For the first post on this blog, I figured it’d make sense to talk about how it all began.

I’m in the slightly odd position of being a big fan of 70s and 80s motorcycles without actually having lived through the era myself. A lot of people tell me I’m “born in the wrong time,” and honestly, I get it. When your music taste and dress sense pre-dates your birth by decades it’s easy to question it. I’d also be lying if I said my dad didn’t play a monumental part in shaping my love of bikes, especially the ones I’d eventually end up owning, riding, and restoring. Even with a background in IT, programming, and digital art, there’s something irresistibly magnetic about the raw, mechanical honesty of those machines.

Speaking of my dad, people say it takes 10,000 hours to become a master. He blew past that milestone ages ago. Before I could even walk, I was surrounded by engines, tools, and the smell of petrol drifting out of his garage. I’ve never met anyone so relentlessly dedicated, so quietly brilliant, or so downright passionate about a craft. “Tommy10Bikes” stopped being an accurate nickname a long time back; his fleet of restored machines outgrew it, and so did his reputation. In his circles, he’s the guy—the one people go to when they want something done properly.

As someone who actually lived through the era I idolise, Dad naturally leans toward the analogue life. His mountain of handwritten notes, diagrams, sketches, and photos documenting his builds has always blown me away. It’s like a real-world Library of Babel—if Borges had been really into carburettors and everything smelled faintly of oil and coffee.

Now, while I love analogue machines, I’m… less enthusiastic about analogue paperwork. It’s bulky, subject to the passage of time, and sometimes challenging to find that one important note, So the idea of turning his archive into something digital, searchable, organised, shareable was irresistible. That’s what led to Thumperpedia: a digital encyclopedia built from Dad’s decades of knowledge about Yamaha’s big singles, preserved for anyone who shares our fascination with that era.

So that’s it, this project will be a product of organic growth, fueled by passion and a desire to share knowledge with all who need it.

Welcome to Thumperpedia!