Restoring a Honda Elsinore motocross bike should be a pretty straightforward job when you’ve been trained to maintain 747 passenger jets. Well, it would be straightforward if you were not a perfectionist. When I ask Gerald Langston if, maybe, he’s a little OCD, his wife Amanda nods her head behind his back. Gerald likes to say he’s just meticulous. Whatever the reason, Langston’s motocross restorations are works of art, and, more importantly, he does virtually every bit of the restoration work himself.

Gerald only started his beautiful restorations quite recently because, to put it mildly, he’s had many other things going on in the last fifty years. After finishing his national service in his native South Africa, the Durban native worked as a maintenance technician for South African Airways, maintaining their fleet of Boeing 747s. On weekends, he’d be racing a used 1974 125cc Honda Elsinore at the local tracks. He progressed quickly through the ranks, and it wasn’t long before he had a South African ex-works 1976 125 Honda. “Motocross was huge back then in South Africa,” says Langston, “and I made it as far as #37 in the National A class.” Then, a friend introduced him to go-karts, and his life took an unexpected turn.

Racing karts brought him into contact with an extremely wealthy property developer who dreamed of building a giant racing facility with a 2.6-mile road course capable of hosting Formula One races. Gerald Langston helped move this bold plan towards reality. Bulldozers moved mountains of dirt at the former Idube (Zebra) Ranch outside Durban, and the iDube International Raceway was moving forward quickly until the fateful day when the money man landed at the half-finished track in his helicopter. The investor stepped out of his Bell Jet Ranger with a bag full of cash for his employees’ wages and was mowed down in a barrage of gunfire.

Dreams of an F1 race died that day along with the investor, but the track lived on as a slightly more modest facility that would host national go-kart championship races and dirt oval events. More importantly for Langston’s convoluted future, iDube International would also sprout a motocross track.

While Gerald was still blasting around the asphalt in his go-kart, his five-year-old son got his first taste of racing on the motocross track. Five-and-a-half-year-old Grant showed early promise, and the daily practice on the huge track allowed him to hone his skills quickly. Gerald even allowed Grant to ride against the adults; the youngster was winning everything before long. Aboard a KX80 Kawasaki, Grant won all but one race in 1996, attracting the attention of the South African Kawasaki importer. With Dad as his riding coach and mechanic, young Grant was virtually unstoppable. He was so fast and dominant that at age twelve, the South African Motorcycle Federation picked Grant as one of their team members in the annual Coupe de l’Avenir, a Motocross des Nations for under-21 riders.

Langston’s performance on a borrowed Kawasaki was enough to dazzle former world champion Harry Everts, who wanted Grant to join his privateer Kawasaki team in the 125cc World Championships. Grant was only fifteen, but dad and son decided to roll the dice and move to Belgium. It was a massive decision with virtually no money and definitely no guarantees. “We were poor, and we were outcasts,” remembers Grant his early days in Belgium. The almost unbeaten South African also had to come to terms with suddenly being an also-ran. Grant didn’t even qualify to race in the early rounds in Spain and England, but by the penultimate round in France, Grant managed an eighth place.