quarter. I was operating an automotive machine shop at the time and just needed an excuse to pull my new 1000 apart. The idea of a ten second street bike was huge and that’s all that I needed. The motor came out and apart.

When I was done the crank had been welded, the block re-sleeved and a set of 1175cc pistons put in. I put in stainless 40mm and 32.5mm Manley valves, dialed in a set of Andrews cams, ported the head and installed a set of 29mm smoothbore carbs. I modified a Hooker pipe to get more ground clearance and replaced the wire wheels with mags.

The bike didn’t make it into the tens - It was running eleven teens at that stage. So I added a nitrous system. At the time I was the first guy I’d heard of who put nitrous on a bike.

We had a lot of fun raising hell on the street in those days. I founded NESRA, the North End Street Racers Association. I entered my 1000 in an endurance race and had the fastest bike there, at least down the straights, (with speeds over 150 mph), but one of my co-riders threw the bike away and ended our day. The only bike in our neighborhood that was faster than my GS was my friend Tord’s turbo 1200 Kawasaki Z1. Tord tended to turn the boost way up (like over 20 psi) and the bike was a beast, not only when under power, but it’s low speed behavior was pretty beastly too.

Somewhere around that time I saw my first Pro-Stock drag race. It was really cool, with radically lowered and lengthened bikes running well into the lower half of the nines. When I flipped my bike (a third gear wheelie set off tank slappers that eventually went full lock) I used the opportunity to rebuild my GS into a Pro-Stocker.

The first time I took the Pro-Stock bike out was at Orange County International Raceway. I totally blew the launch and the bike turned a 9.40. With just a little practice I was in the nine teens and then the nine ohs. My first two races were at Antelope Valley Raceway in the upper California desert and I won them both. Not a bad start.

I had got into the engine building game because I figured that the best engine builder would be in a good position to win races. Eventually I learned the Golden Rule of Racing , that is, that the man with the most gold wins. But I gave it a good go and did OK for a kid trying to race on a shoestring. I managed to get enough points in 1982 to win the AMA Dragbike! West Coast series Pro-Stock championship and got a national number four.

Somewhere about that time some friends of mine convinced me that I should go back to school and try to get a degree. I decided to go for the gold, so that I could afford to go racing the right way. I parked my bike and didn’t really get into racing again for a number of years.