Normally not one to make random threads, but this one means something to me.
Right so my father is and always has been my hero. Always. I won't write out his life story here, but he did just about everything, Air Force, Motorcycle racer, Steel Mill worker, Coal Miner for a day, Fire Department, he was a drunk for 7 years, went back to school and ended up making really good money as a technical writer. He was So smart. Was a model engineer, had a full metal shop, some of my earliest memories are standing at the end of his lathe watching him work, I got a lathe when I turned 11. We were the best of friends in a father son way. When I was 17 we drove from MA to Mexico together, just he and I.
One of our greatest shared passions was motorcycles. Old English and Italian motorcycles specifically. He bought a Norton Atlas when he was 21 and rode it till he was 31, bought a Ducati 900GTS then and rode that till he was 40 something, then gave it up until I (youngest of two) turned 18. Went out got a Ducati Monster 750 and we did all sorts of stuff to that bike, but he was hit 2 months in.
Mom swore if he got another bike she'd leave him. So he didn't... till 2005 when she announced that if he wanted one he could have one - I think it was our constant talking of bikes that got her in the end, and his saying if he got a bike she could have the BMW.
I'd actually introduced him to the Hinkley Bonnies down at Performance Cycles in Shrewsbury MA. I was lusting after one in the worst way. His first take, he wasn't too impressed, but as days wore on he liked them more and more, he admitted to secretly going to look at them twice before mom made her announcement.
Suppose the announcement was made on a Friday, Dad owned a 2005 Triumph T100 that Sunday.
He LOVED that bike, and browsed this forum, though I never did find out what name he used, or if he ever posted.
He put drag bars on, plugged up the thing in the head, went up a tooth on the countershaft sprocket, Progressive Hagon shocks and Springs, a Dart Fly screen with home made spacers (made of brass) made in the basement with his logan lathe to give it just the right angle. In under two years he put 10,000 miles on the bike, commuting and just going for rides on the weekends.
He retired in the spring of 2007, having given the computer industries over 25 years and in the end not being treated very well by them.
He was always working out, eating right, doing it all good. Gave up drinking in the 70s, gave up smoking pipes in the 80s.
Retired he was as giddy as a school boy, always thinking, tons of ideas for the house, for the bike, for adventures. We had some of the most perfect days that summer, he and I working on the tent trailer to get it ready for a cross country trip he and mom were going to take. Working on bikes.
When I laid down my Guzzi 750 Breva in the drizzle going 35 I was so worried about about his reaction. I shouldn't have been. His response was how are you? How's the bike? "Don't worry about it, they don't stay new for long" I replaced the headlight using the headlight off his '67 Atlas the 30+ year old halogen bulb still worked!
He died of a blood clot July 23 2007, it was random and totally unexpected by all of us, including him.
I rode his bike a lot that summer. But I discovered I was too worried about it being Dad's last bike, and gave up all rights to my brother.
That bike arrived here in Phoenix this morning, and is now my bike again! Dad's last bike. I inherited the Norton Atlas too, so technically I have his first and last English roadsters.
When he was alive she looked like this:
So here she is now:
Now for the more sentimental.
Dad at age 25 (my age now) in a field at Nelson's Ledges in Ohio with his '67 Norton Atlas.
His shirt reads "Triumph" by the way.
Perhaps my favorite picture of him, taken just two years before he died, this was him at 57, and he looked pretty much just like this when he was 59.
So to make a very long post end, I am thrilled to once again have Dad's T100, and I guess I just wanted to honor my father a bit more.
Charles Gregory Greenman
25 November 1947 - 23 July 2007
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