First of all, I would like to thank the Academy for this prestigious honor. I never could have done it without the many mechanics, cops and robbers that have been so much a part of my motorcycling experience.

 It all started a long, long time ago in a land far, far away. Actually, it really started in Jr. High School with a burning desire to have a motorcycle; ANY type of motorcycle. But, alas, it was not meant to be back then. It would not be until after a couple of years of college that I found myself in that far away land, Hawaii, in need of transportation. I managed to get a step through Honda 50cc, as best as I can remember, and was finally a biker. I was bitten. After a tour in Nam, I came back to Honolulu and got a Yamaha 250 Enduro that I could ride all the way around the island, even the unpaved section. That was so cool. Began to do a bit of dirt riding on Sundays with that bike and a succession of different ones. 

I left Aloha land to take a summer tour around Europe that ended up in London England. Still having some dinero, I bought a brand new BSA 650 lightning and had it shipped to New York, USA where I met it and rode it home to Fredericksburg. That was a beautiful motorcycle. Finally needed some doe ra me and sold it but biking was definitely still in my blood. I didn’t really get back into it until about ten years ago when a friend asked me to find him an inexpensive used bike that he could commute on for a couple of years and resell without a big depreciation  hit. I found him an old Moto Guzzi Lemans in good shape but at the last minute he back out. By that time, I was so enamored of the bike that I bought it myself. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I rode the Le Mans for awhile until I wanted something roomier and got a Moto Guzzi California model that a couple of people I knew had. Some folks called it an Italian Harley as it is more of a cruiser type bike. Decided I wanted something bigger and got a Honda Valkary which was all well and good but they are HEAVY. About this time in my resurrected riding career I noticed that I was beginning to scrape parts of the bike in turns. So, I got a sport touring bike: a Yamaha FJR 1300. Although somewhat heavy it was still much lighter than the Honda and had ample ground clearance. I was getting to know some guys from Ft Worth that  mostly rode sport bikes and decided to attend their fearless leader and bike shop owner’s track day up by Ft Worth. What you do is get to ride your bike around this race track, separated into different groups based on skill level. Well, I rides me Yamaha up there, drop the bags and off I go around the track. At the end of the day I puts me bags back on and home I go; in hog heaven. As I got more and more interested in track day riding, I got bikes better suited for the track than the big old FJR until I got curious enough about racing to get a little Suzuki SV650 set up for the track. They are a pretty popular beginner bike for that. Got my license at 60 years of age and crashed out enough and hard enough in my first few races to decide that I was no longer curious about racing. Just too damn old. But, I still go to the track from time to time. I now have a total of seven motorcycles and lord knows how many tickets I’ve piled up through the years. A couple of my bikes are true crotch rockets, a couple sport touring, a couple dirt or dual sport and one standard that a friend of mine crashed and is now my winter project to make something out of. Don’t know exactly what yet.  

I have traveled a good bit, mostly on an FJR but some on a 1000 VStrom usually camping out most of the time. I’ve been butt freezing cold and burning hot, stranded and rescued, run out of gas, ridden until all hours of the morning looking for a place to stay, almost fallen asleep riding, got separated from a group in Mexico and rode by myself for 3 days getting home just as Montezuma’s revenge kicked in and had more fun and seen more beauty and met more wonderful, interesting people than I ever would have imagined. Well, it’s time for me to go for a ride. See ya on the road.