Old Hobbies Die Hard

I spent the majority of my life on two wheels. I started out on bicycles and then began riding motorcycles at a young age. Shortly there after, I got into flat track racing. I did that for a number of years and even made it to the expert pro level. Although I was never a major threat, I enjoyed my years racing and have applied a lot of those skills to life in general.



After I stopped racing, I rode for a number of years before giving it up completely and became obsessed with bicycling (still, two wheels though.) Like the old adage, what's old is new again, I'm riding again.

Where did the renewed interest come from? Hard to say, possibly many things. Fuel prices are one and the economical advantages of a motorcycle. The show American Choppers is probably another. Probably most recently was on my trip to Photoshop World Miami. I met Lesa King-Snider from the GraphicReporter.com. She and her husband had just gotten into motorcycling and have a podcast called Your Bike Life. I recounted to her my many stories of riding and racing and I'm sure I bored her ear off. All these things probably piled up on one another and I thought... "I'd like to get a bike again."



Father's Day, I struggled for a gift for my Dad. I decided last minute that we should just get up bright and early (a hardship for me) and go for a nice long ride and we'd stop somewhere and buy him breakfast. It doesn't seem like much, but he later told me it was probably the nicest Father's Day gift he had ever gotten (or at least meant the most to him in recent memory.) Afterward, he decided that I needed a bike and found a vintage Honda Gold Wing on eBay and picked it up for me. I've been doing much more riding now. We even did a trip to Ohio to watch a Flat Track Race. It was overall 1200 miles and half of it was in the rain. Some of that was VERY heavy rain.



It's kind of funny, in the last 3 weeks I've probably ridden 4 different motorcycles; Gold Wings, new and old, Honda VTX 1800 and Harley Davidson Dyna Low-Rider. I find I really like the cruiser style these days. Probably goes back to American Chopper. But I'm not the "speed quest" king that I was when I was younger. I'm more about style and function now. What really shocked me was the Harley... I'd long since put down Harleys saying they were based on old technology. While that may be somewhat true. The attention to detail is very nice. I even liked the ride, power and feel of the bike, but after the first corner and dragging the pipes, I realized this was not a bike for me (besides, I would never be able to submit a photo to istock with that bike in a picture.)

So, for now, I'll be racking up the miles on the new Vintage Gold Wing. Taking it on shoots. Putting it in photoshoots. And getting back to old habits.