Drop of a hat 2005 .
. Part 1
2004 was drawing to a close and I was
reflecting on what a busy, and to a large extent, a successful year it had been.
The obvious highlights of the year were my deals and trips in Michigan and
throughout the U.S.A. and the VERY memorable days spent at Deals Gap in the
smokie mountains. I had one HUGE regret though, that was that I sold the N.O.S.
Brown H2b on Ebay (albeit for a large sum) and also that I sold a perfect 3,000
mile H2b to a friend in Belgium. My own H2b in my collection is nice and has a
lot of memories for me (I have owned it 20 years) but it was restored many years
ago when we didn’t have the knowledge and expertise that is available today. So,
imagine my surprise when a guy in Canada told me that he knew of a local
dealership that had a brand new NOS Brown H2b in the basement! I contact the
dealership and found that the bike belonged to the owner who had put it aside
after covering it in waxoil. As to whether it was for sale was all down to price
– the old phrase of “everything is for sale at a price” seemed to hit the right
note, I had already shot myself in the foot as the guy knew full well what the
last NOS H2b sold for on Ebay. I turned the idea over in my mind for a couple of
weeks and then rang back to ask him to check certain areas and certain parts
condition on the bike. All questions were answered with a positive reply and I
felt confident that the guy was genuine and knew what he was talking about.
2005 was starting to look very hectic
for me, I had a container of 20 bikes coming in from British Columbia on the 23rd
Jan, that would then give us 10 days to try and get many of them ready to sell
at the “Donnington” Show in early February, 10 days after that, my plans were to
fly back out to Michigan to load and ship the bikes that were in storage at my
pal Gary K’s house, once back I would have to be working on those bikes for
resale so the chances of me jumping on plane to Canada were slim at best . . .
unless I leave first week in January . . . . which is why at very short notice
I am sitting above the Atlantic typing out these notes!
As with most of my trips there was very
little planned other than to fly into the U.S. and then onto Canada to see the
bike and then to Michigan, collect my truck and then down to Illinois to meet up
with Brian Hilvety (a renowned Triple restorer in the U.S.) - and then back up
to North Michigan, fly to Florida, check out a few triples there and then jump
on a plane to meet the guys in Dallas for a beer finally back to Tampa for my
connection back to the U.K. pretty straight forward really, 14 flights, 4 hire
cars, 12 different hotel rooms and 3,000 miles to drive. As with many of my
trips, the start did not go well, I was up VERY late trying to get my route maps
loaded onto my new laptop, it wasn’t having any of it –I finally packed a
couple of bags sometime after midnight. I woke for a VERY early start in the
morning to find that someone hade re enacted the “Texas chainsaw massacre” in
the kitchen – enter one very poorly dog, plans were made to get him to the vet
and I left Brett Towers in a very sombre mood. All went well with the
first leg of the flights but due to severe snow my 2nd flight to
Toronto was cancelled, I did however get a later flight and collected my hire
car late at night, from there it was across the city to arrive my hotel in
Oshawa VERY late at night.
An early start sees me trying to find a
PC store to buy a new copy of “Streets and Trips” for my laptop I eventually
find a store at 9am only to be told that their shop hours are (10am to 10pm) I
carry on my journey only to come across a breakers yard that I had seen whilst
trawling on the Internet. I call in and the owner tells me that old Jap bikes
are getting pretty scarce in the area, I wander out into his yard but the place
is an ice rink and with very little spare time I decided to give it a miss and
head up to the City where I purchased a new copy of the autoroute programme and
within minutes my SatNav is telling me that my destination is just 2 miles away.
The owners “Pete & Bernie” are a little
surprised to see me, I guess that they had an inkling that it may have all been
a wind up, but, we head over to Petes house and there in his basement is a N.O.S.
H2b in what can only be described as FILTHY condition, Pete soaked the bike in
waxoil several years ago and the waxoil had attracted dust, grit, dirt but most
importantly of all, it HAD protected the bike from the ravages of time and I was
elated to find that beneath the layers of dirt was a pristine H2b. A few moments
of thinking and I took the plunge and we were soon shaking hands on
a
completed deal.
The snow was starting to get heavy as I
headed back to Toronto, the radio was giving out severe storm warnings and the
temperature on the cars thermometer had slowly dropped from minus 5 to minus
12, the 140 mile trip to Kitchener to see my pal Greg turned out to be an
interesting One, I was surprised to see that the canucks have a similar outlook
on driving as the British do, i.e. I am in a 4 x 4 SUV (people carrier/school
run vehicle) I can drive a lot faster in the snow than anyone else! WRONG,
whilst you can get more traction in the snow than most, your ability to grip on
ice is as limited as almost everyone else on the road, which is why I passed
around 20 accidents in the 140 miles, most were bad enough to write off the
vehicles (hitting the concrete central reservation barrier at 60mph will do
that) fortunately it seemed that human casualties were minimal. All praise to
the Canadian authorities in that the major freeways had Dozens if not hundreds
of snow ploughs working in teams to keep the roads clear.
I make my over to Gregs to spend an
evening talking bikes, watching Vids and meeting up with another “Triples nut” –
Richard, who has the unenviable task of rebuilding several Triples that he
bought in boxes . . along with a money pit of an E Type Jag!
Friday morning sees me heading to the
Airport for my 3 flights that get me into Traverse City where my truck is based,
things were going well until I came to collect my bags and One was missing,
lucky for me I spent a couple of hours at my favourite local restaurant with
friends “Mike & Jess” and by the time I got back to the airport my bags had
arrived on the next flight, I collected my truck from Garys and found that it
would only get into third gear, after nursing it for a few miles the oil seemed
to warm up a little and it changed O.K. The thought of a 1,500 mile drive in a
truck with a dodgy gearbox was a little bit daunting.
Saturday, and the reason for the gearbox
fault soon became apparent – it needed 3 pints of tranny oil! That problem
solved and I head South for Henrys place in Joliet, the unnerving sound of a
rumbling wheel bearing has me a little concerned but I press on and manage to
make the 300 mile drive in under 6 hours. A relaxing evening is spent with Henry
and his family followed by a few games of pool at a local bar. 6.30 Sunday
morning and I am awake and planning the rest of the journey, I shower and by
8.30 I am ready to go but Henry and family are still in bed, I do a little
reading and am relieved to see Henry finally appear at 8.50, I call him an idle
sod and tell him that I need to get on the road pronto – “but it’s only 7.50am
explains Henry, Duuuhhh . . . Guess who had forgotten to take the extra hour off
his watch as I crossed the time zone!
So, 8.00am and I am again heading South
for Brian Hilvetys place in Decatur, Brian has a “agricultural” H2 that is
destined for England. The roads are pretty clear and I manage to make the
trip200 mile trip in under 3 hours. Brian has been restoring bikes for several
years now and use to work for the “infamous” Mark & Matthew Jackson who built up
their business in the late Eighties by selling huge numbers of old Japanese
bikes to Europe. Brian still works full time at a motorcycle shop but he also
restores some H2’s for folks or buys and restores bikes to sell on Ebay. The
bike I have come to see was destined for restoration, that was until Brian sent
me a photo of the bike. It was a 1973 H2a that a farmer had been using as a work
horse! I am now at the stage in my bike collection where I have decided that I
have every perfect H2 I now want to collect some of the more bizarre or
bastardised varieties - This H2 trike will be for my collection and I am also
on the lookout for a H2 Hillclimber, H2 Chop, H2 Quad – in fact anything unusual
?
We loaded the H2 and I headed off on my
600 mile journey up to the North of Michigan, I decided to take a stop along the
way and try to track down the original importer into “Kawasaki Midwest” – my
search went quite well and I finally found the office of the original importer .
. . . only to find that he was away on a golfing holiday! After an overnight
stop I continued on my final leg with the rumbling from my transmission getting
increasingly louder. Fortunately I completed the journey without problems and
unloaded the “trike” at my pal Garys place. We put petrol in the bike and it
fired up! A quick spin about in the snow and I soon realised what a lethal bike
this could turn out to be – the huge paddle tyres are just a couple of inches
from your feet, if you got your foot caught in a tyre it would make a VERY nasty
mess!
The mornings weather for the U.S. was
bizarre to say the least, My local weather was a cool minus 5 degrees, 150 miles
West and it was minus 20 degrees, in Utah, 5 skiers had been killed in an
avalanche, in California 28 people had died in the floods and I was about to
jump on a plane. Travel 1400 miles South and land in the 80 degree sunshine in
Florida – to have so many different weather aspects in just One country floors
me. I dropped the truck off at the auto shop and got the feeling that it was a
propshaft UJ fault and not a wheel bearing – I then boarded a plane for One of
my 3 flights down to Tampa where I was going to check out a salvage yard that
had several H2’s.
Things in Tampa didn’t go too well, the
guy that was suppose to be giving me he details on the 6 H2’s - hadn’t! Mind
you, he had only had 6 weeks to sort the bikes out, but I guess he had been
busy! I had been forewarned before my trip that everything in Florida may not go
to plan so I had checked my schedule and decided that as I was hopefully back in
Florida in Early March to see Dave Crussell race at Daytona I would check out
the H2’s again then. The plan now was that I would jump on a plane and go and
see the guys in Dallas for a couple of days. The Dallas guys are a great bunch
and coupled with the fact that I had eaten my most memorable steak ever on my
last trip to Dallas I needed to find out if I had imagined that meal or if
indeed “Kirbys” really do serve the best steaks on the planet. I should point
out that John Ingram is the co owner of a small group of steak houses in Texas.
So, I land from the crystal clear skies
to the brilliant sunshine of Dallas, as I exit the terminal building to collect
my rental car I am shocked to find that the temperature is a very cool 55
degrees! I collect the rental car and head for my local hotel. Mt first night
was a quiet night in going through my mails and checking out any bikes for sale
in the area. I wandered off to a local liquor store to buy a bottle of wine the
journey home wasn’t too great as my car was rammed at the back by a car
travelling VERY fast, I was catapaulted over two lanes of traffic and was lucky
that the freeway was pretty quiet! – I suffered some whiplash but at least my
car was still driveable. We exchanged names and addresses but I was to live and
learn that I should have called the police.
Friday morning and I am heading for “re
Cycle” who are advertising a nice H2b on Ebay, the bike is described as totally
original with a professional respray. With a price of around $6,000 and $2,000
shipping the bike had to be pretty good to warrant taking it back to the U.K.
Unfortunately it wasn’t! The decals had been badly applied and there were
numerous air bubbles underneath them, the bike had obviously also been
“freshened up” for the pictures. Other than that it was a genuine bike with
around 7,000 miles on it. But with a price of £4,200 and still needing another
respray I decided to walk away. I managed to track down a couple more bikes in
the locality and they may feature in a future trip to Tx later this year.
Friday night and I head over to Barry B’s House for a Triples
gathering, all the regular guys were there and an enjoyable night was spent in
their company, I had to smile as I checked over the four bikes in Barrys garage
to find that ALL of them had been disabled in one way or another to lessen the
chances of anyone getting one out after a few drinks and waking the
neighbourhood.
Saturday and after just 5 hours sleep I
make my way over to Johns house to check out his H2’s, and what a fantastic pair
of bikes they are! The blue ’72 is a bike that John bought new back in 1972, and
had it restored a couple of years ago. Johns other H2 is also a ’72 (restored by
Brian Hilvety) but finished in the contrasting Gold. A short ride on the bikes
is enough to make me smile.
Saturday evening and we are booked in
for a meal at one of Johns steak restaurants, on my way over I call into a Dodge
dealership as I am interested in the difference in price between a Dodge Ram
truck in Michigan and a Dodge Ram truck in Tx, I am slightly bemused as I walk
around the lot at 8.15 on a Saturday night to see a car door open and a salesman
come out and try to sell me a truck, he is constantly telling me that I can
afford ANY truck on the lot and the paperwork will be done in 15 mins and I will
be driving out in my new Dodge Ram – all for £500 down! No wonder that the
AVERAGE credit card bill in the U.S. is £12,000! So, it’s on to “Kirbys” and yet
again we are treated to an absolutely superb meal – I get a lot of mails from
people around the World that enjoy reading about my travels! If you are in the
Dallas, Houston or Oklahoma City area then do yourself a favour, if you are
celebrating a special occasion then try a meal at “Kirbys” – I know you won’t be
disappointed, lets put it this way, the thought of a meal at “Kirbys” was enough
to make me book a flight over there! After eating hundreds of steaks in the U.S.
I can categorically state that they serve the best Ones at Kirbys!
Sunday morning and yet another early
start sees me heading for the airport and my journey home.
Rick Brett
