As a young boy a 500cc BSA appeared in our basement. My older brother told my parents he was repainting it for his buddy- turns out he had bought it from him. His buddy needed the money to buy something called a Black Shadow. The Shadow got disassembled in his mom’s kitchen and there it sat while it’s owner got hauled off to a place called Vietnam. Tour of duty ended , the mom got a call from Hawaii- “sell the Vincent mom - I’m staying here “ - I think it went for under $2k - likely way under.
So my brother broke the ice. While my dad was not into bikes he couldn’t play the “ motorcycles are dangerous card “ because at the time he was designing, building and racing 280cubic inch hydroplanes , one of which missed the kilo record by 7/10ths of mph - a hair over 103 mph at the time.
The BSA single went for a 650 twin - T-bolt maybe? That led to my sister getting a Honda 50 step through Cub - then a bigger one and then a Yamaha AT 1.
After a Steen mini bike with the ubiquitous Briggs motor my turn at dirt bikes came . Along with my brother we had a string of them - mostly Yamaha but my brother had the odd Maico , Ossa and Montessa for variety. The final one for me was a Husqvarna 360 Sportsman - the dual range 8 speed one. ( really wish I still had that one ) When the bottom end started getting a bit noisy I swapped it to a friend for his bent Commando which he had made into a “chopper “ by putting in really long fork stanchions which were all the rage in the early 70’s ( I thought it a sacrilege to do that to a Norton)and then he promptly ran it into the back of a car. Fortunately the long stanchions absorbed the energy of the crash and left the headstock undamaged. I built it into a Cafe style with Dunstall goodies a tank and seat built from scratch out of fiberglass ( I posted a shot of it in the embarrassing early pictures thread on this site ).
So began my love affair with motorcycles. I love to ride them, build them , ogle them , polish them . I love all things mechanical and have many hobbies and interests beyond motorcycles. I would love to do an E type Jag ( too much $$ ) or even a more affordable MGA but motorcycles are of a scale where I can hope to complete them and still have time for my other interests.