The bikes were teh suck, but we didn't know it. Just as we don't know today that our bikes will be teh suck when judged by 2040's riders.
Tires didn't grip, springs didn't suspend, dampers just didn't. A pair of single-pot calipers on the front wheel was state-of-the-art. While many of today's bikes can brake from 60mph at 1.0g average deceleration, a 1978 KZ1000 tested by Car and Driver in a comparison with a Firebird could barely manage 0.7g.
It was great fun, though. My ride on the back of a 1979 CBX is what hooked me. Soon after that, I was all in, and a few years later my garage was packed with bikes (including a CBX of my own).
Motorcycling was totally a young man's game in those days. Over half of bike owners in 1985 were under 30, and only 20% were 40 or older. I don't have data from the '70s, but it was undoubtedly even more skewed back then.
There was basically no training. It wasn't until 1986 that the CMSP came along to make MSF training available all over California. In the early '80s a friend and I found an MSF ERC given by the Municipal Motorcycle Officers of California, under a National Safety Council program. We considered ourselves among the elite, the MSF-trained riders of the day.
There were plenty of roadracing opportunities. I don't know about the Bay, but in So Cal, there were Riverside, Ontario, Willow, and a parking lot course at Orange County International Raceway (a local dragstrip).
Recreational track use didn't yet exist in the '70s, but Keith Code's Superbike School got started in the early '80s, as did a predecessor of Reg Pridmore's CLASS (same deal, but a different acronym, which I forget). My MSF buddy attended a Kawasaki demo day at Willow in the mid 80s, where he got to ride all of the latest bikes on the track under the watchful eye of Keith Code. I first attended CLASS in 1988.
On the street, riding was frickin deadly. In 1979, California recorded the most motorcycles deaths in its history, with 856. In 2008, 560 riders died in CA, a 20-year high. Most riders killed back then were under 30--as would be expected with all the young riders. But young riders of the day were also far more likely to die than old riders.
One reason for all the deaths was alcohol. More than half of riders in fatal crashes in those days had BAC > 0. In 2008, it was only one-third. Increased awareness of the danger of drinking and riding is one of the motorcycle safety victories in the past couple of decades.
smoking
