DING BOB TRIKES AUSTRALIA
THIS IS AN EXCELLENT STORY FOR THOSE CONTEMPLATING JUMPING OF A BRIDGE. ITS GOOD READING. WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED GO AHEAD AND JUMP.
ONE PRANG ON A HONDA BIKE - THEN ANOTHER ON A TRIKE - (neither Col's fault) SHOULD BE ENOUGH FOR ONE LIFE - BUT NO. NOW WE ARE ON TRIKE NO 2.
"COLIN SCOTT loves his bikes so much he'd give his right arm to keep the spirit of motorcycling alive - if he still had one - said 'The Picture' magazine issue September 29, 1993.
Colin, alias the 'One-Armed-Bandit', had to have his right arm amputated (amputee) after a Victorian road accident **when some fuckwit driver lost control of his car and trailer and knocked Col clean of his motor bike --"let's ban cars and trailers", I say.
The poor bastard went into a coma, only to find out he was one arm short of a pair when he awoke three weeks later. This is hard to take because you can't swap hands when you get tired.
| Note - Col has nothing against the prick who found / stole the arm because we could all do with an extra hand - he just wants the tattoos back.. |
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It took 18 painful months of hospital and rehabilitation to help him get his shit back together. An elephant would be proud of that amount of shit..
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Not surprisingly, he put motorbikes in the too-hard-basket for a while, but a shift to you-beaut Perth - Western Australia and it's top climate in 1988 got him wanting to throw a leg over once again. His wife didn't understand this bit caus' she reckons he never stopped throwing his leg over.
"Once you've ridden a bike for a while you get the bug and it's hard to stay off them'' Colin said. It's the same with girl people. ''Then I saw a couple of trikes on the road and tracked down the bloke who built them'. Enter 'Ding Bob' Busellato of Wattelup, south of Perth, a builder of custom bikes and trikes for *(at that time 17 years) and a man on a mission to get disabled bikers back on the road. (See A Bloody Paraplegic).
It just so happened that Ding Bob built the first legal, non Harley trike, in WA based around a Moto Guzzi and had a fair idea of what he was doing.
The trike he designed for Col is based on a Honda Gold Wing, with controls relocated to account for Col's disability (shouldn't that be ability). The right-side *handlebar, like Cols arm, has done the bolt and it's major controls have been relocated - the accelerator to a car-type pedal on the right side-side footboard, and the front brake lever to the left-side handlebar.
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| Honda Goldwing Redback One.
*We don't have any pictures of the one-sided handlebar but if we ever get one we will put it in. |
In Bandit's own words.
"They say as a rule of thumb, that it takes approximately 10 years to recover from a severe mutli trauma accident. My experience proved that to be pretty well on par, as after 9 years, I was once again reasonable content with life and loving the freedom of being back on a bike again, albeit a trike".
Unfortunately, as my old man used to say, "Life wasn't meant to be easy son."
| THEN MORE GREAT NEWS. REDBACK RIDER IN BIKE SMASH Sunday Times |
 Bandits prang No 2 |
Bandit got bent, the pole got bent, the trike frame got bent, but the bloody welds held. Pics here
February 22nd 1994, around 5.20 pm, I was traveling home from work on good old Redback, when it happened again.
My memory of the exact incident is by most accounts, fairly hazy, although I do have vivid memories of the moments before impact that will never leave me and often come back to haunt me. The fact that I was just 5 minutes from my house on the main roadway, the burn marks from the aftermath of the second accident are still in the spot that bear witness to what occurred that day.
