BobWitte
Member
History and background discussion "catch up":
At age 73, I think that I have finally passed the point where my oft cited claim that "most people my age are dead already" is no longer a joke! But in any case, I'm glad to be signing on here to move over some of the narrative on my now finished trike conversion that has been documented only on the other CTX700 forum. I'm doing this with two purposes in mind. First, I want to "tighten" up the narrative intending to eventually polish it up as a history for a website I intend to set up soon. Secondly, there are riders on this side of net that are not, have not, nor will not sign on the other forum.
This will take awhile, after all there are over 400 posts and there's been just under 45,000 views in the two years since I first started the thread. I count that as a high level of interest in what is clearly a very tiny segment of the CTX700 population.
Okay, here we go...
I started riding career one bright sunny morning in August of 1958 (it was my 14th birthday). I hit the road right after I passed my exam for my "restricted" license. At that time in Florida, you could get a daytime-only-license which allowed me to ride a small motorcycle or scooter. And I hopped on my new-to-me, recently purchased 200cc Triumph and didn't look back for the better part of the next decade.
Over the next 9 years I packed on something like 200,000+ miles on one of my four trusty steeds I had along the way. I quit riding back in late 1967 in favor of tooling around in a 64 MGB roadster. I gave $700 in cash and traded in my last bike of that era, a 1966 CB72 Honda. As it turned out, it was a good thing I didn't still have that Honda Hawk when I met my future wife Karen.
Although we had our first date on a Friday night and were engaged the next Sunday night (yes, just 2 days later!!) I later found out that she might never have agreed to even go out with me in the first place if my only form of transportation was that Honda! It wouldn't have mattered that Mr. Honda spent millions on convincing the USA that "You meet the nicest people on a Honda!" She was petrified of all motorcycles and according to her would have passed on my pursuits. (however, I don't think so. I was that determined she was “the one” – and after some 50 years this Feb 17th, I'm proven right!).
Anyhow, we were married just 6 weeks after that whirlwind weekend (culminating with our engagement on 1968's New Year's Eve). Fast forward thru a year of air combat missions in SE Asia, 3 boys born to us in a half dozen years and five years later one girl adopted as our youngest, 8 out-of-state moves, and an equal number of career changes (including a stint of 6 years in full time Christian education ministry).
Blink twice, click your heels and turn around. All of a sudden, 38 years have whizzed by during which I never even sat on a motorcycle. However most of you will understand it when I say that I perked up every single time I heard the "music" roaring out of a set of pipes on a motorcycle going by.
All that changed in 2006. With all our kids gone and married I felt it was time to come back to “a first love” of mine – motorcycling! By now I'm well into in my 60's so I promised my long-suffering wife that I would do at least 3 wheels. And I embarked on an extensive research program. I checked them all, trikes, sidecars and the "training wheel" systems which are actually 4 wheelers. Therefore, I call them "fourples" not trikes). I got so involved in it that since I couldn't afford to buy the trike I really wanted, I wound up starting a trike conversion company of my own in 2007 (The Trinity Trike Mfg. Inc.).
My partner in this was Richard Yelvington and we designed and built almost 100 units. However, we didn't have very deep pockets (just barely shoe strings!) and we ceased Trinity's operations in Dec 2011. I went back to full time software development and luckily for the sport, Richard later partnered up with some other local investors, and carried on. You can see his stuff on http://www.ytrikes.com . Note that the “Trikes” icon takes you to a screen that now only shows the HD Sportster. In the past, one of their better selling standard models was our own CTX700! Sadly, I believe that mine will be the last Yelvington kit for the CTX700.
Ironically, the very last Trinity Trike conversion was to be my own personal ride that was put together with some Frankenstein like "left over" parts and a lot of my "spare" time. Actually it was to be our Trinity prototype for the millions of Honda Shadows built over the last couple of decades. It has been a work in progress for some 3.5 years (with some long pauses along the way). The donor bike is a rather pristine 1982 Honda GL500i SilverWing Interstate and has only now finally been finished.
In October 2015, I talked the wife into going to the huge AIMExpo motorcycle trade show in Orlando. My daughter and a next door neighbor (who wanted to see about getting a trike) were already signed up to go with me. Even though I think my wife volunteered just to avoid being home alone on a Saturday, much to my surprise, she really enjoyed it!
Amazingly she said something that day and again a couple days later that brings me to the reason I have just signed up on this forum. After seeing the several newer bikes done as gorgeous Yelvington Trikes, she opined that perhaps I should sell my 82 Honda and get "one of Richard's trikes instead." Her thinking was that it would be much newer and therefore more reliable. I didn't realize she actually meant it until she brought it up again a couple of days later. Once she told me twice I sprang into action straight away. This being her idea might give me more leverage in convincing her to actually go riding with me (at least once in a while).
So here I was, clearing up the last few items on the Honda GL500i and I put it up for sale. At this writing, I was shopping for a new or late model cruiser to replace it. My list narrowed down to a Hyosung GV650 (which I’ve owned before in 2006) and our own CTX700. Whichever it is, I wanted to have the professionals at Yelvington Trikes do the actual conversion for me this time. My goal here is to get on the road as quickly and for as many miles as I can muster while I’m healthy enough to do so. And with the number of Seniors still riding their trikes around here (who are well into their 80’s), I’m hoping for a lot of miles yet!! However, as will be seen in a later post, I wound up doing the install in my driveway.
I looked forward to being back “in the wind” and gleaning much good information from the forum as well.
At age 73, I think that I have finally passed the point where my oft cited claim that "most people my age are dead already" is no longer a joke! But in any case, I'm glad to be signing on here to move over some of the narrative on my now finished trike conversion that has been documented only on the other CTX700 forum. I'm doing this with two purposes in mind. First, I want to "tighten" up the narrative intending to eventually polish it up as a history for a website I intend to set up soon. Secondly, there are riders on this side of net that are not, have not, nor will not sign on the other forum.
This will take awhile, after all there are over 400 posts and there's been just under 45,000 views in the two years since I first started the thread. I count that as a high level of interest in what is clearly a very tiny segment of the CTX700 population.
Okay, here we go...
I started riding career one bright sunny morning in August of 1958 (it was my 14th birthday). I hit the road right after I passed my exam for my "restricted" license. At that time in Florida, you could get a daytime-only-license which allowed me to ride a small motorcycle or scooter. And I hopped on my new-to-me, recently purchased 200cc Triumph and didn't look back for the better part of the next decade.
Over the next 9 years I packed on something like 200,000+ miles on one of my four trusty steeds I had along the way. I quit riding back in late 1967 in favor of tooling around in a 64 MGB roadster. I gave $700 in cash and traded in my last bike of that era, a 1966 CB72 Honda. As it turned out, it was a good thing I didn't still have that Honda Hawk when I met my future wife Karen.
Although we had our first date on a Friday night and were engaged the next Sunday night (yes, just 2 days later!!) I later found out that she might never have agreed to even go out with me in the first place if my only form of transportation was that Honda! It wouldn't have mattered that Mr. Honda spent millions on convincing the USA that "You meet the nicest people on a Honda!" She was petrified of all motorcycles and according to her would have passed on my pursuits. (however, I don't think so. I was that determined she was “the one” – and after some 50 years this Feb 17th, I'm proven right!).
Anyhow, we were married just 6 weeks after that whirlwind weekend (culminating with our engagement on 1968's New Year's Eve). Fast forward thru a year of air combat missions in SE Asia, 3 boys born to us in a half dozen years and five years later one girl adopted as our youngest, 8 out-of-state moves, and an equal number of career changes (including a stint of 6 years in full time Christian education ministry).
Blink twice, click your heels and turn around. All of a sudden, 38 years have whizzed by during which I never even sat on a motorcycle. However most of you will understand it when I say that I perked up every single time I heard the "music" roaring out of a set of pipes on a motorcycle going by.
All that changed in 2006. With all our kids gone and married I felt it was time to come back to “a first love” of mine – motorcycling! By now I'm well into in my 60's so I promised my long-suffering wife that I would do at least 3 wheels. And I embarked on an extensive research program. I checked them all, trikes, sidecars and the "training wheel" systems which are actually 4 wheelers. Therefore, I call them "fourples" not trikes). I got so involved in it that since I couldn't afford to buy the trike I really wanted, I wound up starting a trike conversion company of my own in 2007 (The Trinity Trike Mfg. Inc.).
My partner in this was Richard Yelvington and we designed and built almost 100 units. However, we didn't have very deep pockets (just barely shoe strings!) and we ceased Trinity's operations in Dec 2011. I went back to full time software development and luckily for the sport, Richard later partnered up with some other local investors, and carried on. You can see his stuff on http://www.ytrikes.com . Note that the “Trikes” icon takes you to a screen that now only shows the HD Sportster. In the past, one of their better selling standard models was our own CTX700! Sadly, I believe that mine will be the last Yelvington kit for the CTX700.
Ironically, the very last Trinity Trike conversion was to be my own personal ride that was put together with some Frankenstein like "left over" parts and a lot of my "spare" time. Actually it was to be our Trinity prototype for the millions of Honda Shadows built over the last couple of decades. It has been a work in progress for some 3.5 years (with some long pauses along the way). The donor bike is a rather pristine 1982 Honda GL500i SilverWing Interstate and has only now finally been finished.
In October 2015, I talked the wife into going to the huge AIMExpo motorcycle trade show in Orlando. My daughter and a next door neighbor (who wanted to see about getting a trike) were already signed up to go with me. Even though I think my wife volunteered just to avoid being home alone on a Saturday, much to my surprise, she really enjoyed it!
Amazingly she said something that day and again a couple days later that brings me to the reason I have just signed up on this forum. After seeing the several newer bikes done as gorgeous Yelvington Trikes, she opined that perhaps I should sell my 82 Honda and get "one of Richard's trikes instead." Her thinking was that it would be much newer and therefore more reliable. I didn't realize she actually meant it until she brought it up again a couple of days later. Once she told me twice I sprang into action straight away. This being her idea might give me more leverage in convincing her to actually go riding with me (at least once in a while).
So here I was, clearing up the last few items on the Honda GL500i and I put it up for sale. At this writing, I was shopping for a new or late model cruiser to replace it. My list narrowed down to a Hyosung GV650 (which I’ve owned before in 2006) and our own CTX700. Whichever it is, I wanted to have the professionals at Yelvington Trikes do the actual conversion for me this time. My goal here is to get on the road as quickly and for as many miles as I can muster while I’m healthy enough to do so. And with the number of Seniors still riding their trikes around here (who are well into their 80’s), I’m hoping for a lot of miles yet!! However, as will be seen in a later post, I wound up doing the install in my driveway.
I looked forward to being back “in the wind” and gleaning much good information from the forum as well.
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