Homepage Photo: Uncle Bill's Frozen Pond

[Tom Penton]

Follow up on Kip Kern's 12/21 entry "New Photo"

Sorry I didn't see your thread earlier, Kip... I've been checking Penton Talk every couple weeks or monthly, but missed it somehow...

I need to say that the "Picture by Tom Penton" may be misleading. As is true of most of my Flickr photos ( Tom Penton Flickr Photos ) the photos weren't taken by me, although I did take some photos with a nice Yashica I got overseas in the Air Force. I can't remember if I took this one, so the default fallback photographer for photos from this era around Pentonville is cousin Mike Kovach. And a hearty thanks goes out to him for the wonderful memories.

The best motorcycle for the pond was Jeff & my 125cc Yamaha, our first motorcycle. Somewhat heavy for a 125, it had all of 2 or 3 inches suspension travel, which in the dirt helped encourage our "up on the pegs" riding style. The pay-off on the pond was the low seating it afforded. Even with our short legs, we could easily reach the ice flat footed. As a matter of fact, what helped make the bike "Pond King" was an "opposite" list of features: anemic flat powerband, aforementioned wheel travel, heavy weight (but low center of gravity) and balloon street tires. (We would let air out of the tires till half way flat, the better for more rubber to the ice...)

You can see in the picture there is a nice grass slope coming onto the pond. I remember starting from up on the slope and "gassing up" the Yamaha to a nice 25-30 mph speed to hit the ice running. The contest was to see how many 360's one could fit in before getting to the other side of the pond. The technique was not "riding" in the normal sense, but rather keeping it upright as vehicle with 4 points of support: perhaps like an outrigger canoe.

We would talk in later years how the pond experience helped our dirt riding. The most memorable example here was the Hungry Creek event in Tennessee, where we were routed down slate bottomed creeks for quite a distance. This was a time when it was unfashionable to put your feet to the ground (ride the pegs, damit!) and that style served Jeff, Jack & I well ... most of the times. But we didn't hesitate to "do what we had to do" and at Hungry Creek that was most unfashionably with both feet out flat on the slate creek bottom, wakes coming from our boots!

Thanks for using the photo for the homepage!

Tom




Tom Penton

[skiracer]

Thanks for the great input Tom!  Another example of just going out and having fun builds skills......

1976 MC 5 Original Owner
1982 Suzuki PE 175
1976 Penton 175 XC
1979 KTM 175 GS: FOR SALE
1985 20' Hi Point trailer