CHRIS SPAETT IS MY FRIEND WHO RUNS A business buying and selling old motorcycles. I borrow lots of these motorcycles so I can learn what they’re like and can then share that hopefully entertaining and possibly amusing understanding with you. We also get on like a house on fire, mainly due to a shared and sometimes obscure sense of humour.
One thing we do not share, strangely, is our taste in motorcycles.
Like most enthusiastic traders, it is hard to justify being in the old bike business if you’re not a bit batty about old bikes. Chris has a collection of motorcycles which are not for sale – he calls this his private collection, and like most private collections, including my own, it varies a little from time to time. Bikes come and go. Happily, my collection contains no bikes anyone else would want, and Chris’s contains bikes I could never afford.
Another thing we have in common is that every so often we find an exceptional machine. I usually refer to these as The Ones To Have, whereas Chris calls them Keepers. Journalists get paid by the word…
And thus, it was that when an excited email landed from Chris, fair bubbling with delight about some old lunker which had dropped into his possession and which he
