can do with Skype on my desktop computer Norm is on a mission for over 85 year olds to keep their licences as when he went to renew his they just punched a hole in it , cancelling it & handed it back & told him he would have to set a test if he wanted to drive again it took him 3 goes to get it back again & each year he has to do another test . I his words “ they punched a hole in my heart that day “ & they gave his old licence back to him to dispose of himself to add insult to injury We covered a lot of past history we were both involved in when we were first in Lake Macquarie District MCC another past club & my first motorcycle group as we were building race tracks in places like Thomas Park on Minmi road Wallsend blowing out stumps with acquired Gelignite & Detonators , then shovelling the holes back in with box trailer loads of fill from the gullies that ran through the place . Crosscut saws & axes were all we had to clear the land with & the old Forest Devil winch & chains to pull the big trees to ground . It took us months to build & I crashed in my first race on my Excelsior Villers 197cc 2 stroke in the down hill dip the front forks bottomed out jammed the wheel into the guard my day ended there in a big heap . That was the end of my racing for years as Anita was pregnant with our first borne & building a house took priority over all else . Norm Fraser & I go back along way I have worked with him but never for him but the friendship stayed good over my lifetime as our paths crossed & re crossed as I learned early that there is no money to be made working in a motorcycle shop for someone so I became a motorcycle riding coal miner till strikes drove me to find an even better job in earth moving We both lived in Kahibah at the time & I became friends with Bill Ruddy who was a 2 stroke tuner & a good one at the time , Bill was about 14 stone & I was about 10 so I should be faster Bill & I rode a 125cc Bantam BSA ’ s to work every day at Bill at Sankies where he was a tool maker & me with Brambles in the BHP most afternoons we would race up Adamstown rifle range where he would beat me till one day he was passing me up the left side & I grabbed his luggage rack where our Gladstone bags lived & got a tow till a police siren ended our fun . Bill was a great teacher after we got a good talking to by the copper on the side of the road he told me to go down 1 tooth on the countershaft sprocket on my Bantam , I did & he never won another race up the hill a lesson I have never forgotten when you only have 3 speeds to play with its important to get overall gearing rite so the engine can pull it . When Ken Thornton infected me with dirt bikes years later the race tracks we built & rode on gearing was important as our bikes only had 4 speeds so gearing became very important & we would change sprockets ' sometimes during the day as the terrain changed or we got up to speed he also taught me that a flexible well tuned engine like his Greeves Griffon was a beter way to go when traction was scarce & the mud deep on our natural terrain tracks . Thanks mate TC