Chris Richie, Godspeed my Friend

[Eric]

I copied this from RB`s site just in case some may not know.

Chris Richie, Godspeed my Friend

by Baxter » Tue Mar 27, 2012 11:02 pm

My first conversation with Chris Ritchie was one I will never forget. He walked up, introduced himself and said:
?I understand you live in Dallas, my fiancé lived there when she was married to my best friend?

To say he had my undivided attention is in understatement, he had this round cherub-like face, child-like innocence and soft voice but he was about to tell me how he became engaged to his best friends wife. This, was going to be good !!



And it was a good story but we will save that one for another day. I will say that he really loved Tina, one of those relationships that most people spend their lives looking for. Whenever he came to visit our home he would wonder off to find a quiet place to call Tina and he would come back into the workshop with glassy eyes and his lower lip quivering a bit?he missed her a great deal when they were apart. Many times he told me that he would be lost without her, she was the love of his life.

After we met in May of 2006 he would call occasionally and just the sound of his voice made me laugh. Hearing him on the phone was funny, don?t ask me why, it just was. Often times the office phone would ring and you could hear my daughter Amy laughing, I knew it was Chris on the phone, she didn?t have to tell me who was calling. I think she misses his phone calls as much as I do.


Even after many years his calls would start the same; Dude!! and it would always make me laugh. Who else would call me dude, with an English accent trying to sound like John Wayne? And they usually ended the same way ?Cheers Mate, call me anytime? with emphasis on anytime.

In October of 2006 he asked if he could come for a visit, we didn?t know each other very well but he made me laugh and was interested in drag racing H2s so, why not, it sounded like fun.

He showed up around 6:00pm and looked like he had ridden on the outside of the plane. We didn?t know that he had to drive for several hours to get to the airport before his ten-hour flight, he had been up for about 26 hours. It was funny watching him try to stay awake while we ate dinner. He was about to drop from exhaustion but he never said a word, just sat there with this far-away look in his eyes.

He was fine the next day and very anxious to talk about H2s, I thought he was just a typical guy who liked bikes and racing, I didn?t know he was an accomplished engineer.

I told Gary Clarke that my goal was to make Chris?s head explode from too much information but that never happened.

Component after component was laid out on the workbench and everything he saw he understood.


It was a bit disappointing, nothing really impressed him. He liked the various parts and pieces but even a slider clutch assembly didn?t make much of an impression. And then I found out why.

Less than a month after going home he emails me a photo of a slider clutch he had made from scratch, based on the one I showed him, except it was better. This was the beginning of my understanding of just how good he was at turning ideas into metal.



Over the next few months he transformed his bike into one of the quickest and best looking H2 street bikes on the planet. And what is most impressive is the amount of work he did himself, which is to say he did it all. Cylinders, heads, cases, crank, clutch, transmission, pipes, bodywork/paint, air-shifter, ignitions system, triple trees, swing arm, electrical?



And what always blew me away was how quickly he could design and make something. He took this old dented gas tank and turned it into a mold for laying up a fiberglass tank shell, which he made in less than a day.

He called asking about outboard bearing supports for countershaft sprockets, I gave him a brief explanation, about an hour later he sends me this photo of very nice outboard bearing support that he machined from aluminum. It took me longer to describe it than it took him to make it.



He started to change the basic geometry of his chassis with a change in the front-end rake and trail, new front suspension and new billet triple trees and new swing-arm. This isn?t the stuff that a novice should be attempting. A mistake on the chassis could cause some serious problems, but not for Chris.

He made his own triple trees for the new chassis, a rather nice looking piece that came out of the recesses of his fertile brain.



His H2 custom was his pride and joy. It was and is one of the nicest custom H2s anywhere. It is street legal, comfortable to drive and super fast. No one can argue about how good it looks.



That big fat rear tire, the custom paint and pipes. This is a stunning bike. It looks the business and is capable of some stunning numbers in the quarter mile. It is an impressive bike in both form and function.

One thing about Chris, he was never satisfied with the way his bike ran, it would run in the mid 10s and the next week it was apart getting an all new engine or clutch, crank, trans, ignition system.
He was motivated by discovery and the thrill of coming up with something new and what he came up with was usually amazing.



This is one of my favorite photos of Chris and Gary. This is the way you normally saw these two. Good friends doing what they love doing most. They made a great team.

Over the next few years we became very close friends, we would talk for hours (sorry Tina) about projects and making plans for complete world domination (his term for doing well racing H2s). We also talked about his other projects, mounting a Fiat engine into a Morris Minor, rebuilding his diesel generator, plumbing a bathroom, building a media room, taking Tina?s dog for a walk, trips to the sea with Tina, four cylinder H2 street bikes and how much he liked bantering with Rick Brett on the forum (some of it was priceless).

An post by Chris in the summer of 2009:

It's amazing, as soon as anything occurs that has some form of gay connection, Betty's there with his camera. Nipper and myself were just inspecting his broken tow-bar and, WHAM!!, Betty's taken thirty plus pictures and is giggling like a little girl. I know he asked the track photographer if he could have the image blown up to life size. You just know it's on the ceiling above his bed. I really don't want to know what he does then... YUK. Chris?s last trip to the States was in September of 2010. He had sent over his most aggressive engine and we were going to run it at a big race in Michigan. But I was not able to get it sorted in time and had to put in an old engine.

He had built an engine that was amazing, the design and fabrication work had to of taken weeks or even months. Then he traveled all the way to the states to see it run at a major event but when he arrived it wasn?t even in the bike.

Not a single word of disappointment was ever spoken, he seemed just as happy as ever and that is something I don?t understand. This incident speaks volumes about his character and it also makes me very sad that he will never see this motor achieve its full potential.

After that race we had a long drive home. We left Henry Wedge?s home around 8am and we didn?t get home till around 1:00am the next day. And it was one of the briefest days I can remember. We talked, planned, laughed, listened to gospel radio stations in Missouri, ate beef jerky and jelly beans, stopped at six gas stations to get fuel and Rt 66 coffee mugs and just enjoyed the proverbial road-trip.

Our first fuel stop in southern Illinois had a display of Rt 66 memorabilia and Chris said how much he had wanted to make a road trip down that historic road, you should have seen his face when he found out we had been on it for five hours and would be on it most of the day.

We got lost on the west side of St. Louis after stopping at a sandwich shop. Had an argument with some rednecks near Springfield Missouri about how slow their Harley was compared to our triple. Drank ten hour old coffee and laughed about everything imaginable.

We finally arrived home after some 17 hours on the road and instead of going to bed we sat in my back yard and talked for another hour, about nothing really, it was one of the best days of my life.

After he returned home we talked about plans to dominate the world, how much we both enjoyed the road trip and also of some, shall we say, delicate issues. And this was his email response:

... I am always thinking of H2 motors and I also may, on rare occasion, be known to fart.

Oh alright then - I fart all the time.

Happy now?

I know now that he wasn?t physically up to a 17-hour road trip, standing around a race track for hours in the cold, he wasn?t up to sitting up and talking another hour in the back yard after we arrived home, this was his way of telling me good-bye.

We both knew when he stepped on the plane the next day that we would never have another road trip. We would never spend another weekend racing motorcycles, working in the garage or hanging out together.

Walking away from Terminal D at DFW airport that day was one of the most gut-wrenching experiences of my life.

We talked a little about his failing health but only a little, he didn?t like talking about it, he had a positive attitude even when they told him he only had a couple of months to live. He never complained, even when he was on so much medication he couldn?t stand up. He sent me an email the night before his first Chemo treatment, it never mentioned the treatment, only that he and Tina had spent the day together and they had plans to visit a botanical garden the next week.

Chris made a lot of friends in the triples community. I know for a fact that after one of his surgeries Roger Ramm drove from London to Yoevil, more than three hours one-way, just to take him a sandwich. You don?t create those types of friendships without being a man of character.



My wife once told me ?You could stack ten other people on top of each other and they wouldn?t make one Chris and she was right. Karen loved Chris as much as I did. Even my Grand daughter Marley thought he was special. Chris built some great relations with a lot of people. The day Chris passed away Karen had to take off work, she found a substitute and came right home, she was as much of a mess as I was. We just sat in the kitchen telling stories and remembering a great man.


He sent me this email when he returned home in October of 2010:

If it wasn't for the fact I missed Tina so much, I would have loved to hang out with you and your family for a while longer, or at least until May!

I really appreciate all that you did for me and the nice parts for my bikes. Please give Karen an extra big hug from me tonight and tell her "thank you" for looking after me.

Lots of love to all the family too!



This photo is right above my computer, in a place where I can see it all the time and it has a note on it ?To Bill, My Team mate, Mentor & Friend?. The photo was taken right after he returned home from our Epic Route 66 road trip in 2010 so it?s easy to picture him in my mind just as he was that day.

But to be perfectly honest, he would have been my best friend even if he had never made a single part for a bike or even had an interest in motorcycles. He was a kind and honest person that was genuinely interested in the lives of his family and friends.

Chris was not a spiritual man, I don?t know if he ever darkened the door of a church. But there is letter, written by Paul, that reminds me so much of Chris. I don?t remember it all but this is a part of it.

?I may speak with the tongue of men and of angels, but if I have not love, I am only making noise. If I have the gift of knowledge and can understand all mysteries and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preservers.

And now these three things remain; faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. ?

Chris may be the only person I have ever known that held no grudges, was genuinely concerned about all his friends and thought of himself last. Always had a good word for and about everyone he knew. And any knowledge that he obtained was free for the asking. Anything he had he was willing to share.

One of the last things he did, which still amazes me. After several days of barely being able to communicate with his family, laying in a hospital bed in a Hospice center, at the very end of his life, he hugged his brother Michael and whispered to him ?Happy Birthday?. Even at the very end of his life he thought first of those he loved the most.

I miss him more than words can express.



Chris, Godspeed my Friend, I will see you again.

[Guy K]

I'm so sorry to hear this news.

Sadly, I never did meet Chris but I did speak to him on the phone a few times when he was rebuilding my crankshaft, he seemed like a really nice guy.

His mechanical talent was without question extraordinary and the many triples upon which he breathed his magic will surely be his lasting legacy to us all.

My deepest sympathy goes out to all his family, friends and to all who knew him personally.

Chris Ritchie. R.I.P.

[TallyB]

What can any of us say that will ease this pain of loss for Chris's family. I never met Chris but feel a deep loss . My deepest sympathies to his family.

[h2al]

Very Very Terrible News...RIP Chris.

[Rubbadub]

Gutted

[Rab]

Like others, I have never met chris, but had spoken to him on the phone several times, found him very pleasant and always helpfull, a very talented engineer, I had hoped to have him do a crank for me.

Being very interested in the engineering side of things myself, I had watched with great interest some of the kawasaki triple inovations and engineering projects Chris has accomplished, and I know that everyone in the UK had great respect for him and his abilities, I truely believe that if only given more time, Chris had the potential to become one of the worlds top triple professors of all time.

Greatest respect for you man, you will be missed by all

[GinaG]

This should never happen to anyone.

Chris did not deserve this, He was the nicest Guy I have ever met in my life. We will all miss you mucker & you will never ever be forgotton.

Keep building those hot H2 motors matey when we all will meet again!

I love you mate RIP

Delboy