Interests Over the Years

Besides an obvious interest in computers, over the years, I have had a number of past, ongoing, and new interests to avoid too much TV with.

• Snow skiing; 100+ days of intense fun on my K2 612 GS skis, with Marker Racing Bindings. My brother Pat gave me those bindings one Christmas. Still have those skis.
  
  
• Water skiing. Great times growing up and in my twenties. Obrian rules!
  
  
• Dirt Bikes: Brother Pat, a friend Les Grim, many others and I, had lots of awesome weekends blasting through California deserts and at many riding areas.
  
  Riding at motocross tracks, at paid riding parks, and desert riding were the best.
  
  Also liked Trojan Speedway's flat track and TT tracks. That track was owned by the Armenta family who lived across the street from us in Downey.
  
  A couple of friends, who's fathers co-owned Echo Lodge at the 'River,' commandeered their father's bulldozer and cut a flat track on their father's property, adjacent to the park. That was in '69 or '70, and I think I can still see it on Google maps. There were thousands of laps turned on that practice track and some wild races, too.
  
  One day, I rode a Hodaka from Echo Lodge, on the California side of the Parker Strip, to Havasu City so I could say, for the rest of my life, that I rode under the London Bridge. This was just before they finished it and filled up the waterways. I went under it in a boat sometime later.
  
  Hodakas were the most versitle bike, as the parts were reasonable and made that tiny engine scream. A vintage Hodaka parts propriater, of then Strickly Hodaka, many years ago, was trying to talk me into racing in Vintage Motocross in the southeast series.
  
  It was tempting, as they had race classes for 50+, 60+ and 70+ in addition to many bike spec related classes. Every class had three skill levels. The bikes all had to conform to specs from the early seventies, which ment shorter travel shocks and forks. If I had done that I would have wanted to try a '69 to '71 250cc Bultaco Mk4 Pursang (prepped to Vintage MX specs). Amazingly, these bikes still appear for sale from time to time and there are shops that still prep them to whatever the current Vintage MX specs are.
  
  
• Street Bikes. Besides the goofy little Yamaha 100 I rode to school and work when I was a senior in high school, two screamers (and ticket generators) I had were my 1975 Yamaha RD350, 2 stroke, 2 cylinder, 2 carb, 6 speed. It was a wheelie machine. My other Yamaha was a 1982 550 Maxim. This was another small displacement screamer which also liked to do wheelies, though not as out of control as the RD350. The Maxim was a 4 stroke, 4 cylinder, 4 carb, 6 speed. This bike was smooth. I might even look at getting another '82, only a larger displacement (750 Maxim with shaft drive). Restored units appear for sale on Ebay and through various bike enthusiast groups. I've maintained my motorcycle endorsement from California to Georgia to Mississippi and now in Virginia.
  
  
• Backpacking (Old passion, need new legs!). In 1986, a group of friends and I went up to the peak of San Gorgonio Mountain (11,503 ft.), a 12 mile long trail of switchbacks, in a single day from Poop Out Hill, near Mill Creek Station off CA Hwy 38. When we went up again in 1988, we took two days to go up and one day for the decent.
  
  I also backpacked up San Jacinto Peak (10,834 ft.), with friends, a couple of times in the early and mid seventies. I also remember riding the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway sometime in the sixties. When we backpacked to the peak from the other side of the mountain the backpacking access we used, and were pemitted for, went up from the town of Idyllwild. On one of our backpack trips up San Jacinto in the mid seventies, when I was already over 21 years old, after we had set up camp, one of us said it would nice to have a beer. We hiked over to the top of the Palm Springs Tramway where the had beer for sale and I bought a six pack using a credit card. I remember thinking how strange it was to purchase beer using a credit card in the middle of a backpack trip.
  
  
• President of Hughes Fullerton Employees Association IBM Compatible PC Club for 4 years.
  
  
• Country music (concerts and dancing)
  
  
• Recreational Cast Net Shrimping (good eating)
  GA DNR Regulations (these are tweaked annually or even more frequently)
  How to throw a Cast Net (short video available to watch)
  
  
• Basketball (played in one 24 team and one 16 team Hughes Aircraft league, in '93 and '94 respectively).
  
  
• Softball (played several years, usually at 3rd and left field)
  
  
• Racquet Ball (played many years)
  
  
• Target Shooting (Trap, Skeet, and Plinking)
  
  
• Reloading
  
  
• Motorsports. Years of enjoying various forms of racing at these southern California venues* : Lions Drag Strip, Riverside International Raceway, Ontario Motor Speedway, Orange County International Raceway, Ascot Park, Willow Springs International Raceway, LA Coliseum, Marine Stadium, Saddleback Park, Trojan Speedway, South Gate, CA
  * Also see the 'Southern California's Past' history page where these are briefly discussed.
  
  

• Daytona International Raceway, Daytona Beach, FL. NASCAR Winston Cup. Attended the first night time Pepsi 400 (once known as the Firecracker 400) in 1998. Was to be held on July 4th weekend, but was moved to October that year due to severe fires in Florida. The speedway was used as a staging area for the firefighters and their equipment.
  
  
• Talladega Superspeedway, AL. NASCAR Winston Cup. Attended the EA Sports 500 on October 6, 2002. The event was won by Dale Earnhardt Jr. with no caution flags. 188 laps went by fast with no yellow flags
  
  
• Kentucky Speedway, Sparta, KY. NASCAR Sprint Cup. Attended the Inuagural Quaker State 400 race, held in July, 2011. We also attended the Nationwide race held that weekend. Both races were evening races which we attended with our friends, Mike and Tina Fox.
  
  
• Charlotte Motor Speedway, Concord, NC. NASCAR Sprint Cup. Attended the Coca-Cola 600 race (once known as the World 600), held May 27, 2012. We attended with our friends, Mike and Tina Fox.
  
  
• High Point Raceway, Mount Morris, PA. Highlights. AMA Pro Motocross. Attended the 35th Annual High Point Nationals, held on June 11, 2011. Ryan and I had VIP tickets to this event in the 40th year of American Motocross. Ryan Villopoto won this event in the year he dominated SX and MX, and he won the MX of Nations and the Monster Energy Cup.
  
  
• High Point Raceway, Mount Morris, PA. AMA Pro Motocross. Attended the 36th Annual High Point Nationals, held on June 9, 2012. Brent, Ryan and I had VIP tickets to this event in the 41st year of American Motocross. Ryan Dungey won this event which started his long consecutive moto win streak leading to the inevitable MX championship.
  
  
• High Point Raceway, Mount Morris, PA. AMA Pro Motocross. Attended the 37th Annual High Point Nationals, held on June 8, 2013. Brent and I had VIP tickets to this event in the 42nd year of American Motocross. Ryan Villopoto won this event dominating Moto1 and eventually passing Dungey and then Stewart to take Moto2.
  
  
• Lake Havasu, AZ, The World Outboard Championships. The event was held for several years in the late '60's and early '70's, and took place over two days for four hours each day. The two day total milage increased each year to over 660 miles in 1971. These boats screamed. Molinari Tunnel hulls, three point stances, multiple engines and open expansion chambers or megaphones. Loved the experience. The folks were acquainted with the head of the, then, Chrysler Outboard Racing Team. So, after a few years, I was asked to help in the pits. We would pull off whole outboard motors and lift on new ones like NASCAR pit crews change tires. That was fun, and is probably why I respect racing pit crews today. The 1970 World Outboard Championships are mentioned at the bottom of this linked page.
  
  
• Colorado River, Parker, AZ. 9 Hour Enduro. This was an amazing assemblage of boats. Flat bottoms, tunnels, shallow v's, deep v's, hydros, crackerboxes, inboards, outboards, jet pumpers, V drives, I/O drives, blown, injected, two stroke or four stroke. What ever it took to last the 9 hours.
  
  
• Oglethorpe Speedway, Savannah, GA. Late Models - Cool...want one. 600 HP on a 7-1/2 degree banked 1/2 mile dirt track is intense. So were the Street Stocks and the occasional 150 lap, no yellow flag, enduros. By the way, this was one of the original tracks the NASCAR Grand Nationals (now Sprint Cup) ran on from 1948 - 1952.
  
  
• Pro Player Stadium (now Hard Rock Stadium), Miami Gardens, FL, is where we saw the Dolphins vs. the Bills in October 1998. Pretty much, all seats were good seats in that stadium. Tail gating was fun for a few hours before the game. Unfortunaely, the long drive to back to Richmond Hill, GA (near Savannah), after that game is what I remember the most. We had to work Monday!
  
  

• Here are a few memorable times at pro games.
  
  
  • On October 21, 1973, Fred Dryer, defensive end of the LA Rams, set a record with two safety's, sacking the quaterback in the endzone on two consecutive possesions, against the Green Bay Packers. I remember that both were at the east end (Peristyle end) of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, to the north side of the endzone. We were sitting right there, in the first couple of rows. We couldn't believe what we had just seen in the span of a few minutes. I didn't know it was record until much later.
    
    
  • After the 1985 season, on Jan 4, 1986, the Rams defeated the Cowboys 20-0 in Anaheim in the NFC Divisional Playoff Game. My father, Richard Kelley, had just completed five years working in Saudi Arabia at the end of 1985, and took my brother Pat and his son Jason, my two sons, Brent and Ryan, and me to this game. We were able to get the first row in a section so we could corral the three boys and still watch the game. That section was normally a section overlooking right field when it was used for baseball. This was a great day for the six of us, which to me was as memorable as being at the last drag race (actually called The Last Drag Race) at Lions on December 2. 1972, the first Winston Cup Race at Ontario Motor Speedway in 1971, and many others.
    
    
  • For December 25, 1994, a friend, Glen Gregory, had a couple tickets, through an employer, for a LA Raiders game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum against the Kansas City Chiefs. We decided to attend, specifically, because this would be Joe Montana's last regular season game of his career. Also, whichever team won the game, they would become an AFC wild card team for the playoffs. It was a large crowd. We sat about 50 rows up, at the south-west corner, near the tunnel. The Chiefs won, so Montana would play one more game in the playoffs, which they lost. However, to LA fans, this Christmas Day game had greater significance. Excepting Al Davis and probably a handfull of others, I doubt if anyone else in that stadium knew they were attending the last game of the LA Raiders. In fact, it would be the last game played by a NFL team based in the LA/OC area to this day, as both the Rams and Raiders moved away before the start of the 1995 NFL season. Hey, so did I that year.
    
    

This page updated 08/03/19.

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