Pettis & Anderson at McLaughlin's 1993

If memory serves correctly, this video marks the return of Larry Pettis to riding and racing in 1993. Larry bought a new bike and brought it over to my parent's house with Dave "DJ" Anderson.

I can remember a time when I used to think the jumps on my parent's track were enormous. When I was about 12 years old I tried to jump the double closest to the woods on my XR100 and wiped out miserably. It was a milestone day for me when I was a freshman in highschool when Larry came over on his old CR125 and became the first person to jump that double. After seeing it accomplished, I jumped the double, myself, shortly thereafter and, thus, embarked on my journey into motocross.

Dave is a great guy, too. He hired me for work at AAA Rent-a-Pottee when I badly needed a job to save for college. Back then, a bunch of my friends and riding buddies worked for AAA. The story behind the scenes and the reason the guys kept hitting the same jump over and over was because Dave wanted to clear the big double jump and Larry was trying to show him how.....although it looks like Larry could have used a few lessons himself.

When I first met Dave he brought his buddy Todd Jenkins along with him. Todd stuck with racing a little more and did pretty good for a little while. I've got a video or two with Todd in that I will post in the future.

But, alas, Larry always seemed to steal the show. I don't believe I ever had an uneventful day of riding with Larry. One regret I have is that we didn't video Larry more. One of my favorite stories about Larry is a time when he crashed at 116th and his spinning rear tire left a terrible rubber burn in his arm pit. He was in so much pain and worried that it would be infected that we convinced him to lay on a towel so we could pour hydrogen peroxide on the wound. Pretty cruel of us. What a funny video that would have been to see it when we poured the hydrogen peroxide on him. He was flopping around the living room like a fish. It was funny.

Larry was a good rider, though. It is possible that if he could have stayed injury free and avoided some personal drama that he could have achieved a great deal of success racing. But, hind sight is 2020. Larry seems to have a great life now and can tell many a good motocross stories.

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