My road bike was a sweet ride, but I couldn't hack it for much more than an hour. Nicely made Columbus Altec2 frame with aero Ritchey wheelset, now in the hands of another who enjoys it more than I did.

One of the prides of the garage is the big red Yamaha Roadstar. I got back into bikes around 2001 and started off with the Yamaha XV650. It was a nice looking bike (unlike me in the photo) and even got used at Scott's wedding for photos! The engine didn't quite "do it" for me, so I traded it for a CBR 600! This bike was awesome for acceleration and I am afraid to mention the speeds I used to clock on it. It stopped and turned nicely and certainly got you a fix for speed. Deciding I wanted to live for a bit longer, so I sold it and invested in the Roadstar. I bought it from a nice guy called John who had fitted it out with touring gear and had repainted it purple. I've since stripped most of the daggy looking lights and added the old '39 Ford tail light and had it resprayed in the good 'ol candy apple red, looks awesome in the sun. I lowered it and did a few other mods for appearance. This bike got used at Owen's wedding!

Bought the ute for helping me collect stuff for the reno I was doing on the house. It's been a reliable little beastie, but might trade up to something else...

The commuter bike is a carbon frame that we got to test from China. It is a very well made frame and has got quite a few miles on it now. Have been doing quite a few road miles on it of late and found the "old school" handlebars a lot better than road or MTB bars. Running 165mm 105 cranks with 41,24t chainwheels to a 11-32 cluster, quite a sweet gear range. The Fox forks are also pretty plush, a bit overkill in road mode, just turn the preload all the way up!

Then there's my much loved Mazda 1200. Started out life as a $500 rust heap. I removed all the rust and welded it all up and applied bog and sanded all the panels. I reconditioned the motor but a "friend" had the head re-machined too far and the motor spat the con-rod out the side of the engine and broke the starter motor off! I bought an RX5 for $1,000 and used the engine, gearbox, steering wheel, front struts and brakes, wheels and whatever else I could scrounge. The motor was seized, so I pulled it down and rebuilt it, a steep learning curve! The motor already had a port job, large extended port from memory, so she had plenty of potential. Anyhow, to cut a long story short, I welded the diff to get some drive and had a few years of excitement in the process. For some stupid reason I sold it along with an original condition Mazda R100 and bought an ET turbo...we all loved that car.

My Specialized Palmer inspired MTB was something really cool. I bought the frame in the States while there doing a bike show and bought it back on the plane. It ended up single speed with XTR hubs, Profile cranks, Magura rear brakes, Bezerk front brakes, Sun rims, DMR pedals, Azonic bars, Flite seat (gets used on everything!) Bezerk stem and GT forks. Eventually got sold to fund the transition back to motorbikes.