Feb 2008: Hello Gus Kuhn's Contact Person,

Jamie Waters alerted me about the inclusion of my name on your 'Customers' page, and I was pleased to see that the circle had been closed, as it were, with my old PR bought from GK in Feb '72.

I was indeed an "American serviceman" in the UK then, being a United States Air Force 'blue-suiter' based from May '69 through July '72 at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk, and racing in ACU 'National' class events as well as club (primarily Bemsee) events from '70 until my departure with the Yellow Submarine back to the States. The full story of the bike and my involvement with it is available here:

My memory of Kuhn's when we bought the Yellow Sub was of a terrific staff, highly knowledgeable and enthusiastic, led of course by Vincent Davey, who all went out of their way to make customers feel immediately welcome -- in contrast with some other well-known bike shops in the UK and USA. It's good to see that Gus Kuhn's legacy is being kept alive online, and I'm certain that, as people become more aware of the site, many more former customers will share their own tales of moto-adventures begun on Gus Kuhn's showroom.

Subsequent to my stint in the USAF, I became deeply involved in special-interest magazine publishing and then writing books. Six of my novels have been published, with one New York Times best-seller (The Wild Blue [Crown, 1986] co-authored with Walter J. Boyne). My next book, a non-fiction work about motorcycling, is slated for publication this year.

I returned to the IoM in '87 with Team Cycle World and a new, stock Suzuki GSX-R750 to race in the F1 and Prod 750 TT (the class for which I'd bought the Production Racer from Kuhn's 15 years earlier!), and managed to lap over the ton, becoming thereby one of only three Yanks who'd done so by then (my story about the return to the IoM was published as "The Long and Winding Road" in the Sept. '87 issue of Cycle World), and previously, in '85 had helped Team Cycle World set six FIM World Speed Records at the Uniroyal Proving Grounds in Laredo Texas, with a pair of box-stock Suzuki GSX-R750s (story in the Dec. '85 issue of Cycle World). Following a near-fatal car/motorcycle collision in May 2004, I am disabled and unable to ride, which makes my memories of racing in Britain when Gus Kuhn's was 'Norton Central' all the more poignant.