My dad put a chainsaw engine in his bicycle when he was a kid and it's been all downhill from there. He's a british bike guy and served as one of the board for the Norton Owners Assoc for awhile. Lots of Nortons, he still has 5 of them and an old Triumph as well as several others. We are starting to restore/mod a 65' Norton Atlas together at his place that will eventually end up in my garage.
When I was 6 or 7, he and I took my saved up pennies and bought a beat up Yamaha DT80 and rebuilt it in the garage one winter. Of course, he did most of the work but I was good with a toothbrush and a coffee can full of gas and cleaning parts. Not long after that my little brother got a Honda SL70 and the three of us would ride, ride, ride. It was the original "brat style" because we had to cut the seat down so much so his feet would touch the ground. When I was a teenager in the 80's he bought a Suzuki/Kawasaki dealership. Mom ran the place during the day and dad would work all day at his real job and head to the bike shop after work. I remember many afternoons as a kid trying to get my homework done behind the parts counter so I could go play with one of the bikes in the back. I was one of those hooligan kids with a dirtbike, riding through town trying to avoid getting caught going as fast a possible. The cops knew me, we provided the bikes for the Motorcycle Safety MSF classes in town. We had that place for about 8 years before he sold it to our mechanic and his brother who still run a version of the shop today.
I gave up bikes for awhile when I joined the military except for a few rides on a friends bike here and there. After I got out and was going to college, I married a woman who gave me a wonderful daughter but had no patience for bikes. I later traded that wife out for a bike and a dog. Skip ahead some years and I'm remarried to a wonderful wife who also rides her own bike and my now teenage daughter that likes to ride on the back with me on family rides in the summer. Hopefully learning safe riding skills so that some teenage boy doesn't coax her onto the back of his crotch rocket and try to impress her with his dipshitted wheelie non-skills I see too often.
I have another major hobby that kept me from having the time to work on my own bikes much so I used to always farm out that stuff. In the last year or two, I've taken it upon myself to re-learn the skills to build my own and that is how I ended up in this fine company of misfits!
Cheers!
-Kelly
When I was 6 or 7, he and I took my saved up pennies and bought a beat up Yamaha DT80 and rebuilt it in the garage one winter. Of course, he did most of the work but I was good with a toothbrush and a coffee can full of gas and cleaning parts. Not long after that my little brother got a Honda SL70 and the three of us would ride, ride, ride. It was the original "brat style" because we had to cut the seat down so much so his feet would touch the ground. When I was a teenager in the 80's he bought a Suzuki/Kawasaki dealership. Mom ran the place during the day and dad would work all day at his real job and head to the bike shop after work. I remember many afternoons as a kid trying to get my homework done behind the parts counter so I could go play with one of the bikes in the back. I was one of those hooligan kids with a dirtbike, riding through town trying to avoid getting caught going as fast a possible. The cops knew me, we provided the bikes for the Motorcycle Safety MSF classes in town. We had that place for about 8 years before he sold it to our mechanic and his brother who still run a version of the shop today.
I gave up bikes for awhile when I joined the military except for a few rides on a friends bike here and there. After I got out and was going to college, I married a woman who gave me a wonderful daughter but had no patience for bikes. I later traded that wife out for a bike and a dog. Skip ahead some years and I'm remarried to a wonderful wife who also rides her own bike and my now teenage daughter that likes to ride on the back with me on family rides in the summer. Hopefully learning safe riding skills so that some teenage boy doesn't coax her onto the back of his crotch rocket and try to impress her with his dipshitted wheelie non-skills I see too often.
I have another major hobby that kept me from having the time to work on my own bikes much so I used to always farm out that stuff. In the last year or two, I've taken it upon myself to re-learn the skills to build my own and that is how I ended up in this fine company of misfits!
Cheers!
-Kelly
