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18 Trail Rider What can we say about John Penton that hasn't already been said? Name anything from the past in the sport of motorcycling, and he was there. He rode motorcycles when he was young. He looked at off-road racing, enduros especially, and thought that racing med events through the woods was good fun. So he took the most unsuitable machines you can imagine--Harleys, BMWs, NSUs, whatev- er--and thrashed them through the trees. And he was good at it. If only the bikes were as good and as capable as he was, as his peers were, actually. And as he modified these unsuitable machines for off- road punishment, he dreamt of how great it would be if he could only build his own bike. But how in the world could he do that? He'd spent me in na onal service; he came from a fairly big family. Once he got started, he created a fairly big family of his own. Then he lost his first wife to MS and tried his best to fill the hole in his heart with his only source of fun, his motorcycles. He'd learned about a coast-to-coast motorcycle riding record and took his BMW out and set a new record. But his heart was in off-road racing, and he threw himself into it with a passion. The local enduros, soon to be Na onal Enduros, were a challenge and good fun, but once you've done them a few mes, you have to start wondering, what else is out there? What's happening overseas, for example? Across the pond, it was the Six Days, the Inter- na onal Six Days Trial, and with a group of other hardy pioneers, he went over and tried it out. And found out that this was something to go a er. Six days in the saddle, like trying to win an enduro six mes in a week! But once again, the limita ons of those big old bikes were, well, limi ng. And here in Europe, there were guys riding these spindly li le bikes, some only 80cc for goodness sakes. Maybe he should bring a few of those bikes home and see if he could shake up the pecking order at the Jack- pine. Be er yet, why not try to get his own bikes made and try to make a li le money out of this hobby? And then, he could put together his own Six Days team to see how they would fare against the rest of the world. He had a handful of sons who were old enough, or nearly old enough, and then there were some cousins, and they all knew a few fast guys here and there. He'd have a Six Days team, and he'd put his name on the bike so there'd be no ques on who everybody else was trying to catch. John Penton 1925-2025 John Penton 1925-2025 Legend Legend By Paul Clipper By Paul Clipper