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Sounds good to me - best of luck with the workshop clear out though. That's going to be a hell of a task all right. I know there's a Teesdale built 1988 Fisher Mt Tam hanging in the rafters that I would be happy to rehome ;)
I'm up to my neck in stuff ATM (kids, trying to setup a business etc.) but shoot me a PM if you want and I'll see if I can help with anything as well.
mynchiboy-
Heh. The Mt Tam was originally owned by Richard Ballantyne, who swapped it for a faired Windcheetah. Mike rode it a few times, got into mountainbikes, crashed and broke his arm and declared that mountain bikes were stupid and dangerous and never rode one again. That bike is coming home with me, being good friends with both RB and Mike, that bike is as close to sacred to me as it comes. And I’ll make sure it gets ridden by as many people as possible. There is one more of Mike’s bikes that I want too, but the rest will go to auction.
What’s going to be hard is all the bits and pieces. There’s are literally boxes of stuff that are recognisable to me and other aficionados, as in “Jeez, that’s a prototype casting from a Windcheetah Mk5” which is useless to anyone but holds such memories. Hubs, castings, experimental bits. All useless but sentimentally they’re priceless.
His massive Milwaukee milling machine - it’s ancient but he used to build nearly all of his bikes. It should be preserved but Mike told me a couple of weeks ago “sod that, it should be used to make things!” It’s going to be auctioned off with the proviso that it’ll carry on working and not be sold for scrap. His family just want the place sold off and aren’t at all sentimental so it’ll all go.
I’ll message you. If you’re a local you may well know Andy P and we can go from there.
jj72
His sidekick Andy Pegg and I are looking to organise something. His funeral is going to be extremely private (not his doing; his family are a tad eccentric, shall we say) and so we want to have a memorial event of some sort. We have to clear his workshop out, catalogue everything and list a load of stuff for auction, which is going to be incredibly hard to to do, but it’s what he wanted. Then we’ll see how best to celebrate him. I’ll keep people informed.