2 local men living life at full throttle

At an age when no one could blame them if they fretted over their prostates and left greasy impressions on their recliners, Jerry Pokorny and Jack Bergman are hanging it out, baby. And it feels good. It feels like life, stripped of all the boring stuff.

This past summer, Pokorny, 61, of Black Forest and Bergman, 63, of Cascade slipped their fit frames into full leathers and set motorcycle speed records on the vast whiteness of Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway. And these two sexagenarians are scheming how to break new records next summer.

These guys aren't outlaws, perpetual adolescents or sad members of the Hair Club for Men set. Both spent years slaving in the corporate world and then put in the backbreaking work of running their own businesses. They've taken care of their wives and children. They're responsible citizens. They've paid their taxes and done their duty.

They just don't think they now have to turn to the wall and die.

That's why the men's quixotic quest for speed records is about speed - and yet it's more than that.

Pokorny, in his maiden race at the mecca of speed, set a world record for a 350cc production vintage (pre-1956) motorcycle - a sizzling 50.725 mph. His steed: a 1945 Triumph 3HW, a 17-horsepower, lumbering hunk of World War II iron meant to deliver word the Huns were on the move.

"Once the world stopped being a blur before my eyes, it was time to get off there," Pokorny joked of his two-mile, wide-open run down the flats.

Pokorny, retired from a Denver-based engineering consulting firm he founded, speaks with the precision of an engineer - he "reverse engineered" his record, he said, by researching what categories of motorcycles had yet to set a speed record. His jeans are crisp, his white mustache neat and the beautiful house he shares with wife, Nancy, just so.

But somewhere along the line - he thinks maybe it was when he spent eight straight hours at the helm of a bucking sailboat crossing from Martinique to St. Lucia in a raging storm - the engineer decided you can't figure out life on a slide rule.

"When we finally took shelter on land, I was spent. I just collapsed," he recalled. "You talk about being alive. Once you've discovered that, it's really hard not to want to keep doing that. It's just the feeling of being in touch, really in touch."

That feeling was rekindled when Pokorny first visited the salt flats in 2007, fell in love with the freewheelin' atmosphere and the camaraderie among competitors and "threw down the challenge" by pledging to come back with a bike.

Pokorny tapped the expertise of Bergman, a veteran at the flats. Then he got nuts-and-bolts help with his assault on the salt from an unlikely sidekick, skilled British-bike mechanic Kevin "call me HillBilly" Shipe.

The ponytailed 51-year-old Denverite retains the drawl of his native West Virginia, wears a leather vest festooned with British-bike patches, has a story for every occasion and is the instigator of many of the men's two-wheeled adventures.

The name of their two-man team, Carpe Diem - "seize the day" - says all that needs to be said about their effort on the flats, Pokorny said.

Yeah, Pokorny and HillBilly wanted to set a record. But speed itself was secondary in the men's first quest on the salt.

"We were out there and people asked us how fast we expected to go and I told 'em, ‘Well, the shadows are moving faster than the bike,'" HillBilly recalled.

Really, the men said, the wide-open run for the record was about the challenge and thrill of doing something new, mastering technical skills, overcoming last-minute hitches and accepting a modicum of risk.

"I can close my eyes and mentally run that videotape over again in my head," Pokorny said. "I can feel the environment. I can see the salt. And I can remember the feeling of the bike accelerating and the air movement and the sounds and vibrations."

Bergman, a funny but laconic bloke, knows well the feeling of running at speed. He broke two records this summer on his 250cc Triumph. He bolted on streamlined fairings and broke the record for the streamlined, modified-engine class at 100.98 mph. He took the fairing off and broke a record for that class at 91.3 mph.

For the lifelong motorcycle rider, the quest for speed is, in part, a fascination with the technical challenges of propelling two wheels as efficiently as possible.

"I've always wanted to build a Bonneville motorcycle," said Bergman, who spent 24 years with General Electric in Cincinnati before he, at age 50, and wife Rhetta sold everything, moved to Colorado Springs and bought BB Countertops & Cabinets. He first visited the salt flats in 2003.

"I was walking around out there and it's like ... ‘You know, I can do this.' I bought a rule book, came home and lived in the garage for the whole winter."

In 2004, Bergman set two speed records. He was back in 2005 with his Triumph and set another speed record. When he left Bonneville this summer, he held five speed records, proving, indeed, that a guy in his sixth decade could, as the kids say, kick it.

Ultimately, both men said, their adventures at Bonneville are one way they try to retain the curiosity and sense of adventure many of us lose as we get older.

Both men are licensed to pilot sea-going sailboats and both scuba dive. In the months before his first speed record attempt, Pokorny and his wife took a round-the-world trip, with some diving included - another item on his "bucket list," that list of stuff he wants to check off before he kicks the bucket.

In the summer of 2007, Bergman took a break from chasing speed records to make his own round-the-world trip - on a motorcycle. The 15,000-mile adventure through Japan, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Europe, plus a tireless effort to keep off-road trails open to motorcyclists, earned him the American Motorcyclists Association's Road Rider of the Year Award in 2007.

Bergman, an avid skier, also has done some skydiving and used to pilot an ultralight aircraft.

"Luckily, someone stole the motor" after his third - and worst - crash, he said.

"People say I have a death wish," Bergman said. "I don't have a death wish. I want to live forever."

Both men have traveled too far down the highway to know that's not going to happen. In fact, Pokorny said he and Bergman have seen mutual friends struck down by sudden illness - and in one case a motorcycle crash - in recent years.

"I got to thinking about the fact I was spending a whole lot of hours working and not a whole lot of hours playing, and you never know when your number is coming up," Pokorny said. "The carpe diem concept came to mind. There were a lot of things I wanted to do before I checked out, and I needed to start doing some of those things."

For Pokorny, "some of those things" means preparing for two new class records. He's started restoring a 1954 BSA 650cc twin "Golden Flash," which he'll run in the production vintage class. He'll also take to the salt on a 1971 Triumph T-120 Bonneville 650cc twin. He'll shoot to break the record of 97.316 mph. He reckons the bike will do 120 mph by August after HillBilly "does his magic."

Next summer, Bergman is going to take the highly modified engine out of his small Triumph and try for the production class record for 250cc's.