An excerpt from a speech given by guest speaker John Ulrich at the MRA Awards Banquet in Denver, Colorado, circa 2001. Copyright Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

I first came to race with MRA in about 1974, at Aspen.

When I got there, MRA founder Woody Witte came up to me and introduced himself, saying, “I’m Woody Witte, you may have heard of me.”

So in that tradition, I’d like to start tonight by saying, “I’m John Ulrich, you may have heard of me.”

I actually started road racing in California in 1973 and I am living proof that you can race all around the country over three decades, have a lot of fun, meet a lot of cool people, turn a lot of laps and live to tell the tale.

I had a lot of fun racing at Woody Creek Raceway in Aspen, a tight little 1.1-mile track with 10 or 11 turns. I met some good friends there and I learned some lessons that came in handy later.

Some of the biggest lessons I learned were taught to me by an MRA racer. I was going to race a Kawasaki KZ650 in the annual Aspen 6-Hour in about 1978, and although it’s been so long that I can’t remember exact lap times there, let’s just say for the sake of this story that I was turning 1:05s.

Watching from the pits while my partner Charlie Hennekam practiced on the bike, I saw a guy on a single-cylinder Yamaha dirt bike fitted with a disc-brake front end off a TX500 enter the last corner.

He was putting on the brakes earlier than I was, so when he came in, I walked over and said, “You know, you can brake a lot later for that last corner.”

He gave me a “what are you talking about?” look and said, “I turn 1:01s here, I was breaking in my new engine.”

“I’ll just slink away with my tail between my legs now,” I said.

That’s how I met Meryln Plumlee, now Crew Chief for Nicky Hayden, and the lessons he taught me in that little exchange were, “Things aren’t always as they seem, we aren’t always as good as we think we are, a little research before talking never hurts, and practice isn’t racing.” I was about 23 years old at the time, and he made a big impression on me.

Merlyn has never held that day at Aspen against me, and he has always taken the time to answer my questions when I’ve seen him at AMA National races since then. He is a good guy.

Another time at Aspen I had entered a Rokon 340 in the 350cc Production class, against a field of RD350s. For the first part of the race my teammate Larry Lim and I were regularly lapped by fast guys on RD350s, including Woody Witte. No surprise. The Rokon was an air-cooled dirt bike powered by a two-stroke Single with a continuously variable belt-and-pulley snowmobile-type automatic transmission. It was heavy, slow and went around the track making a single-note drone. But it did have a lot of cornering clearance, which came in handy when it started to rain heavily and the “safety boulders” surrounding the track were quickly punctuated by crashed RD350s that had dragged mufflers, footpeg brackets and other hard parts and levered the wheels off the ground at the first hint of a big sideways slide. And that funny looking Rokon finished fourth overall, first in class.

The lessons? The race isn’t over until the checkered flag falls, and the guys who are expected to win or supposed to win don’t automatically win. Never give up, and, above all, have patience.

Those early experiences with the MRA at Aspen also taught me that I liked endurance racing, a lot. Later, after figuring out that we weren’t going to get rides, my partner Bruce Hammer and I started a team that went on to win 13 WERA National Endurance Championships and 127 endurance races. It started out as Team Hammer, later known as Team Suzuki Endurance. It’s now in sprint racing, called Team Valvoline EMGO Suzuki. You may have heard of it…

And now, some reader reaction:

FIRST PERSON/OPINION

Via e-mail:

I have had the pleasure of working as a lowly ‘Tire Fitter’ for Walt Schaefer and Michelin in the AMA Superbike paddock as well as other racing organizations for over 15 years. I had to write about the passing of Merlyn Plumlee. Although we never worked together we still saw and recognized each other as ‘Paddock Regulars’. I had the pleasure of chatting with him several times and watching him work with various riders under relaxed as well as stressed situations. He was always a rock…but a kind and gentlemanly one. Such a nice person in such a high stress environment. Never flustered, upset, mad or anything but confident. I mourn his passing as I would a family member, friend, Head of State or any close, great person for he was to me, all those things. 

Scot M. Tway 

Auburn, Alabama