The Kazakhs thought he was crazy, but that didn’t bother Bill Morris.

While living in the city of Almaty in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, Morris liked to ride a 30-year-old Russian motorcycle, much to the dismay of the local populace.

Bill Morris sits in a sidecar of an M-72 Russian motorcycle that he shipped from Kazakhstan to the United States. Morris brought back 13 motorcycles, 12 sidecars and spare motors, as well as maintenance guides to Lawrence after working overseas with his wife, Sharon Eicher, at the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economic and Strategic Research in Almaty.

“Over here, people think motorcycles are cool,” Morris, now living in Lawrence, said recently. “Over there if you have a motorcycle you are a hillbilly. They wondered why I wasn’t driving a Mercedes. They think all Americans are rich.”

Yet old motorcycles are still used in Kazakhstan, primarily by people in rural areas and small villages, said Morris, 35. They keep them running out of necessity for routine transportation.

“I’d see villagers driving in to sell their produce at the markets,” Morris said. “The sidecars would be full of watermelons or whatever was in season. There’d be a guy riding on the back and people hanging off these things everywhere.”

Morris developed a fondness for the machines, and he began buying them right out of front yards and fields from their owners during his stay overseas.

Morris and his wife, Sharon Eicher, returned to Lawrence last summer after spending two years in Kazakhstan. She had worked as a development economics professor at the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economic and Strategic Research, a university in Almaty. He was administration director over buildings, grounds and “everything nonacademic.”

When they left, Morris had collected 13 motorcycles, 12 sidecars and a few spare motors. He had them shipped to the United States, and he keeps them in warehouse space he leases in the Bowersock Mills building.

The motorcycles were built in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. They are undergoing mechanical work and paint jobs. Morris and a couple of mechanic friends are doing the work and most of the motorcycles will be sold on a new Web site Morris recently opened at www.redoctobermotorcycles.com.

Morris’ collection includes three main types of Russian cycles — Ural, M72 and Dnepr — as well as a few military versions. He plans to keep one for himself.

Morris, foreground, is storing the motorcycles and parts at the Bowersock Mills building. Monty Maxwell, a worker hired to help clean up the bikes, is shown in the background.

There are a couple of motorcycles already advertised on his Web site. One is a 1969 Dnepr MB-750M, a military bike with a sidecar. The other is a 1969 Dnepr K-750. The asking prices were $3,800 and $2,700, respectively.

Easy to fix

Morris said he bought most of the motorcycles for a few hundred dollars. The cost to ship them to the United States from a landlocked country through China was high, he said. He hopes to recoup that cost with the sales.

The simplicity of the motorcycles’ mechanical workings as well as the fact they are old are what attracted Morris to them.

Extra motors like the one pictured above were among supplies Morris brought back last summer when he returned from Kazakhstan.

“The workmanship is very poor; anything can go out at anytime,” he said. “But they are very easy to fix. If you break down on the side of the road, then there are very few things you can’t do with a few simple tools to be ready to go again. They don’t make them like that anymore.”

Mechanical work has always interested Morris. He owns two British sports cars, a 1960 MGA and a 1994 Jaguar, which he keeps in good running condition.

“I’m a British sports car guy,” he said, “but there are no British sports cars in Kazakhstan, so I had to find something else to occupy me mechanically.”