At the age of 16, my dad recommended that I add motorcycle riding to my required life skills.  Actually it wasn’t a recommendation, it was a “cancel your plans this weekend, you are learning to ride”.   My lessons began on my dad’s Kawasaki Concours 1000, a hell of a starter bike. He talked me through operating the clutch and brake, which I immediately grasped with confidence by popping the clutch, lurching forward and dropping the 600lb bike on the asphalt.  We finished my first rider’s course minus one foot peg, one mirror and some telltale scrapes on the fairing.  I’ll admit that my mother completed her riding course with grace and dignity on a much more challenging bike, a classic 70’s era BMW.

After my initial riding lesson, he never pushed me to go full biker. I guess he knew that the love of two wheeled freedom is something you develop or don’t develop on your own.  I had to grow out of my teenage “know it all”  years and get some life experiences to realize what freedom meant to me and on what vehicle, real or metaphoric, that I’d find it.

It’s funny how experiences, good and bad, shape your life and rearrange your priorities.  For me, it was a climbing venture gone wrong,  that left me with two broken legs and a fractured back.  Being restricted to a wheel chair and moving back in with my folks was an enormous challenge for an active 21 year old.  However, it gifted me a lot of time to think. While my body healed bone, sinew  and muscle, my mind focused on what I wanted to do when I got back into the game of life.  Meanwhile, my dad was wheeling my chair through the local BMW shop once a week, always pausing in the vicinity of the illuminated R1150GS adventure. Dad always had my best interests in mind! So began my commitment to circumventing the globe on motorcycle.

My dream was 6 years in the making, in which the beginnings were quite humble.  I set off for my first big adventure on a 1981 Yamaha Maxim X. My destination was Alaska. She was red, chromed and had skull bar ends and she only got me about 20 miles closer to Alaska before she suffered a colossal electrical fault in a rainstorm.  The next day I sheepishly bought greyhound tickets to bus me the rest of the way. After working the Alaskan canneries, I returned home and enjoyed and suffered through many more adventures on the Yamaha, always one electrical fault away from being stranded.

On a ride around the Western US in December, I made my way from one source of gas station coffee to the next, stopping just long enough to defrost and scrape the ice off my windscreen.  One night, lounging on a bedroll next to the bike in the Sonoran desert, gazing up at brilliant night sky, I pondered over all the miles, the mishaps, and the adventure of it all. I sensed the enormous satisfaction of adapting to adversity and reveled in that thrilling world flourishing just beyond my comfort zone. I was hooked.

I ultimately moved beyond the electrical drama of the Maxim X and bought my dad’s Kawasaki Concours.  That bike thrived on an adrenaline diet of big fast miles.  I chased massive distances putting in 1,000 mile days, racing around the west and adding each state to my collage of speeding citations.  I’m glad I moved beyond that and it was the dirt that compelled me to a higher, albeit muddier purpose. In all my long distance touring around the west, I had one major problem.  All the best campsites, secret hot springs and cool things to see were hidden just off dirt roads. I never hesitated to attempt to ride my street bike over sand, mud and rocks, but my bike and I paid for it, physically and financially.  I suffered an endless line of punctured tires, bent rims, broken fairings and lots and lots of getoffs. I needed a proper adventure bike.

Within a few years, I had saved up enough for my dream bike, the BMW R1150 GS adventure and she and I embarked on a two year trip of lifetime, ultimately completing a circumnavigation of the globe.   The adventure took me across five continents, 44 countries, innumerable water crossings, desert tracks, mountain passes and shady jungles. That is as story unto itself and not a day goes by that I don’t think about it all.  (www.thelongestfriday.com)

Following my world tour, I settled back in Colorado, a place I have always loved to come home to.  While recovering my career and enjoying a period of stability, I took advantage of the Colorado winter to pull the bike apart and fix her up and chase some powder in the backcountry. With some off time, I toured Colorado in a Jeep. Being far less reliable than my BMW, the jeep broke down and stranded me in the small town of Buena Vista.  With the jeep in the shop for two weeks, I frequented the local coffee shop for great coffee, good atmosphere and reliable wifi.  Well, truthfully, I went there because of a certain extremely attractive and somewhat shy barista. Well, maybe I was the shy awkward one.  Katelyn had me racing back to Buena vista long after the jeep was repaired.  After numerous backpacking trips, bluegrass concerts, paragliding ventures and of course motorcycle rides, we were getting serious. It was after she threatened to leave me if I sold my motorcycle, that I decided to ask her to marry me.  Thanks to jeep problems, good coffee and our shared love for adventure motorcycles, I am unreasonably fortunate to have an amazing wife and riding partner.  We live in Buena Vista, Colorado now, a little mountain town that straddles the Colorado Backcountry Discovery Route and offers access to a lifetimes worth of other lost tracks and world class two wheel terrain.

Even with all the epic tracks in our backyard, we were inspired to tackle something bigger.  We wanted to get out and explore, grow through adversity, immerse ourselves in new environments, meet new people and chase our imaginations in exotic places beyond the horizon.  Africa called to us.