Ex-racer David Singleton sent me some photos he’d kept over the years and included this note about his recollection of traveling to the races as a teenage and how it had such a major influence on his life. I love being able to feature these types of collections and I thank David for considering Rider Files as a way to share these great photos. – Larry Lawrence

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Note from David Singleton:

David Singleton races his $400 Yamaha RD400 in his very first road race at Loudon in April of 1986. Singleton sent me a batch of photos he took at Elkhart Lake and Brainerd later that season and they are featured below. (David Singleton Collection)

I have been enjoying the Rider Files website for a number of years now.  I have a stash of racing pictures from mid-1980s to the early 1990s.  I am in the middle of scanning a large group of images I took when I was 18 years old accompanying Phil Berke to AMA nationals at Brainerd and Elkhart Lake as a helper.  I would love to share these pictures with you if and it would be great if at some point you posted some online to share with the greater community.

These pictures are very special to me as they a window in time for me back to the very start of my involvement in motorcycle road racing.  At that point I had two road races under my belt the last AAMRR race ever in the North East at Loudon and a race at Pocono on my RD-400.  Given my inexperience spending two weekends in the pits at AMA nationals was quite an amazing and educational experience.

I returned to the AMA national circuit two years later in 1988 when Titian Bue and I held the points lead during the mid-season in AMA-CCS GTU series as Cycle Connection Racing on a shoestring budget with no funding for photos/film. We ended up finish the year in 3rd place in the points, the high water mark for my road racing career.

Another interesting recollection from that trip was driving from Brainerd to Elkhart Lake Phil Berke and I convoyed with Randy Renfrow and Ron Barrick.  I’ll never forget how privileged I felt to sit down and have lunch with them at a dinner along the way. I had been following the AMA nationals in Cycle News since I was 16 and there I was sitting across the table from one of my heroes.

I have pasted a picture of me at Loudon in my 1st race weekend ever in April 1986, 18 years old on a 1978 RD-400 that I bought for $400 and put $300 into setting up. Those were the days!!!  I wonder if a young guy or girl starting out today could get themselves onto the track for less than $10K?

Click on photo for larger version