THE ROAD IS CALLING AND I MUST GO: A lifelong love affair with motorcycles.

Crested Butte, Colorado.

The mountains are a special place for me

Why does one ride motorcycles? For some, that question will inspire a thought-provoking, deep-dive discussion into the human soul. But not for me! Nope, for me the answer to that question is simple: My mother told me that I couldn’t. As a young boy growing up in southern California in the 1980s, I was witness to the cutting edge of all that was cool and desirable in the world of fashion, speed, music, and extreme sports, and most of all, the birth of what would later become known as the modern “Super Bike”, and I was in heaven. I had always been attracted to motorcycles since the time I could walk and anything with two wheels was more of an obsession for me than most kids my age. If the stories told around the dinner table at family gatherings over the years are true, I was riding my first bicycle at just under 3 years old. And I never looked back. Of course, that was back when the coolest bicycles all had banana seats and if you were lucky, maybe even a “springer” front end. Over the years, two-wheeled machines, whether motorized or powered by our own two legs, have changed immensely, but my obsession with bikes of every kind has remained unchanged since childhood. 

Now, back to the part about how my mother, through her insistence that I not ride a motorcycle, unwittingly sparked a lifelong love affair that is still going strong some 40 years later.  As I alluded to in the opening of this article, I spent my formidable teenage years in the streets of Southern California’s most iconic cities. Huntington Beach, Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Venice Beach…..You get the point! It was the early 1980’s and back then hanging out was the thing to do. Young boys and girls spent countless hours hanging out at the beach, the mall, the skating rink, the pizza joint, or any other type of fun venue that got us out of the house. On one particular summer day, I was walking to the local convenience store with a group of friends to get an Icee and play some video games when suddenly, I heard a noise coming from down the street behind us. It sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before. I had no idea what it was, but I knew as I turned myself around to see, that it was going to be the coolest thing I’d ever laid eyes on. As I came fully around and my eyes eventually found their target, I was blinded by the sun reflecting off the front of a narrow silhouette approaching us at a speed that seemed utterly impossible back then. As the unidentified rocket ship came closer and closer, it sounded as if there were a million possessed demons howling to escape the confines of the narrow machine's metal restraints. Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, it had reached, and passed us by, continuing out of sight with nothing but the sound of the tormented screaming exhaust teasing my imagination long after the futuristic space bike had disappeared from view. I had no idea what I just saw, but I knew that I wanted one. Later that day, when I finally returned home from a day of video games, skate rink, and boardwalk shenanigans, I remember excitedly telling my dad about the motorcycle I saw and how one day I wanted one just like it. My mother overheard the conversation from the other room and moved with a speed only a mother on a mission to crush a young boy's “evil Knievel” dreams could do. She made it quite clear that there was no way on this earth she would ever allow me to get on one of those death traps. It was an “over my dead body” type of affair. Well, this of course only made the thought of riding a motorcycle more enticing. I went to my room, put on my headphones stared at the posters of all my favorite rock stars, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, and the like, and dreamt about the day I would own one of these awe-inspiring testaments to man's ability to push through the laws of physics and as Jim Morrison said, “break on through to the other side.” I know, I know, that’s not what he was talking about, but if you ask me, it applies just as well to riding motorcycles at a certain threshold. 

So what kind of bike was it I saw that day that set my life on a trajectory of riding countless motorcycles over unknown thousands of miles in several countries around the world? It was a Honda VF750 Interceptor, what many say was the very first sport bike. The VF750 was Honda’s reaction to the onslaught of the offerings from the competition that was intended to knock “Big Red” off the podium. Suzuki had introduced their Katana, Yamaha had the FJ1100 and of course, there was the Kawasaki GPZ900 of “Top Gun” fame. All of this competition among the Japanese motorcycle makers meant that I could count on being exposed to all the latest and greatest innovations in the world of motorcycle racing at a constant pace. Especially in southern California in the 1980s. It was a great time to be a young kid growing up dreaming about riding bikes. The next couple of years went by excruciatingly slow for a kid who was only about 12 or 13 at the time and still under the watchful eye of his disapproving mother. 

In school, I was lucky enough to have a few friends that either had dirt bikes like the Honda XR and Yamaha YZ, or in some cases mini bikes. which was all the rage back then.  A mini bike was really just a homemade frame that was built to accept a lawn mower engine. It wasn’t exceedingly fast, but it was fun and introduced us young kids of the era to a feeling of freedom that is hard to define to the uninitiated. On a weekend or maybe after school I would rush over to a buddy’s house and beg him to let me ride his motorcycle. It was probably a little annoying to my friends because I was the textbook definition of obsessed with riding and could not get enough. Of course, my newfound hobby came at extreme risk of being found out by my mom, which would no doubt be met with a lengthy grounding, and endless guilt trips about how I was driving her to an early grave with my mischievous behavior. I would have to be very careful not to end up with an injury or cut, scrape or bruise of some sort that couldn’t be explained away as a normal part of a teenage kid's rambunctious day-to-day behavior, lest I be put under a microscope by my over-protective mom who would ensure that it never happened again. Of course, my intentions were never about rebelling against my mother, all although there is always a level of satisfaction a young boy gets from rebellion, but no, this was never about that. I was genuinely obsessed. Motorcycles had infected me. They were all I thought about. I didn’t want to ride, I HAD to ride. 

Unfortunately, until such a time as I could escape my parent's authority over me, a bicycle would have to do. And when I tell you that I made the most of it, you can believe it. I remember my Redline BMX bike I got from the bike shop when I was about 13 years old. I immediately set about stripping it of every part that wasn’t essential for basic operation. It had to be light because it had to be fast. I did all the common upgrades of the era. Replace the gooseneck handlebar clamp with a square 4 bolt one, new, taller, and wider handlebars, Z rims for the wheels, and of course anodized inner tube stem caps. I took the breaks off and would wedge my right foot in between the top of the front tire and the bottom of the steering head and forks to stop the bike by way of friction. (This of course meant I went through a pair of Vans sneakers pretty darned quick, which my parents hated). The best set of 3 piece cranks had to be installed as well. Finally, a fresh jet-black powder coat on the frame rounded out the ensemble. I must have put a million miles on that bike. I rode everywhere, regardless of the distance. Even going around the block to a friend's house, there would be at least three of four things I could jump off of or over, or if there wasn’t anything to jump or shred, hey, I could always just pull the front end up and ride a wheelie. Wheelies were of course the most fun, and you better believe that thrilling endeavor transfers over to riding motorcycles with even greater excitement. At that particular time in the greater Los Angeles area, houses were being bought up in droves and being replaced with luxury apartment complexes. What did this mean to me and my friends? Tons of fresh lots where houses had stood, were being prepped for the development of the new complexes. These dirt lots would sometimes sit for several months before construction would begin, so we’d set about building dirt tracks with jumps, berms, whoops, you name it. And once construction started to get underway and they ran us out of the lot, what came next was a future luxury apartment complex complete with tennis courts, exercise areas and POOLS! Yes, pools. The newest craze in things we wanted to ride back then. Once the foundations were laid and the pools were set in, we had another few weeks of endless pool riding before the next phase of construction started and we were given the proverbial boot once again. But there was sure to be another project underway in the neighborhood soon. It was a dream come true for a kid who was obsessed with riding. 

Taking a road trip out to Leadville for the weekend

Escaping the city on motorcycles is the best feeling in the world!

I rode my Redline BMX through the end of my middle school days, into high school and beyond. Of course, the thrill of getting a driver's license and being able to drive a car meant the bike would have to take a back seat to driving for a bit, but once the initial thrill of driving started to wear off, I was back to riding my bike whenever and wherever I could.

I graduated high school at seventeen and for some still unknown reason, decided to join the army. I went to basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky and after 16 weeks of One Station Unit Training or OSUT, I was given orders to Germany. I was excited about the prospect of seeing another country, but at the same time was completely bummed out about the fact that I would have to wait at least two years, the minimum overseas tour of duty back then, before I could buy my first street legal motorcycle and begin the rest of my life as a motorcycle rider. Germany ended up being a lot of fun and I actually extended my tour over there, eventually doing just shy of four years before returning to the US. As a side note, I dated an Italian girl for a bit while I was stationed there who rode a motorcycle. It was very unusual at the time for a woman to ride and I think that is what I liked about her. She had the same love of the freedom and excitement generated by a motorcycle that I had. At any rate, I would occasionally ride her bike around town and it was both exhilarating and a terrible reminder that I would not have a bike of my own until I could get back to the states. 

After my tour in Germany, I was assigned to the National Training Center (NTC) about 40 miles outside of Barstow California in the Mojave desert. The NTC was a vast expanse of harsh terrain that was unbearably hot in the summer and remarkably cold in the winter. The US Army would send their combat units there to participate in war games against a presumed Russian army. Our job at the base was to play the part of the Russian army and conduct war maneuvers against our Army brothers and sisters in order to prepare them for an actual conflict with the Soviet Union. As far as I know, the base still has the same mission to prepare units for actual conflict, but I assume the “enemy” force has probably morphed since the days of the former communist Soviet Union. But I digress…After leaving my post in Germany, I was given one month's leave before reporting to my new duty station outside of Barstow. I went to the airport in Frankfurt Germany and boarded a plane for my home of record in Lodi, CA to see my folks and catch up with some old friends. But first, I had some business to attend to. I was home for about 6 hours when I asked my dad to give me a lift to the local motorcycle dealership in Stockton. If you recall my story in the beginning about my first memorable encounter with a motorcycle on my way to the convenience store several years earlier, it was a Honda VF750 Interceptor that had started me on my path to find motorcycle nirvana. Well, that model had come and gone with much success but in 1992 the Honda CBR600 F2 was burning up the pavement and I had to have one. I walked into the shop, found the bike I had been dreaming about for the past couple of years and I told the first guy that walked up to me “I’ll take it!”. After singing some papers and parting with a large pile of cash I’d been saving prior to returning home from Germany, I was given the keys and the bike was mine. Once they pulled the CBR around to the parking lot in front of the shop, it was already dark and they were closing for the evening. It was late November in the San Joaquin Valley of Central California, and it was damp and cold. If you’ve ever been up that way, you no how cold it can get. The entire area is agricultural and the moister humidity created by the crops along with the wind can make it damn cold. It had been years since I had ridden and I was a little nervous to get right out on the road so I spent a little time riding around the now-empty parking lot with only a couple of dimly lit street lights to help guide me. After a short amount of time getting acquainted with my shiny new state-of-the-art Japanese crotch rocket, I got on the street and pointed the bike east toward my folk's house 10 miles down a country road to the heart of central California farmland. The temperature was probably about 45 degrees and very wet and cold but the exhilaration of finally being able to ride a bike that I can call my very own was so exciting that I barely recognized that I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes on the ride back to my parent's house.

KTM Super Duke 1290 R

I love all types of motorcycles, but I’m definitely partial to the sport bikes

After putting over 1000 miles on the bike in my first three weeks of ownership, I took it back to the shop for its first service and packed up a couple of things in a backpack, and started my 300-mile trip south from the San Joaquin Valley, to the Mojave desert to report to my next duty station. As luck would have it, California was having one of its 10-year monsoon seasons. I remember that it rained from December of 1992 to March of 1993 almost without stopping. The ride to the Mojave desert took me past Tehachapi in the Sierra Nevada mountain range down into the high desert area that housed Edwards Air Force Base and China Lake Navel Test Facility. You could always spot some sort of cool new plane being tested or some awe-inspiring missile being launched into the atmosphere in that area. The roads through the desert, as many people will know are usually long desolate stretches of straight pavement through rolling terrain. It’s the type of road I remember driving on as a kid on family trips where my dad would get really excited as he sped up the family sedan going over the top of a rise and then laugh as the car would suddenly change pitch and head straight down over the crest of the hill and my sister and I would feel our stomachs rise up into our throat. The road resembled a frequency wave of crests and troughs that stretched out for sometime twenty or thirty miles or more. Well, during a monsoon season of course, those roads would become flooded in the low portions. This particular year, the rains were so incessant that almost every low portion of the road had almost  a foot of standing water. I can still feel the water sloshing around in my riding boots during my rides to and from the base that year. I didn’t care though. I was young and I loved riding motorcycles. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Oddly enough, now in my early 50s, I actually go out and find water to ride through still to this day.

After a few years of ownership, I sold the CBR and bought a 1965 Chevy pickup. It was fun and I also love old cars and trucks but after a few months of having it, I had the itch once again to be on a motorcycle. Of course, as a young 21-year-old soldier, I didn’t have the funds for a car and a bike. That wasn’t a luxury most young GI’s could afford back then. So I traded my truck to a friend in my platoon for a Honda Nighthawk 750 and all was once again, right with the world. I spent the remainder of my time at Fort Irwin riding that Nighthawk all over the high desert of southeast California.

Once my time was up in the California desert I decided I wanted to try out to become a Green Beret in the Army Special Forces. I contacted a Special Forces recruiter and got the ball rolling. After some initial prerequisite stuff like a physical fitness test and background check to ensure I’d qualify for the required security clearance and whatnot, I was given a date to attend the Special Forces Assessment and Selection Course or SFAS. Selection, as most of us would come to call it, is a 4-week course designed to allow members of the Special Forces to assess your potential as a Green Beret. It consists of one month of very little sleep, not more than 4 hours a night, long grueling days of physical exertion, and endless amounts of mind games designed to make the mentally weak candidates quit. The soldiers of Special Forces must be the type of individual who can continue to prevail against overwhelming odds with little to no support or outside help. It has to come from within and they intentionally put you in situations where your intestinal fortitude and will to succeed are all you have. Fortunately, I met the qualification that they were looking for and was selected to continue training. Yes, continue training. The grueling selection phase is just the beginning and after being selected to continue trading to become a Green Beret, you’ve only just begun. Candidates who are given the opportunity to continue to train are given a report date to Fort Bragg North Carolina where they will start a one-and-a-half to two-year training program specializing in one of four occupational specialties. As they say after you get selected, “congratulations, you’ve just finished the easy part, from here on out, the challenges become greater, the weight becomes heavier, and distances become longer.” And that is not a joke, I can attest to that. After I completed training and had the honor of donning the coveted Green Beret, I was assigned to the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Carson Colorado in Colorado Springs. I still remember when I got to my first team.

My Team Sergeant, the heart and soul of a Special Forces team, shook my hand, told me there are three things you gotta have to be a good Green Beret and asked me three questions. Him: You got an ex-wife? Me: Yep Him: You got a pickup truck? Me: Yep Him: You got a Harley? Me: Nope Him: Get a Harley! It didn’t seem rhetorical so I went and got a Harley. Level Up! I had never owned a Harley Davidson before and never really had the itch to buy one, but they are quite popular among service members and once I got my first Harley Davidson, a 2003 Springer Softail, I fell in love with the feeling I got while riding it through the Colorado mountains. I’ve had several of them since.  

I spent the next 17 years in Special Forces before retiring in 2013. I had the extreme honor of serving with some of the finest men that this country has ever produced in not only Iraq and Afghanistan but also countless other countries helping them bolster their ability to fend off threats from both within and outside of their own borders. These are the memories that really make my 25-year army career special. During these deployments, I was also able to ride motorcycles. And this time, the Army was paying for it so that made it even sweeter. I had many adventures on dirt bikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the thrill of which most will never know. I’ve shot down little side streets of a post-communism, developing nation like Albania on old Russian and Chinese versions of Japanese motocross bikes, taken 4 wheelers places they shouldn’t be able to go in the forests of Kosovo, Bosnia, and Serbia, and most importantly, I’ve been able to explore thousands and thousands of miles of this beautiful country of ours, with still many thousands more mile still to explore.

As I write this article from my home here in the Denver area, many streets are covered in a hard-packed mix of dirt and ice attributed to an above-average amount of snowfall for the season and the very unusual fact that for the past 30 days, the temperature has been at or below freezing for a record amount of time. Add those two conditions together and you get a phenomenon that we here in the East Range of the Rocky Mountains are not used to; Snow that just will not melt. Generally speaking, when we do get a good snowfall, which isn’t near as often as people think, the snow will be completely melted within a day or two. Although it may be pretty darned cold here in the winter, if you are willing to bundle up and brave the elements, you can still ride in most parts of Colorado, most of the year. Not the case however this year. And for someone like me, it has become a sense of cabin fever I’ve never known. While this once-in-a-quarter-century weather phenomenon has been hard to deal with, it has provided me with lots of good planning time to figure out what rides I want to do this year, once the climate conditions become favorable. And believe me when I say that it has given me plenty of motivation.

This April, I have plans to head to the southern Arizona border town of Sierra Vista where I will ride the Arizona Back Country Discovery route in its entirety to the finish point near the Lake Powell gateway city of Page on the Arizona/Utah border. As soon as I finish, I’ll turn left and point the BMW 1250 GSA west toward California’s Mojave desert to meet up and ride with hundreds of other adventure riding enthusiasts at the Get On! Adv Fest, sponsored by Revzilla. This promises to be a fantastic 4 days of riding great new terrain and enjoying the company of some of the most prolific names in the motorsports realm. When it’s all over with, I’ll head east for home, where I’ll refit, get the bike tuned up, and prepare for a ride out to Salt Lake City UT to attend the final AMA Supercross event of the 2023 season and spend a few days riding my KTM 300 XCW-TPI in the lush forested hills that surround the greater Salt Lake region. In late May, I will make my way out to Flagstaff, AZ for the 2023 Overland Expo and then back to Salt Lake City for my oldest son's wedding in July followed immediately by a mad dash to the Get On! Adv Fest in the Black Hills of South Dakota. There are several more rides to be had this year and at this point, I’m trying to sort out my schedule so that I can make as many of them as possible. 

So far, 2023 looks to be an epic year of adventure riding and I look forward to seeing just how many miles I can put on the bikes. Having the opportunity to do all this travel and document what I see through different social media venues and capturing it all through my writing is such a blessing and I am so very glad that I’ve been offered the opportunity to use my life as a means of exploration.