It all started in the early 1980s, when my dad was one number off winning $60k on Lotto (seriously) and won a $1000 consolation prize instead - so he bought a shiny new Honda ATC125ME (trike) to use on his few acres on the NSW south coast (Tomerong).
Needless to say, young Nathan took over it pretty quickly and must have done about a million kilometres on it. Every weekend was spent at dad's place riding with my partners in crime (three siblings with a Z50 and another kid with an XL75 who were all around my age). Looking back it was a blessed existance - we had three, then four then five bikes and free reign of about 1200acres - and more if we were adventurous...
The first to wheeler I rode was an early Z50 (a different one). Rode about 5 metres, got a vine caught around a foot peg, did a very tight donut and fell off... Maybe I should have taken it as a sign, but it got better from there. Where the 3-wheeler was fun, 2-wheelers were awesome. So I was forever pestering my mates for 'swapsy' rides on their bikes - mastered both Z50s, the XL75, the ATC90, but shied away from "the Yammie" (in hindsight, it was probably a YG1).
A few years down the track, dad was given an old XL175 - and through a twisting turn of events, I inhereted it as a project bike. Woo-hoo! My very own two wheeler, even if it was a long way short of the CR125 that I lusted after.
Got it going and rode it a whole lot.
At the start of Yr9, a mate told me that he wanted to off-load a DT175 and a DT250 that he'd bought from the local tip for $50 each... The DT175 turned out to be a CT1, so I turned my nose up at it
so I bought the DT250A.
Damn that was a good bike - unsurprisingly, it had no hassles hosing off my mates on SL125s, TL125s and the like! So good that I still own it.
It was definitely the start of the the love of most things Yamaha - simple, reliable and plenty of grunt (for what it is).
Then I fart-arsed around with a collection of DT125/175 monoshockers, and some (relatively) modern bikes until I moved to Canberra and got serious with a girl - kept my (Italian) TM125E and the DT250, but didn't ride either of them for five years.
Then got 'divorced' a couple of years ago, and suddenly found myself with more spare money and a truck-load of freedom... Decided to go VMX racing like I'd been wanting to since I first read about it in July 87 ADB. Bought a '77 YZ125 from Ebay and then went a bit mental buying bikes with the support of the new girly - 77 YZ250, 80 YZ250, blah blah...
Drove up to the HEAVEN Evo Challenge early last year and fronted up to my first race and had a ball (a very slow ball, but a ball nonetheless!). Have since progressed from "hopeless" to "very mediocre" - the current goal is to be normal mediocre.
So that's how I got to here.
Current collection of running bikes is: '69 CT1, '70 AT1, '72 TS90,
'74 DT125, '77 YZ125, '80 YZ250,
'84 YZ125, '88 DT175, '94 TM125E, '99 Husky WR360.
Project bikes include: '77 YZ1
75D, XL175 x2, '77 DT175D, '82 IT250G, '83 YZ250K, '79 YZ125F, '82 YZ250J, AT1 Noguchi replica,
DT/TY/AT1 hybrid,
CR125RH,
SL100...
The only bike that I realistically want to add to the list is a YZ125A. I'd love a 250A and/or an Ossa Phantom, but until the lotto numbes come in...
My other way of keeping myself poor is rally cars. I started rallying in mid-1999, and have built/rebuilt dozens of cars (not all mine!). Current toy is a
1972 Volvo 164E (?!) that runs in the Historic class. It's not super fast, but is cheap and fun to drive, and reliable. The
RX-7 turbo that I crashed mid-1995 should be fixed by the end of the year, and will get a run sometime next year. Among a big heap of unfinished road car projects, there's also a rally GA Galant awaiting a rebuild, my old 808 rally car halfway through it's major rebuild, and a Volvo 244 that might be the next serious rally car. Yes we have a big yard!
I am (and have been) heavily involved with the administration side of rallying - committee member of the ACT Rally series, BMSClub, and currently serve on the NSW rally panel - this is most of the reason why I'm such an opinionated shit about the direction of VMX...
(that emoticon is supposed to be embarrassed).
Oh, and my full name is Nathan Senior. I can't see the point in hiding behind a nom de plume, although I am registered as Spac on numerous other forii - it's my highschool nickname and has the advantage of never being contested as a username...
I ride with the number 818.
