Awesome!!
Unfortunately i was not lucky enough to know whether i ever did meet him
personally...
i know of a few people that did though. He was a very unique person...
while i was playing with vintage race bikes Marc told me a story about an outing
with his Vincent. Phil Irving walked up to Marc's pristine example unannounced,
"what a lovely looking bike", then spun the brake and clutch lever around
on the handlebars to Marc's horror... "WTF" from Marc's mouth is a polite
description...
Phil didn't care. He just turned to Marc and said "that's why the
handlebars are painted and not chromed"... long story short an apology was
quickly
present when he learned he was about to smack Irving in the head; Marc
shut up and learned a lot; they became good friends...
Les was a very unassuming humble guy... inside his shed though were the rarest
of rare ferrari, and other stuff. they were sent to him from all over the world
to restore.. Phil taught Les how to build ferrari engines to run really well...
I would take Les a bag of fresh hand picked oranges each winter and we would
talk about engines and suspension.
My father handed down a first edition copy to me; i still have it... to this day
i have not yet come across a book that transcends Irving's bible.
Phil had the ability to explain something in just a couple of sentences when
everyone
else delivered a lecture or novel that was lost in the wind.
Read this topic online here:
http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=509797#509797
|