Athens to Amsterdam

Vintage motorcycles—pre-1969 BMWs in hand-pinstriped black—are beautiful. On a spring morning in 1991 the owner of an R25 single-cylinder BMW approached me as I admired his masterpiece parked on the sidewalk in Athens. Off I went on the back of his vintage thumper on a ten kilometer helmetless ride to a local Greek family motorcycle shop. With the R25 rider acting as interpreter I cut a deal over Greek coffee (which is what everyone else calls Turkish coffee). “He has new motor. For 2,000 km,” brother Vangelis told me, “you must ride it slow.” That was an understatement. It took two years and thousands of dollars before the bike could be ridden safely. When it was completed it ran like new and was nearly all original, inside and out, down to the toolkit and tire pump. Often I wished I had never bought that collection of multinational scrap, but after the ordeal was over I was glad I did! The payoff was riding the finished old-timer that I had dismantled and reassembled with my own hands on the scenic byways around Holland, mostly alone but sometimes with sibling bikes from the BMW Mono Club. The R26—the world’s slowest 250cc motorcycle—had ample power on Dutch back roads. A vintage European bike in Europe … it belonged there.