I have reached the time when I am losing friends and family. Today, I am remembering Mark Doman. I met Mark in college and we have stayed in touch over those many years. Mark was a special person, adventurous, very intelligent, creative, open, and accepting of everyone. He was always doing something interesting, but was always more interested in hearing about what someone else was doing. He was a person that I admired so much. I would like to be more like him.
Mark was also one of the best engineers that I have ever known. Along the way, his career varied from making snow to designing roller coasters. I used to tease him that he would be a big hit at parties handing out business cards that said he was a roller coaster engineer. Once, while at Chrysler, I tried to hire Mark as a Vehicle Dynamics engineer. It had been years since he had done automotive engineering, but I knew with his engineering skills and curious intellect, he would catch up in no time. Alas, my boss couldn't see it that way, so Chrysler lost a wonderful opportunity.
You may be wondering what a remembrance of someone like Mark is doing in a blog that is mostly about motorcycles. Mark was also into motorcycles and, as usual with Mark, his story is a little unique.
When Mark was a teenager, his dad was working for Ford in Australia and Mark wanted a motorcycle. His dad was into antique cars, but also worried about his teenage son riding a motorcycle. Mark used a little psychology and got his father to approve him buying an antique motorcycle. As a result, his first motorcycle was a 1913 Douglas 350 motorcycle. How many of us can say something like that?
The Douglas was a British motorcycle that was unusual, even in its day. It had a opposed twin like a BMW, but the cylinders lay fore and aft and that resulted in a narrow, nimble bike with a low center of gravity. The 350 was rated at 2 ¾ HP and was a very reliable motorcycle. It was and still is considered to be quite sporty for the day and the 350 won the Isle of Man Junior TT in 1912. Naturally, even in choosing an antique, Mark chose an interestingly engineered and “high performance” bike.
From discussions with Mark, Stephen Wells says that the Douglas made it back to Ann Arbor, but was left behind in a shed when the family moved out of a rented house.
Another of Mark's motorcycles was a BSA 250 single. He had intended to restore that bike when he moved back to Ann Arbor from Utah, but it is one of those projects that never got done. The motorcycle images have been downloaded from Google images with credits for the Douglas going to Yesterdays.nl and the BSA to Wikipedia.
Mark's most modern motorcycle experience was on trials bikes in Utah. I remember him telling me about going out to a motocross area in Utah with himself and a friend on trials bikes. They would start out with the motocross bikes zipping around them, but soon they would be high on the mountain with the buzzing motocross bikes far below them. That appealed to the explorer side of Mark, in addition to the balance and skill of riding the motorcycle.
In the end, motorcycles were only a small part of Mark's life. It was a very full life, with family, friends, career, exploration, and adventure. Unfortunately, it was a little shorter than it should have been. There is not room here to tell all of the stories, so let me just say that Mark was a friend, a man who I greatly respect, and one I won't soon forget.
