Moto agent Russ Stratton once said, “Jerry Bernardo’s mind is like a room and the room is on fire and everybody’s trying to get out, but there’s only one exit.”
Indeed, one can gauge the mind of Scott “Jerry” Bernardo by the sheer volume of thoughts that cascade from his mouth—with rarely a filter applied.
That’s not to say he’s a chatterbox. But his ability to instantly analyze situations from a different perspective than most leads to many entertaining moments, the majority of which are not politically correct or safe for work. But his reason for being is to ride dirtbikes and have fun, not to conform to society at large, and, naturally, he felt out of place in your run-of-the-mill motorcycle club.
“We were just a bunch of little dirt balls mucking about with ratty KTMs, shredding things off in the rocky woods of New England,” Bernardo said. “We drank and rode; we didn’t really raise hell, but we were young, we were growing up through the gauntlet of life.”
So, back in 1986 he formed his own, unofficial band of two-stroke misfits, as they called themselves: FAHQ Racing, the initials derived from the license plate of a car in a movie he saw. The name isn’t an acronym for anything; it simply reflects the rebellious spirit that was so much on display during those tempestuous days. Pronounced phonetically, of course, it’s not something one screams in polite company. As Bernardo shrugs, “We’re the good club with the bad name.”
In those early days in New England, Bernardo found work as a sign painter and letterer—somewhat ironic since he’d been kicked out of art school for the pranks he pulled. The artistic side of him gave expression to the rebel nonconformist by producing T-shirts and stickers bearing slogans or sayings that, again, were often too close to vulgar to be repeated here. Some of the more PC ones included: “We’re not Satanists. We just like dirt bikes.” And “We’re not happy ‘til you’re not happy.” And who could forget the popular caricature of John Wayne with a pair of goggles atop his tussled hair, above the words, “More whiskey and fresh bikes for my men!”?
While not an official club with regular meetings, a board of directors, by-laws and all, FAHQ Racing nonetheless attained something akin to cult status, its fame spreading farther and faster when Bernardo turned his artistic talents to helmet painting. Some of the stars of the sport proudly wore lids Bernardo painted. Again, these often reflected Bernardo’s interpretation of cool and, combined with the neons so popular in the era, were loud, brash and impossible to miss in magazine photos.
When Bernardo moved to California to pursue TV announcing gigs on ESPN, he established the West Coast division of FAHQ Racing, but those TV duties and the labor-intensive
demands of painting helmets began to eat more out of each day.
By the time he moved to Australia in 2009, he couldn’t get any farther away from New England and the group grew somewhat dormant until a few years ago when one Tom Leacu of Massachusetts contacted Bernardo to inquire about resurrecting the T-shirt and stickers side of things.
Fast forward a few years and Bernardo notes, “There’s been a regrowth of FAHQ Racing in the Massachusetts area because [of the alliance with and involvement of Leacu] With that, it kind of ran side by side with a lot of guys riding [again and] John Day from the J-Day off-road series has brought off-road racing in New England off life support, as far as I’m concerned. No knock on NETRA, but they’re a bunch of old guys and they don’t use social media [and other promotional tools].
“With [J-Day], we’ve hand in hand grown in numbers between people riding and racing and getting on board and seeing the availability of our shirts, which have always been the thing you don’t wear to Thanksgiving dinner because your mom hits you in the back in the head [for doing so]!” Bernardo added. “We’ve taken pride in a little bit of the shock aspect, per se, so I thought, ‘I need to come back [and do a reunion ride]!’”
From the sparkle of an idea almost a year ago, Bernardo got on his computer and began to plan things, all the while living Down Under. While he had some help in the U.S., he knew he’d bear the majority of responsibility for organizing the 30th Anniversary FAHQ Racing Reunion Ride in 2016, though the FAHQ network would prove invaluable.
“The thing about FAHQ that I don’t think people understand is that there’s a lot of heavy hitters [in the club],” he points out. “You’ve got guys like [six-time ISDE gold medalist] Chris Smith, you’ve got Blackwater 100 winner Tommy Norton. We’ve got Steve Leivan, who’s not coming; he’s 17-time Missouri state hare scrambles champion. Phil Oveland’s won the Mauna Kea enduro [in Hawaii] six times. We’ve got Michael Vroom—he’s a new member of the club; he’s all the way from Alice Springs, Australia. He’s a one-time winner of the Finke Desert Race [there] on a CR500R. So over and above the blue-collar A and B riders, we’ve got guys that are proven [winners]. We’re serious; we love to ride. The results speak for themselves.”
And the results of the reunion ride spoke volumes. Some 65 select members and guests said yes to a day of bench racing, meeting new and old friends, riding a typically gnarly four-mile New England woods loop, listening to old school punk rock band Pajama Slave Dancers (a band Bernardo used to play in back in the day, and he got up on stage for a few numbers that day), feasting on catered pig roast plus walking away with one-off T-shirts designed by Bernardo for the event as well as sponsor swag.
As in most clubs, though, it was the people who made the reunion so successful. As Vroom noted of his first time to meet his American club mates, “The highlight [of the day] has been meeting and talking to a lot of different people—some guys older than me, some younger—and getting a lot of different feedback on dirt bikes and the industry and all that. I certainly enjoyed a couple laps out on the track as well.”
That said, it certainly won’t be 30 years until the next reunion ride. And even if you’re not part of FAHQ Racing, there’s no reason any group can’t fashion a similar get-together and make new memories.
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