Rider: Brian Matthews
Hometown: Canyon Country
Age: Fiddy Tree
Started Riding in: 1968
Desert Class: HvyWt Mag Ammie
Bike Make and Size: KTM 525
Family: Tami Matthews
Funniest race moment: Way back I was racing an H&H on my Hodaka in the snow while wearing my first generation Bell Star helmet. You know that your nose runs in the cold, right? Well, it was really cold. I was tapped on a slight decline when I hit ... something. I remember my feet in the air and looking at my number upside down. Then I exploded on the ground. I jumped up and started straightening my forks (Hodaka owners will understand). A club member I passed a few miles earlier saw me crash and stopped. He looked at me and let out a very unmanly scream. As I was pretty numb with cold I got scared I was really hurt. He broke a stick off a bush and started probing my face. To my relief he told me I was not hurt. As you know, when you crash, you exhale when you hit the ground. When I exhaled (big crash), my nose goo flew all over the inside of my enclosed helmet to stick to the existing frozen deposits on my face. The dirt I shoveled up added to the interesting highlights. As I raced on, the flow continued and froze adding to the art project. At the finish the guy told me to pull my own tank card and the lady with the finisher pins would not look and me and threw a pin in my direction. No club members (I was in the Four Aces at the time) would allow me to clean up in their rig because they wretched when they looked at me. I had to wash with my broken up frozen water before anyone would talk to me.
What you like about the Viewfinders: Great people with hearts bigger that the outdoors. I only began racing again for under a year, and being in a club is a necessity. In that short time my wife and I have been made to feel like family.
Racing Accomplishments: Raced my Hodaka to #40t back in 1974. In my first year back to racing I earned a yellow strip again and earned #M43 for 2009. Missed my former number by about 30 points.
Your ultimate goal in racing: I'd like to earn a red strip before I'm sixty. But either way, I wanna red strip.
