{"id":4706,"date":"2024-09-05T08:05:08","date_gmt":"2024-09-05T15:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outlawtrials.com\/davesblog\/?p=4706"},"modified":"2024-09-05T08:05:08","modified_gmt":"2024-09-05T15:05:08","slug":"thursday-september-5th-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outlawtrials.com\/davesblog\/2024\/09\/05\/thursday-september-5th-24\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday September 5th\/24"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me !!!! Holy Moly I never thought I would see this day at 87 years old. – Especially as my mother was told I might not live to be a teen-ager as I was a really sick kid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if I can credit anything for this, it would have to be Motorcycles ( and perhaps my dear old Mum and Babsy) – To say that I feel very fortunate, is really an understatement, as I look back on all the ups and downs through this long journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course I have been so very lucky to meet so many great people, many famous in the Motorcycle World, but also so many friends, a lot of whom died way too young.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m typing this up on Wednesday night as I’ve just seen a couple of Greetings from OZ – who are a few hours ahead of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m not sure at this point, how many people click onto the daily blog – I can’t even remember when I started doing this, but it’s likely about 20 yrs now. – a few years ago it used to be in the millions but I think some of those are the bastard Russian spammers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As some people know, my early years were spent in the Printing Industry as a Photo Engraver , then a Camera man working on a large Camera which was built into the darkroom wall. – Below is a pic of me at age 27, when I started a job working for Duffoto in Calgary. ( I was hired in London UK) This was not a happy time for me ( my first day started at 8.30am and finished at 1.30 am the next day) – and soon I moved on to different jobs ending up as Sales manager for a Printing\/Graphic arts business in Calgary. – Also at this time, I joined the Calgary Motorcycle Club so many of my sales calls, were at local Calgary Dealers – looking after all their printing needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was around this time that I was having coffee with Bruce the owner of Blackfoot Motorcycle – he had sponsored me on a Montesa at one point, but I did not get along with the bike, so went back to Bultaco, however it was Bruce Cameron ( who died too young) who put me it touch with Trevor Deeley and the new Yamaha Motor Canada in Vancouver, and that is how I went from 25 plus years in the Graphic arts\/printing Industry – to driving all over Western Canada, setting up Yamaha Dealerships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I’m sure that I’ve mentioned before that the 10 plus years I spent working for Yamaha, were a big highlight for me, I loved the job – yes it wasn’t easy driving about 1500 km a week and away from home all the time, especially that first 6-8 months trying to find snowmobile dealers out on farms in Saskatchewan at night in snowdrifts -!! I certainly got to see a lot of Canada, including one cross country trip doing a Sales Seminar, that had me ending up (and stranded) in Newfoundland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the big plus for me was the fact that Yamaha were so involved in the sport – they had hired Mick Andrews and I got to set up a demo for him in Calgary to promote the TY 250 – plus of course I managed to get free bikes and became sort of an under cover helper to the famous Bob Work !! ( That is how I met Stevie Baker – who also has a birthday today ) – I put on Trials schools around my territory and -I like to think that some of my ideas for the Cross Country bikes which were put into production, benefited a lot of riders, including our 1983 ISDE Team in the Welsh event. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Moving ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1981 Yamaha produced 3 million Motorcycles, because they wanted to beat Honda for the #1 position for Motorcycle Sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately in 1981 we had a recession, and Yamaha had a huge headache. The Japanese staff were under tremendous pressure to move product, and I think we did our share, but also at that time I had been working on the Yamaha Canada Team for the upcoming ISDE in Wales – My home Country!! – As with anything big events need careful planning and this I did by contacting Mitsui in the UK who were the Yamaha Importers for England – we did this many many months ahead ( not knowing about the big sales crash) –<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I should mention also that at this time because of our huge efforts we can honestly say that the woods were “Blue” with Yamaha IT models – no it didn’t happen by magic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We got zippo help from Yamaha Canada at this time – our Accessories guy Keith Simmons nicked us jerseys and caps for the team, and I borrowed a TT 600 from Walt for Paddy Horan to ride on the Trophy Team. All the other riders bought their own bikes and paid their own way to Wales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As many have likely seen in previous blogs – our Canadian Team finished 2nd in the World that year – the fact that I’m Welsh, helped us pull a few strings, but the riders did an outstanding job to finish a grueling event that saw many top teams fall by the wayside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After that things at Yamaha were never the same – no recognition for what our riders had achieved – so I decided to leave. – But I still kept a link to Yamaha through Walt Healy and Mick Andrews. – but that’s another story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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– In 1992 I was in Scotland at the Scottish Six Day Trial and chatting with Mick Andrews at the hotel about the new TYZ prototype that a Japanese rider was entered on – Mick and myself shared quite a few conversations about dealing with the Japanese Yamaha people – Anyway. Mick told me that he would be going to Japan later to discuss some changes to the new TYZ.!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suffice to say this never happened and when we got our first 1993 TYZ – it had none of the improvements that Mick had wanted. – I rode my new bike at a Kelowna Trial and lost 5’s in the first few sections because it kept stalling- – Later that night (Midnight in Canada) I phoned Mick to talk about this – “Oh yeah- I know Dave – everybody hates them over here” !!! Not the news I wanted to hear. Mick did tell me a couple of things that helped, but really it was very disappointing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A short time later I got a late night call – it was Don Clark – he said Dave how are you getting along with that Yamaha? – I replied – Don you know bloody well, how I’m getting along with that Yamaha. – Hmm! he said, – how would you like to be a dealer for us???? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

-” I will be out tomorrow was my reply.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that is how I became a Trials dealer for Mountain Motorcycles which is now 31 years. – I think we must be doing something right..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me !!!! Holy Moly I never thought I would see this day at 87 years old. – Especially as my mother was told I might not live to be a teen-ager as I was a really sick kid. But if I can credit anything for this, it would… Continue reading Thursday September 5th\/24<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outlawtrials.com\/davesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outlawtrials.com\/davesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outlawtrials.com\/davesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outlawtrials.com\/davesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outlawtrials.com\/davesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4706"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/outlawtrials.com\/davesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4721,"href":"https:\/\/outlawtrials.com\/davesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4706\/revisions\/4721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outlawtrials.com\/davesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outlawtrials.com\/davesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outlawtrials.com\/davesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}