A Brief History of Time…
Judging by these photos I believe I always had the Genes from my dad…
But really… for me it all started in 1986.
I was told by a friend that getting a motorbike license is really easy. And indeed it was… Several lessons on a Jawa 350, a riding test, and voila!… I had a license…
Then, something strange happened: both my mother and I entered a raffle. She won a small bike – a Fantic Sprinter 50, and I won a set of bed sheets… So we swapped , and I found myself on my very own two wheels for the first time…
So I was running around on the little red Sprinter for a little while, until the long anticipated overseas trip to Europe. My friends and I had dreamed about this trip for a long time: Europe on a motorbike.
On the 6th day of our trip we were on Corfu Island and hired a small motorbike to enjoy the island in a real way. Unfortunately an accident put a stop to the dream of doing Europe on a bike…
Back home after traveling the world for a year and it was time for another bike. This time is was an antique 1956 BSA M21… An old beast, single cylinder, 600cc, with every ride being a “light and sound show”… The noise… the smoke… the backfires… the vibrations… I can still feel it now…
But the good old BSA reached a stage it was breaking down more often than it was moving. And in 1991 I found myself following the love of my life, and moving to Australia. So for the next 20+ years I had to obey the boss and stay away from the 2 wheelers.
Except for that one time in India..
… in 1994 when we were holidaying in India and tried to travel to northern India on Royal Enfields with friends… But the Royal Enfields kept breaking down and we never managed to get past the ring road around Delhi… So we loaded the Enfields on a truck, went back to Delhi, and continued without them…
So for the next 2 decades I was sitting in Sydney’s peak hour traffic, morning and evening, day in day out, looking at the bikes going past me and feeling … well… feeling…
Then, in 2018, a number of things happened to people around me and I came to realisation: a person must do what they are passionate about, otherwise they may never get a chance to do it.
And that’s when I bought The Yammy.
