They say you shouldn't meet your heroes, that you'll just be disappointed to find they're often less than heroic and often all too human. Well, whoever "they" are, they haven't met Malcolm Smith.

Malcolm Smith is a legend in American motorcycling. He won the Baja 1000 six times—three times in a car and three times on a motorcycle. He won the Baja 500 four times, the Mint 400 twice, rode in the Paris-Dakar twice and he garnered eight gold medals in the International Six Day Trials in Europe.

But most people know him as the star of Bruce Brown's iconic motorcycle documentary "On Any Sunday," which defined the state of motorcycling in the 1960s. Smith and friends—AMA flat track racing champion Mert Lawwill and some guy named Steve McQueen—rode their dirt bikes all over Southern California in that movie, and it sure looked like fun.

Turns out it was. The movie inspired people all over to ride motorcycles. When it came out in 1971, like a million other moviegoers, I sat in the theater, myself a slack-jawed, wide-eyed towhead of 11, staring up at the big screen and believing that I, too, could "fly like a kite," as the movie's theme song said I could. I did, thanks to our friends the Hugobooms, early adopters of dirt biking, and many times I rode crumpled into the back of their Volkswagen van, stuffed under about five or six motorcycles, no seatbelt, no head restraint, no government- mandated supplemental inflatable restraints, driving out to Bean Canyon in the desert for a day of dirt biking. We'd all sing the movie's theme song: "On any Sunday, I will fly like a kite ..." I forget the rest.

So I was more than a little thrilled when I got to meet Malcolm Smith on a Land Rover trip in the Colorado mountains several years ago. And guess what? He was just a normal motocrosser who was happy to talk to you about dirt bikes or off-roading or whatever came up. On that trip, he told us about adventures he'd recently had in the mountains near his Riverside, California, home, chainsawing his way up an abandoned (but legally open) road in the San Bernardino National Forest, just because it was fun.

A few weeks ago, Smith, 78, was injured in a golfing accident. A friend accidentally backed over him in a golf cart. Smith suffered a broken hip. Which added to my surprise to see him last week at The Quail Motorcycle Gathering in Carmel, Calif., where he was the honored guest.

He signed helmets, programs, a couple dirt bikes. He told stories about his first motorcycle (a Lambretta 125 he got for $329), about his first trip to Europe to ride for Husqvarna, about anything you'd hoped he'd talk about. Of his Lambretta, he said, "I took it home and started riding—and never stopped. It gave me freedom."

The crowd cheered.

He's working on the hip and he'll be back riding again soon. Long live Malcolm Smith, and long live the freedom that only comes on two wheels.

West Coast Editor MARK VAUGHN can be reached at mark.vaughn@hearst.com or on Twitter and Instagram @MVaughnAW