My Dad loves motorbikes and spends most of the weekend working on them
. He doesn't just maintain them he builds new bikes from old ones. He is always looking out for custom motorcycle parts which he can buy to make his bikes a little different.
My first memory of my Dad is of us both working in the garage. He would be working on one of his bikes and I would be there trying to copy him. I would take one of his custom motorcycle parts and try and fit it to my pedal bike. I can't remember how old I was but I must have been around 4 years old.
You can probably see why I found myself interested in motorbikes, it was ingrained into me at a early age. There are people that do develop an interest quite late on and my friend was one of them. He saw a film of somebody buying a bike and using it to travel abroad. I think he got caught up in the idea and thought that he should do it too.
My friend thought that he would get a bargain by buying it on Ebay. Yes he got one cheap but it was cheap for a reason. It didn't work! He can laugh about it now but at the time it wasn't funny. He didn't let it put him off; he just decided he would do the bike up.
Throughout the summer my mate spent time working on his bike. He bought lots of custom motorcycle parts to try to get the thing working again. I have to admit that I admire him for getting stuck in. He didn't know anything about bikes to begin with but he became quite knowledgeable. I think that most importantly he enjoyed it all.
After trying for a long time my mate decided to take it to a mechanic to get advice on different custom motorcycle parts. Unfortunately the mechanic told him that nothing would get the bike going again.