To be honest, I was nowhere close to being a new rider. I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was around the age of twelve. I started with 3-wheelers, jumped into dirt bikes and ended up with a quad.

Somewhere in between those great years, my dad purchased a Suzuki Madura. It was a nice bike, but I never took much interest in motorcycles built for the street. My interest was in going around the track as fast as I could. That was until a certain movie called “Top Gun” came out. What young boy around my age didn’t want the famous Kawasaki Ninja?

The fascination with sport bikes continued throughout high school. Ninja, Ninja, Ninja. That’s what all my friends wanted. Regular cruisers weren’t even something that we considered. If it wasn’t the fastest thing on the road, we wouldn’t even look at it.

Time went by, and I never did get that Ninja. I still enjoyed riding, my father and I went through more than a few different dirt bikes. My fascination with street bikes began to fade considerably. There were other things that held my interest. Cars!!! Well, more to the point Jeeps.

When I was sixteen, my father bought me a 1980 CJ7. A jeep made for a man, something that could be driven through hell and back. In fact, I still own it. It’s under the car port even as I write this.

The jeep and the subsequent four-wheeling totally and completely captured my interest and for many years I forgot all about riding motorcycles. That is until a certain show called, “American chopper” came out while I was in my late 20’s.

They weren’t sport bikes, they were choppers. And man oh man did they put sport bikes to shame. This was cool. If I looked up cool in the dictionary, I was quite positive I would see a picture of some guy riding down an empty desert road on a chopper.

From there, I went on to watch other shows and I learned about other chopper builders like Jesse James. These guys brought back the idea of cool in a realm of stagnant ideas. They created a motorcycle craze that the world had never before seen. Well, at least I never saw anything like it. There was only one problem. The price!!!