About Dave
Back three generations ago, my great grandfather worked for the Canadian Railroad. He was an engineer and had several patents to his name. He designed a cross-cut saw tooth design that is in use to this day. He designed the automatic coupler for railroad cars. I remember visiting my grandparents and admiring a fireplace tool set he made on a metal lathe with multi-colored metal handles, turned much as a woodworker would. They were beautiful.
My grandfather did some farming in Manitoba way back when my Mom was a kid. He made the first radio in his area and it would awaken the family to “Oh Canada” when the station went live each morning. He wired a telephone system between his farm and other local farms. Around the 1920’s he was a motorcycle mechanic and I have a great picture of him on a motorcycle. It is a self-portrait where he rigged up a remote trigger mechanism to take the picture. Pretty cool.
An interesting side story is back when I was in high school when I was getting interested in motorcycles. I clearly remember sitting in the front room of my parents home on five acres as Grandpa warned me of the dangers of motorcycling. It struck me as odd that he went on so about it, even as he was describing how Grandma was hurt riding on the back when he went under the flatbed of a truck. From there he launched into stories of how he would do headstands on the tank when riding down the rutted dirt main street of town and riding in those circular wooden “tubs” where you’d get going fast enough to be horizontal to the ground. Maybe his spirit (but definitely not his logic!) was whispering in my ear when I hit 112 with Jill (Sharlet’s daughter) on the back during her first very motorcycle ride as I raced Gary - me on his own bike, no less. Yes, I was riding his Screaming Eagle Road Glide. He was on his hopped up Fat Boy and I couldn’t catch him. Yes, Jill loved it. But I digress…
As you can see, I came by my interest in both technology and motorcycles quite naturally. But then, I also had an interest in horses. Maybe that came from my Grandfather also. When I graduated from 8th grade I got my first horse. That mare foaled two weeks after I bought her and two years later I broke her filly. A year later I got a two year old Appaloosa gelding and broke him. When I got in college I bought a used Honda 175 that died about a year later. I then traded my Appaloosa straight across for a Honda 350 scrambler and what was essentially straight pipes. Fucking loud, but they had a couple pieces of metal you could see inside so they were street legal - a cop that stopped me even agreed they had “baffles.” That bike also lasted about a year and blew up.
I was horseless and bikeless until after I got out of college. About a year thereafter I bought a six month old Quarter Horse filly. I even trailered her to Wyoming, where she turned two but I never spent much time breaking her and sold her at three years old when I got back to Oregon. Not long after that I picked up a KZ1000 in great condition. It was a very hot bike at the time. A couple years later I traded it for a Vega with an aluminum small block V8, one of my more stupid moves, but a year later we traded back. However, the KZ was never the same. I told people I sold it because I would either kill myself or get sent to jail if I kept it, but the real reason was that it now shook something terrible when it hit 95 mph, which pissed me off.
For most of 15 years I was without a bike or horse. About the time I hit 40 I was dating a “colorful” gal that loved Harleys and I started to see them in a new light. When I had the KZ1000 I thrived on blowing Harleys away. Maybe it was the aging process, but I fell in love with motorcycling all over again, this time with Harley Davidson. After all, if you went too fast, stuff would drag and shake until you decided to slow down and enjoy the scenery (well, sorta slow down). I started looking around and ended up with a couple month old 1995 Springer Softail Bad Boy limited edition.
Nice and fun bike, but not the most comfortable. Starting in 2001, when I would ride my buddy Gary’s bikes when visiting the corporate office, Sharlet found that a “queen seat” was much more to her liking and I have to admit that I also fell in love with Harley’s Road Glide. In 2004 I sold my Corvette powered Malibu ski boat. That funded a new 2005 Road Glide, making the purchase the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Before it came home it got a big bore kit, cam and other power and chrome goodies. Now it is noticeably faster than the lighter Springer, but someday I’ll fix that “problem.”
If you aren’t completely bored to tears, you can waste even more time at DaveDrive.com