Motorcycle Enthusiasm Takes All Shapes

These days there are a lot of different ways to be excited about and involved with classic bikes and the people who ride them, keep them and fix them. This issue features more than a few great examples of just that.

For some folks it means getting back out to one of the biggest and brightest motorcycle events that takes place each year, The Quail Motorcycle Gathering in Carmel, California. Both Founding Editor Richard Backus and writer and photographer Corey Levenson judged the event as it returned for 2022. They also took part by covering the show, bringing back great photos and stories to share with us all.

For others, it’s taking the time, money and energy to bring a bike back from the dead. Reader Gabriel Trench made the mistake of surfing a local listing site and stumbled across a bike he didn’t really need (who here hasn’t done that more than once?). After bringing the bike home, it was some months down the road before he had an idea and a direction for the project.

Soon his enthusiasm to restore the small Yamaha HT1 moved the project to the front of his workshop. After a teardown and a front-to-back overhaul, it is now finished and ridden regularly.

Last but not least, we have a “restoration” story of a completely different kind. A couple months back, writer John L. Stein reached out to me with a great pitch. He’d acquired a seriously crusty but miraculously all-there Yamaha YDS2. His idea was rather than restoring the bike, could it be turned from rough condition back to something closer to what we might call a survivor? If so, what potions, polishes, washes, waxes and processes could bring each and every surface back from the dead? Call it enthusiasm and elbow grease.