2004 was drawing to a close and I was reflecting on what a busy, and to a large extent, a successful year it had been. The obvious highlights of the year were my deals and trips in Michigan and throughout the U.S.A. and the VERY memorable days spent at Deals Gap in the smokie mountains. I had one HUGE regret though, that was that I sold the N.O.S. Brown H2b on Ebay (albeit for a large sum) and also that I sold a perfect 3,000 mile H2b to a friend in Belgium. My own H2b in my collection is nice and has a lot of memories for me (I have owned it 20 years) but it was restored many years ago when we didn’t have the knowledge and expertise that is available today. So, imagine my surprise when a guy in Canada told me that he knew of a local dealership that had a brand new NOS Brown H2b in the basement! I contact the dealership and found that the bike belonged to the owner who had put it aside after covering it in waxoil. As to whether it was for sale was all down to price – the old phrase of “everything is for sale at a price” seemed to hit the right note, I had already shot myself in the foot as the guy knew full well what the last NOS H2b sold for on Ebay. I turned the idea over in my mind for a couple of weeks and then rang back to ask him to check certain areas and certain parts condition on the bike. All questions were answered with a positive reply and I felt confident that the guy was genuine and knew what he was talking about.

2005 was starting to look very hectic for me, I had a container of 20 bikes coming in from British Columbia on the 23^rd Jan, that would then give us 10 days to try and get many of them ready to sell at the “Donnington” Show in early February, 10 days after that, my plans were to fly back out to Michigan to load and ship the bikes that were in storage at my pal Gary K’s house, once back I would have to be working on those bikes for resale so the chances of me jumping on  plane to Canada were slim at best . . .  unless I leave first week in January . . . .  which is why at very short notice I am sitting above the Atlantic typing out these notes!

As with most of my trips there was very little planned other than to fly into the U.S. and then onto Canada to see the bike and then to Michigan, collect my truck and then down to Illinois to meet up with Brian Hilvety (a renowned Triple restorer in the U.S.) - and then back up to North Michigan, fly to Florida, check out a few triples there and then jump on a plane to meet the guys in Dallas for a beer finally back to Tampa for my connection back to the U.K. pretty straight forward really, 14 flights, 4 hire cars, 12 different hotel rooms and 3,000 miles to drive. As with many of my trips, the start did not go well, I was up VERY late trying to get my route maps loaded onto my new laptop, it wasn’t having any of it –I  finally packed a couple of bags sometime after midnight. I woke for a VERY early start in the morning to find that someone hade re enacted the “Texas chainsaw massacre” in the kitchen – enter one very poorly dog, plans were made to get him to the vet and I left Brett Towers in a very sombre mood. All went well with the first leg of the flights but due to severe snow my 2^nd flight to Toronto was cancelled, I did however get a later flight and collected my hire car late at night, from there it was across the city to arrive my hotel in Oshawa VERY late at night.

An early start sees me trying to find a PC store to buy a new copy of “Streets and Trips” for my laptop I eventually find a store at 9am only to  be told that their shop hours are (10am to 10pm) I carry on my journey only to come across a breakers yard that I had seen whilst trawling on the Internet. I call in and the owner tells me that old Jap bikes are getting pretty scarce in the area, I wander out into his yard but the place is an ice rink and with very little spare time I decided to give it a miss and head up to the City where I purchased a new copy of the autoroute programme and within minutes my SatNav is telling me that my destination is just 2 miles away.

The owners “Pete & Bernie” are a little surprised to see me, I guess that they had an inkling that it may have all been a wind up, but, we head over to Petes house and there in his basement is a N.O.S. H2b in what can only be described as FILTHY condition, Pete soaked the bike in waxoil several years ago and the waxoil had attracted dust, grit, dirt but most importantly of all, it HAD protected the bike from the ravages of time and I was elated to find that beneath the layers of dirt was a pristine H2b. A few moments of thinking and I took the plunge and we were soon shaking hands on a completed deal.

The snow was starting to get heavy as I headed back to Toronto, the radio was giving out severe storm warnings and the temperature on the cars thermometer had slowly dropped from minus 5 to minus 12,  the 140 mile trip to Kitchener to see my pal Greg turned out to be an interesting One, I was surprised to see that the canucks have a similar outlook on driving as the British do, i.e. I am in a 4 x 4 SUV (people carrier/school run vehicle) I can drive a lot faster in the snow than anyone else! WRONG, whilst you can get more traction in the snow than most, your ability to grip on ice is as limited as almost everyone else on the road, which is why I passed around 20 accidents in the 140 miles, most were bad enough to write off the vehicles (hitting the concrete central reservation barrier at 60mph will do that) fortunately it seemed that human casualties were minimal. All praise to the Canadian authorities in that the major freeways had Dozens if not hundreds of snow ploughs working in teams to keep the roads clear.

I make my over to Gregs to spend an evening talking bikes, watching Vids and meeting up with another “Triples nut” – Richard, who has the unenviable task of rebuilding several Triples that he bought in boxes . .  along with a money pit of an E Type Jag!

Friday morning sees me heading to the Airport for my 3 flights that get me into Traverse City where my truck is based, things were going well until I came to collect my bags and One was missing, lucky for me I spent a couple of hours at my favourite local restaurant with friends “Mike & Jess” and by the time I got back to the airport my bags had arrived on the next flight, I collected my truck from Garys and found that it would only get into third gear, after nursing it for a few miles the oil seemed to warm up a little and it changed O.K. The thought of a 1,500 mile drive in a truck with a dodgy gearbox was a little bit daunting.

Saturday, and the reason for the gearbox fault soon became apparent – it needed 3 pints of tranny oil! That problem solved and I head South for Henrys place in Joliet, the unnerving sound of a rumbling wheel bearing has me a little concerned but I press on and manage to make the 300 mile drive in under 6 hours. A relaxing evening is spent with Henry and his family followed by a few games of pool at a local bar. 6.30 Sunday morning and I am awake and planning the rest of the journey, I shower and by 8.30 I am ready to go but Henry and family are still in bed, I do a little reading and am relieved to see Henry finally appear at 8.50, I call him an idle sod and tell him that I need to get on the road pronto – “but it’s only 7.50am explains Henry, Duuuhhh . . . Guess who had forgotten to take the extra hour off his watch as I crossed the time zone!

So, 8.00am and I am again heading South for Brian Hilvetys place in Decatur, Brian has a “agricultural” H2 that is destined for England. The roads are pretty clear and I manage to make the trip200 mile trip in under 3 hours. Brian has been restoring bikes for several years now and use to work for the “infamous” Mark & Matthew Jackson who built up their business in the late Eighties by selling huge numbers of old Japanese bikes to Europe. Brian still works full time at a motorcycle shop but he also restores some H2’s for folks or buys and restores bikes to sell on Ebay. The bike I have come to see was destined for restoration, that was until Brian sent me a photo of the bike. It was a 1973 H2a that a farmer had been using as a work horse! I am now at the stage in my bike collection where I have decided that I have every perfect H2 I now want to collect some of the more bizarre or bastardised varieties  -  This H2 trike will be for my collection and I am also on the lookout for a H2 Hillclimber, H2 Chop, H2 Quad – in fact anything unusual ?

We loaded the H2 and I headed off on my 600 mile journey up to the North of Michigan, I decided to take a stop along the way and try to track down the original importer into “Kawasaki Midwest” – my search went quite well and I finally found the office of the original importer . . . .  only to find that he was away on a golfing holiday! After an overnight stop I continued on my final leg with the rumbling from my transmission getting increasingly louder. Fortunately I completed the journey without problems and unloaded the “trike” at my pal Garys place. We put petrol in the bike and it fired up! A quick spin about in the snow and I soon realised what a lethal bike this could turn out to be – the huge paddle tyres are just a couple of inches from your feet, if you got your foot caught in a tyre it would make a VERY nasty mess!

The mornings weather for the U.S. was bizarre to say the least, My local weather was a cool minus 5 degrees, 150 miles West and it was minus 20 degrees, in Utah, 5 skiers had been killed in an avalanche, in California 28 people had died in the floods and I was about to jump on  a plane. Travel 1400 miles South and land in the 80 degree sunshine in Florida – to have so many different weather aspects in just One country floors me. I dropped the truck off at the auto shop and got the feeling that it was a propshaft UJ fault and not a wheel bearing – I then boarded a plane for One of my 3 flights down to Tampa where I was going to check out a salvage yard that had several H2’s.

Things in Tampa didn’t go too well, the guy that was suppose to be giving me he details on the 6 H2’s - hadn’t! Mind you, he had only had 6 weeks to sort the bikes out, but I guess he had been busy! I had been forewarned before my trip that everything in Florida may not go to plan so I had checked my schedule and decided that as I was hopefully back in Florida in Early March to see Dave Crussell race at Daytona I would check out the H2’s again then. The plan now was that I would jump on a plane and go and see the guys in Dallas for a couple of days. The Dallas guys are a great bunch and coupled with the fact that I had eaten my most memorable steak ever on my last trip to Dallas I needed to find out if I had imagined that meal or if indeed “Kirbys” really do serve the best steaks on the planet. I should point out that John Ingram is the co owner of a small group of steak houses in Texas.

So, I land from the crystal clear skies to the brilliant sunshine of Dallas, as I exit the terminal building to collect my rental car I am shocked to find that the temperature is a very cool 55 degrees! I collect the rental car and head for my local hotel. Mt first night was a quiet night in going through my mails and checking out any bikes for sale in the area. I wandered off to a local liquor store to buy a bottle of wine the journey home wasn’t too great as my car was rammed at the back by a car travelling VERY fast, I was catapaulted over two lanes of traffic and was lucky that the freeway was pretty quiet!  – I suffered some whiplash but at least my car was still driveable. We exchanged names and addresses but I was to live and learn that I should have called the police.

Friday morning and I am heading for “re Cycle” who are advertising a nice H2b on Ebay, the bike is described as totally original with a professional respray. With a price of around $6,000 and $2,000 shipping the bike had to be pretty good to warrant taking it back to the U.K. Unfortunately it wasn’t! The decals had been badly applied and there were numerous air bubbles underneath them, the bike had obviously also been “freshened up” for the pictures. Other than that it was a genuine bike with around 7,000 miles on it. But with a price of £4,200 and still needing another  respray I decided to walk away. I managed to track down a couple more bikes in the locality and they may feature in a future trip to Tx later this year.

Friday night and I head over to Barry B’s House for a Triples gathering, all the regular guys were there and  an enjoyable night was spent in their company, I had to smile as I checked over the four bikes in Barrys garage to find that ALL of them had been disabled in one way or another to lessen the chances of anyone getting  one out after a few drinks and waking the neighbourhood.

Saturday and after just 5 hours sleep I make my way over to Johns house to check out his H2’s, and what a fantastic pair of bikes they are! The blue ’72 is a bike that John bought new back in 1972, and had it restored a couple of years ago. Johns other H2 is also a ’72 (restored by Brian Hilvety) but finished in the contrasting Gold. A short ride on the bikes is enough to make me smile.

Saturday evening and we are booked in for a meal at one of Johns steak restaurants, on my way over I call into a Dodge dealership as I am interested in the difference in price between a Dodge Ram truck in Michigan and a Dodge Ram truck in Tx, I am slightly bemused as I walk around the lot at 8.15 on a Saturday night to see a car door open and a salesman come out and try to sell me a truck, he is constantly telling me that I can afford ANY truck on the lot and the paperwork will be done in 15 mins and I will be driving out in my new Dodge Ram – all for £500 down! No wonder that the AVERAGE credit card bill in the U.S. is £12,000! So, it’s on to “Kirbys” and yet again we are treated to an absolutely superb meal – I get a lot of mails from people around the World that enjoy reading about my travels! If you are in the Dallas, Houston or Oklahoma City area then do yourself a favour, if you are celebrating a special occasion then try a meal at “Kirbys” – I know you won’t be disappointed, lets put it this way, the thought of a meal at “Kirbys” was enough to make me book a flight over there! After eating hundreds of steaks in the U.S. I can categorically state that they serve the best Ones at Kirbys!

Sunday morning and yet another early start sees me heading for the airport and my journey home.

Rick Brett