Project Café! –We’ve Got a Winner!

By Richard Backus
Published on October 19, 2009
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Almost done: Our CB500 is just waiting for the rain to end so we can give it a final sorting. Nice, eh?

Our 1973 Honda CB500 Four BikeBandit.com/Motorcycle Classics Project Café has a new owner! We set up a sweepstakes for the bike, and drew the winning name on Saturday, Oct. 10, at the 5th Annual Barber Vintage Festival. And the winner is … drum roll please … Dennis Picken of Omaha, Nebraska! “I suppose everybody says this, but I’ve never won anything in my life,” Dennis told us when we called him. “I’m just shocked. I’m really excited, the pictures I’ve seen are really exciting.”

Pretty cool deal, and better yet, it turns out Dennis is one of us and a regular reader, not some disinterested guy who found us on sweepstakes.com. “I have a 1975 Yamaha RD350. It’s in running order, but I don’t have it licensed. I tend to buy really old, cheap 1970s and 1980s Japanese motorcycles, and unfortunately I have them sitting around and don’t do much with them. I have a KZ Kawasaki and various dirt bikes. I love that era of motorcycles and some of them are too good a bargain to pass up. I’m afraid I have the disease,” Dennis says. His daily rider is a 1987 Honda CBR600 Hurricane.

Notice, however, that we didn’t say the CB500 is done … yet. Don’t forget, we’re just a couple of regular guys trying to build a bike in our spare time, which, of course, we don’t really have any of. Between getting out Motorcycle Classics and its two sister publications, Gas Engine Magazine and Farm Collector, we’re never exactly sitting around bored. Throw in a family and an-ever growing list of chores that need to be done around the house, and bike project time tends to get squeezed into the few hours left at the end of the day. Sound familiar?

Left side of our 1973 CB500: At this point it just needs some final detailing and a good running in before we hand it off to new owner Dennis Picken.

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