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Annual Vinatge Motorcycle Show, Judged by Clement Salvadori
Join us for our annual Vintage Motorcycle Show, Saturday September 26th! All vintage bikes are welcome. We have awards for Best in Class of the following categories: British, German, Italian, American, Japanese & Scooters, plus a People’s Choice Award. You’ll also have the opportunity to hear Clement’s presentation “Forty Years: 1945 – 1985 of Interesting, Dull, and Sometimes Forgettable Motorcycles”!!
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN SHOWING YOUR BIKE:
Please contact Jeff Hanrahan at 916.726.7334 x123 or jeffh at ascycles dot com. There is no charge, and you’ll receive a gift from A&S Powersports, just for participating! One Rule: Your bike must be from 1985 or older.
Clement Salvadori’s Auto-Bio
The first half of my life was pretty dull. At 16 I earned the money to buy a motorcycle, a used NSU 250 Max; my parents gave me a helmet and said that if I were ever seen on the bike without the helmet on my head, that would be the end of my motorcycling career. At 18 I rode my
Clement at 17 on his NSU with high school friend Larry Irwin on a BMW R26
elderly 1951 Indian Chief off to college (Harvard) and then did my military service as a demolitions expert in the US Army Special Forces (Green Berets). In 1966 I was briefly a grossly overpaid public relations person working in Vietnam with Brown & Root, a construction company and predecessor to the infamous Halliburton corporation. In 1967 I enrolled at the Monterey (CA) Institute of International Relations for an MA in Southeast Asian studies,compliments of the GI Bill, then was hired by the US Department of State, which, in its infinite wisdom, chose to assign me to Vietnam for 18 months. The government gave me a Vespa motorscooter to use in Saigon. My second diplomatic posting was to Italy, and after that I resigned my commission as I thought that riding my R75/5 to Afghanistan sounded like more fun that being posted to Washington DC. I spent the next two years riding through parts of Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and then north from Panama. I was delayed for a year in Mexico as the GI Bill was again happy to pay for my studying for an MFA degree, this one at the Instituto Allende in the old colonial town of San Miguel de Allende in the state of Guanajuato. The next move was to Boston where I began writing The Next Great American Novel, free-lancing travel stories to motorcycle magazines and driving a taxi to pay the rent.
Then life changed. In 1980 a moto-mag based in Laguna Beach, California, “Road Rider”, called up to offer me a job. “We don’t pay much,” I was told, “but you can have all the motorcycles you want to ride.” Done deal! I spent seven years with the magazine, with health insurance and all the other benefits, and then returned to the more liberating life of a free-lancer. My wife and I moved to Atascadero in December of 1991, which is close enough to the various motorcycle industry headquarters in Los Angeles that I can ride in for a power lunch and be home in time for a late supper. Also, the town is surrounded by some of the best motorcycling country
in the world. In the past 30 years I have published over a thousand articles and a couple of books.
The Next Great American Novel still remains unwritten.
Clement on his R75/5 in Kenya in 1974
Tags:Clement Salvadori,Vintage Motorcycle
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