I've been on here for a month and posted a few times, but I thought I'd do the obligatory hello post.
I say hello from Atlanta but I'm actually in a northern Atlanta suburb, Alpharetta. I'm in my late 50s and have been a total car and bike guy since I was a little kid. I own my own business, a violin shop, and I am a trained luthier. (There's one for you to look up.) However for the past 15 years I've almost completely forsaken cars and have gone the bike route, averaging 15K miles a year on either BMWs or Ducatis.
Until June of last year that is... riding home one morning from Asheville and a weekend on the Blue Ridge Parkway, I had a guy in an F150 run a red light and T-bone me at about 50mph. Thank God for proper gear, as the witnesses all thought they'd seen a fatality. Still I had a laundry list of problems... an open compound fracture to my left wrist and forearm, a dislocated right shoulder accompanied by a broken acromium, torn rotator cuff, and brachial plexus nerve injury, and four breaks in my right ankle all have made this last year one of mending and relaxing.
I'll have permanent impairment in both the left wrist and right shoulder and arm, but I've bought a bike already, a Triumph Street Triple (what a great engine) and I'm riding again. Still, I can see that a migration back to more four wheel activity is in order, and I've decided that a replica Speedster would make a fun toy to take up my time. I also think it'd look cute sitting in front of my shop.
I really wanted to go to Carlisle last week as I lived there for four years while I was in school, but I'm still not up to sitting in a car seat for the 12 hours it would have taken. Maybe next year!
Anyway, I'm glad to have found this site, and I've already learned a lot from reading here. I look forward to getting to know some of you, either through here or at shows, and I'll thank you in advance for everybody's kindness and help.
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