When a youngster I built a minibike from pieces that included an engine from one of my yard care client's lawnmowers! I don't remember what the repercussions were... I knew soneone who was a production foreman at McCullough (the once-famous chainsaw company) and was able to get some special pieces welded up, tumbled and painted, most notably a one-of-a-kind intake manifold for one of my tweaked lawn more engines. Memories of this time include launching off a cliff on this contrivance, and on another occasion nearly getting knocked out when a piece of the bike's centrifugal clutch flew off and hit me in the head! I was 15 years old, already addicted to motors, and firmly on the path on which I have traveled long and far today.

I graduated from the minibike and traded painting a house for the cash to buy a Honda CA160. Soon, being around motorbikes seemed a worthy full time pursuit and I enrolled in the Motorcycle Mechanics program at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College. Close to downtown Los Angeles, in 1970 Trade Tech had already a fifty-plus-year history and was in every respect an important institution. And with such as the legendary Pat Owens and Joe Minton as instructors, it was the national epicenter for quality powersports mechanics' training.

It was a great course, four semesters. What a time that was! Each of the course's four instructors had his own unique perspective. The first guy I don't remember. But second semester was Malloy with his quiet, down-to-earth way. Third was Owens, the edgy and very capable ex-Gene Romero race tuner with already a lifetime of experience. And finally, Joe Minton. What a treat Minton was! Soft-spoken but with a vast, Master Class level of experience! Like all training institutions, Trade Tech effected much of my mechanical formation and eased my transition into the rough environment of the motorcycle repair business. There was still a lot of "new" in me even as I entered my first shop. It would take literally hundreds of OEM courses and scores of years in the trenches to wear that newness off. I look back fondly at Trade Tech. Many people would graduate the bike program and make their mark on the industry: Dave Arnold, who went on to become the successful manager of Honda's Motocross team. Dave Wolman, one-time president of Motul lubricants. Don Church, recently Director of Training at Kawasaki's corporate U.S. office. And others. The program continues today and has evolved into a community service shop, much the way barber colleges work. At Trade-Tech, local riders bring their machines in for repairs, a system which, despite and maybe because of the legal hurdles, puts this mechanics training school ahead of many others and is to be heartily commended for it. Mechanics-in-training need real-world experience more than anything.

My LATTC training serves me even to the present. Long before I assimilated OEM factory instruction, I had already acquired knowledge that self-taught mechanics lack and I am grateful for the part Trade-Tech played in preparing me. Recently, memory carried me back to my first semester. The college workshop was next to the auto body shop, and deep into the building, its entryway dark and cavern-like. It's stamped edilibly into my mind: the cool darkness, the stained Levi-clad students lounging yet purposeful, impossibly older-looking, more experienced and knowledgeable than myself because the semesters overlapped. The unique smell of gear oil, parts solvent, hot cast iron and aluminum and the vestiges of the auto program next door and I don't know what else, permeated that semi-closed greasy-knuckle grotto. It comes back to me vividly. Very special, privileged, almost cultish. Certainly hinting at holy and mysterious mechanical rites of passage, of knowledge, of acceptance, of place. And a part of me still.