To Build a Bike or.....

And so with that image of this Street tracker made by Mule I was totally smitten.
The stance, the looks, It was in my opnion the way a motorcycle should be and so I was drawn into a new segment of bikes for me: The cafe racers.
I was surprised by the enormous amount of bike builds and so there should be a market for them. But cafe racers are not the thing for me in the way you sit on them, leaning forward or leaning backwards (choppers) are not really my favorite riding position so I only focus on building Trackers or Scramblers. (Scramtrackers)
But then multiple questions arise like:”how would I build a bike?, How should it look?, should it have a signature?, what segment of the market should I build it for?” and so on.
Like questions , insights evolve and so I have quite a clear view in the direction I’m taking.

My bikes wil have mono rear suspension, multiple exhausts and wire spoke wheels or other really light wheels.
And with that in mind I have started upon my first project which is a learning curve for me as wel.

I was fortunate enough to have had a very good education so skills like welding(all sorts), milling and turning on a Lathe were allready mine.
The real challenge lies in new techniques I all want to do in house like powder coating, pipe bending and designing new solutions for problems I encounter.
These all take so much time that my first project is evolving very slowly.
Meanwhile I always keep an eye open for buying opportunities and so there are 6 projects now, on which to think and work on.
My goal is to public as soon as I have finished three bikes which will all have the same theme.
I will never build a same bike twice so every bike will be Unique.

When I was around 45 I cme to a crossing point in my carreer.
You can say I had it all: a wife, a kid, a Nice home, an SUV, a sportscar, A powerboat, but I can truly say I worked harder than all of my colleagues and didn’t mind to do so.
So next to my work I did all kinds of extra work.
Education had been having cutbacks in a way that teaching was getting harder and harder, due to no means. The money just wasn’t there to buy new models, materials and inventory.
Management was increasing and the money was flowing there instead of where it needed to be, which was in the classroom.
So when I was given the chance I took the opportunity to make a career switch, which turned out quite dramatic.
Having just started at my new employment, I was confronted by problems that had been kept from me and they were stacking up to more and more each week.
In the end, the stress and the hours of work took a toll on me.
I woke up one morning with a lump in my neck and was diagnosed with cancer, suddenly I was in a whole new ball game.
My employer wanted to get rid of me because I was sick.
Surgery and radiation therapy took away my energy.
And so I was extremely unhappy.
Anyway time passes and solutions tend to appear spontaniously.
So eventually I made my way back into the working process, being extremely disappointed by a large number of people. You really learn to know who your friends are and they were the best!
And now for something completely different: MOTORCYCLES !

Being back in education led me to new insights and one of them is : LIFE IS TOO SHORT, ENJOY EVERY DAY !

So I decided to go and do something else alongside my job (bills have to be payed).

It all started when I saw this picture:

Growing up in the country, I was riding a 50cc at the age of 14 and motorcycles since I was 16.
I also got my motorcycle driving license before my car license and so I went to college on a Triumph trident.
Man I loved that bike , especially the sound of the engine taking in air through open air filters and the unbaffled sound of the Marving 3 into 1 exhaust pipe.
You could hear me coming for miles.
But then it got so cold in the winter days that the nails of my hands turned black and so it was time to buy a car.
Motorcycles were purely a form of a hobby with my father and I putting them together in our garage and storing them , so at a certain time we had 7 ducati’s and 1 triumph in the garage of my parent’s house.
The ducati’s were all single cilinder bike which my dad and I loved at that time.
From a 250cc twin plug factory racer to a 450cc scrambler.
But as time went by interest decreased and so all the bikes eventually were sold off.
All but 1 : a 350 cc silver Desmo which even went on display at the museum in Assen located near the track.
Eventually that bike was also sold when I decided to buy a bike for my own transport to work and for the weekends.
So I bought a Suzuki GSX and years later traded it in for a Yamaha TDM 850.
With the purchase of a house the bike had to go and many years without motorcycles followed.
But then I became the coordinator of motorcycle education for the whole North eastern part of the Netherlands and every shop who had a student on their payroll was visited by me on a regular base.
This of course kept my knowledge of present day bikes up to date and increased my knowledge of all sorts of problems that occurred by all the different makes.
I was on a roll !

I’m starting this blog as a form of relaxation, writing things off myself is good for the mind.
Who am I ?……Well I’m Richard , at time of writing this, 53 years old , I teach motor vehicle technology and I live in the Netherlands.
I was diagnosed with cancer 7 years ago, and that has quite dramatically changed my life.
Especially my vision towards society and my place in it have been thoroughly revised.
Luckily I have been declared cured by the Doctors 2 years ago and so a new chapter of my life begins.
So in pursuit of my own happiness, I have decided to pick up an old passion of mine which is: Motorcycles.
Since teaching students takes quite a toll on me and the government here has raised the pension age to 67, I have decided to very slowly start building a business of my own in my spare time and gradually build it up to a point in which I will be able to combine both my teaching and building Bikes in harmony.