Editorial - The Future of OddBike

Merry Christmas to all my loyal OddBikers!

Sweet Jesus it's been a while since I've written anything.

It's not for lack of desire, it's due to a general lack of energy and inspiration following a day/week/month of working my ass ragged and trying to maintain some semblance of a personal life outside of my day job. Plus I got a new old car that needed sorting out over the course of many weekends.

I also spent some time rebuilding a 1993 GSXR 1100 WP in my living room, which I dubbed Project Vanilla Ice. I bought the bike in pieces through a friend of mine who found it on Kijiji in Red Deer, Alberta. It was complete and in fine shape aside from being torn apart and put into boxes, allegedly due to a transmission issue the owner never bothered to fix. I lucked out as the worst of it was a toasted clutch pack and some moderate dog wear on second gear. I had the whole thing restored in a few months and wheeled it out of my apartment just in time for the first month of Spring.

I immediately sold it after a mere 200 kms of shakedown rides when I came to the sudden realization that I have no desire to own a fat old Japanese superbike.

It could have made a neat restomod project but I had zero interest in putting any more money into it after I finished the rebuild. I quickly realized it was a pig-heavy brute that had the chassis tying itself into knots anytime the rider attempted to do anything other than accelerate in a straight line on a smooth road. It wasn't even exciting in its general terribleness, just rather soft and fluffy with wobbly vagueness coming on at anything more than city street pace. Even that once monstrous engine is pretty tame by modern standards. Not slow, but far from fast. It had no qualities endearing enough to make me want to keep it around. So off it went, netting me a modest profit and the satisfaction of rescuing a basket case from oblivion. It'll serve its new owner well.

I've been pondering the future of OddBike and my career as a freelance moto journalist. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to devote myself to my writing as I get older, my mind getting mushier as I approach my mid 30s. Add to that the exponential growth of the complexity of my profiles - my techniques have become more detailed and "professional" while my subjects have become more obscure, making the prospect of hammering out a quality article rather daunting. I have a half dozen stalled pieces sitting in limbo due to a simple lack of sources.

The Irving-Vincent - Anachronistic Trackday Missile

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The Irving-Vincent

Let’s say you are the head of a successful engineering firm in Australia. You have a full compliment of advanced casting, prototyping and milling machinery at your disposal and years of R&D experience in various avenues. And you happen to be passionate about motorcycles.

Hesketh V1000 - Immortal Aristocratic Motorcycles

It is the 1970s. You are a wealthy British aristocrat, a Lord and a Baron no less, and you have a keen interest in motor sports. So, with your own money and with the express purpose of having fun, you create your own racing company. Eventually you hire a reckless playboy/racer with a penchant for drugs, sex and boozing, and you have a grand old time, even winning a few races. Along the way you develop a reputation for ostentatious displays of wealth and excess on the trackside, like helicopter rides, Rolls Royce pit cars, and 5 star accommodations (in a time long before excess became the norm in Formula 1).

After a few years the party is over and you are looking for a new gasoline-fuelled hobby. How would you follow up a race career like that? By founding your own bespoke motorcycle company to kickstart the dying British motorcycle industry, of course.