Quite a Bucket List Item

[PlanB]

PlanB note: I used to motocross race with Squeaks and Mike at the Ice Palace track back in the mid 70's up in Alaska...I knew Squeaks but can't remember meeting Mike...I'm sure we were in the pits together on the weekends...seeing the Alaska Raceway Park (dragstrip) in this article and video also brought back some memories of when I raced F/Gas up there ('69 Nova called "DayTripper"), ...if you look at the videos below you can see how heading toward that mountain (Pioneer Peak) at the end of the dragstrip could be quite a rush! Especially when I was doing 130mph with only rear brakes and a Hurst Line Lock shifter (can't downshift) on that Nova! :eek

May Mike get more than this one pass down the 1/4 mile...

On one man's bucket list: a last, fast pass

Posted by adn_jomalley
Posted: May 30, 2010 - 10:00 pm




By November, Mike Pederson knew he didn't have much time. Leukemia was chewing away at him. He had another trip to Seattle for chemo but, his doctor told him, the cancer would eventually win. It could be a matter of months.

Pederson spent the better part of his 63 years in the construction business in Alaska. He never got tired of his job, taking what was broken, working on it and seeing it fixed. When you don't know you're going to die and you like fixing things, you tend to let the projects accumulate. But that wasn't an option anymore. Pederson needed to prioritize. So he made a list. A bucket list. And among the tasks on it was giving life to an old motorcycle collecting dust in his garage.

Pederson bought the bike from someone else who had it sitting in a storage unit for years. It was a 1972 Kawasaki 750 H-2. A drag racing bike that carried about three Coke cans worth of gas, and had been cut down and smoothed out, customized to accelerate to awesome speeds over 1,320 feet of racetrack. It reminded him of a lifetime ago when he used to race motorcycles at the Ice Palace track over on Hiland Drive. He always loved the drag race. That kind of acceleration, from zero to over 100 mph in 10 seconds, the way his heart beat in his chest and the wind rushed against his face, there weren't too many better feelings on earth.

Pederson meant to get it running himself. But by then he needed help. So he went looking for a bike mechanic he used to know in the '70s, one of the best motorcycle riders out there, a man named Squeaks O'Connor.

"I heard he retired," Pederson said. "Come to find out he still lived in the house he always had. I called him up and told him what was going on. He dropped everything to help me out."

I found O'Connor with his friend Jim Meyer a couple of weeks ago in a tidy garage in Muldoon. Pederson's Kawasaki sat on a lift, looking pristine. O'Connor is well-preserved and wiry, with snowy hair and twinkly eyes. He has his own storied motorcycle past. He keeps pictures around from the days when he used to launch his bike off a ramp and sail over rows of parked cars in the Sullivan Arena, Evel Knievel-style. He also holds the 1985 drag racing world record for going from zero to 178 mph in 7.73 seconds.

Audio slide show: Squeaks O'Connor's bucket list motorcycle ride

O'Connor has been bike-obsessed since he was a kid. Now he rides with his white-haired buddies in what they call the "Old Geezers Motorcycle Gang." He spends days puttering in his garage, rehabbing what he calls "Medicare bikes," old ones nobody else wants to fix.

When Pederson called him last winter, O'Connor started counting up the years since they'd seen each other and got to 20. That shocked him. Mike had been a good friend. They jet-skied with his kids and raced dirt bikes. How did time get away from them?

"This fellow lives in North Birchwood, 17 miles from me and I hadn't seen him in years," he said. "Something like this just reminds me to give your old friends a call, just see how they're doin'."

O'Connor is 66 years old. Seems like everybody he knows has some kind of health problem to worry about. He's had skin cancer. A couple of the Geezers he rides with have heart trouble. He always says that nobody gets out of this world alive. But Mike's news hit him in the gut.

"He told me this is his bucket list, if he could just get one good clean pass on it," he said. The old bike turned out to be a puzzle. It took O'Connor about 50 hours of working on it and 200 hours of thinking about it, he said. He pulled the motor and reworked the ignition, the brakes and the carburetors. His friend Meyer pulled some strings with a bike shop in San Francisco to get them to machine a sprocket and send it up Fed-Ex. And finally, in the beginning of May, O'Connor put on his leather boots and stomped down on the kick starter. The bike gave an ear-splitting growl. It was ready.



But Pederson wasn't. The cancer tore through his immune system and made him vulnerable. An infection put him in the hospital. O'Connor took the bike on a test ride. He called Pederson and told him about it in his hospital bed. Finally, Pederson's doctor sent him home. A few days later, with extra energy from platelet transfusion, Pederson was ready to take his ride.

Photographer Bob Hallinen and I drove out to Alaska Raceway Park outside Palmer on a warm, windy afternoon. O'Connor, Pederson and the Geezers circled the bike. I heard a wrench clatter on the pavement.

Pederson's wife, Mary, and I leaned against the bed of a pickup waiting for things to get started. She told me about the last year of her husband's illness. They had been in Seattle, considering a very risky bone marrow transplant, when a doctor said something that changed their minds. He told Pederson he could forgo the transplant and live a little more instead.

"(He said) you have an opportunity to hook up with old friends, make amends, do things you want to do," she said.

I told her I was sorry for what she'd been through. I told her it sounded really hard.

"It's life, that's what it is," she said.



Pederson, thin underneath his leathers, rubbed hand sanitizer on his palms and pulled his helmet over his bald head. O'Connor and a couple other guys rolled the bike to the start of the tarry track. A Sheryl Crow song echoed out of the raceway speakers. Mary and Pederson's daughter, Heather, lined up along the chain link fence.

Pederson climbed on the bike, his chest hugging the metal body. The staging lights flashed yellow, yellow, green. He took off, motor screaming, and blasted past all of us. Our heads turned, following his form down the raceway until it disappeared into the wavy heat, finishing off a good clean pass.

YouTube - Mike Pederson at Alaska Raceway Park, Palmer, Alaska

YouTube - Alaska Raceway Park - Squeaks O'Connor Kawasaki dragbike

YouTube - '72Kawasaki H2 750 Triple Dragbike

http://community.adn.com/adn/node/151873

[Stoney]

Very cool..... thanks for posting this.

[jamman]

nice read B..

[Big D]

Very cool...

[Sport-Ed]

Thanx for posting this PlanB... rep your way.
Very much enjoyed it.... sorta close to home.
Hoorah for Mike Pederson!