King of the kids
I enjoyed reading the article in OBA 109 on the Yamaha RT-1 and JT-1 maxi and Mini Enduro bikes. Fifty years ago when I was 12, I had a JT-1 Mini Enduro and when my mates had either a Honda Mini Trail or QA50 or a “TruTest” with a Briggs and Stratton lawn mower engine, all being mini bikes, I had a proper trail bike!
The photo of me doing a wheelstand was taken by my mother. Living in suburban Auckland wasn’t ideal for trail riding without annoying the neighbours so on the weekend we would load the Mini Enduro and my older brother’s Honda SL100 on the bike trailer and either Mum or Dad would drive us to some vacant land that was being developed for housing or commercial use and pick us up later. The developers would scrape off all the topsoil and heap it up into mounds so we had a ready made “track”.
My brother’s school mates would meet up with us, mostly on SL100s and a TS90 and as there were not any clubs or organised competition for kids until a few years later, there seemed to be a mini bike and trail bike craze in the early 1970s after the release of “On any Sunday”, with all the Japanese makers coming out with their mini versions of the bigger bikes.
Malcolm Anderson
Auckland, New Zealand
Links explained
The article ‘When Size was certainly a blast from the past. I remember that black and white photo of ‘Wild Bill’ Gelbke’s Roadog, probably from (USA) magazine in the late ‘70s. I checked out the National Motorcycle Museum’s website and found out that they have recently closed. Mecum Auctions auctioned off the ‘Roadog’, (on Saturday the 9th of September*), as well as the 1994 Century Chief Prototype that was also featured in .
