Why We Ride

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The sun in your face, the sound

of the motor and the vibration,

the unobscured view of everything

that's going on around you.

It's a bombardment

of the senses.

I just love it,

I just enjoy being on a bike.

The cliche of

feeling the wind in your hair,

even though I don't have much

hair anymore, is very true.

It's just...

It's a wonderful feeling.

It's a built-in passion to ride a

motorcycle, no matter what it is.

It's unlike anything else

that you'll ever feel.

There's nothing in my

life that's like it.

It's part of who I am,

and what I want to be.

Motorcycle riding is such a

filter for the brain for me.

I always end up singing while I'm

riding because it's just me and my bike

and I'm just enjoying myself and not

really thinking about anything else.

Some people paint,

some people sew,

some people listen to music.

I get on a motorcycle

and that really puts

my mind at ease.

It's a high, it's a good high, and

it's one that you can get addicted to.

In a spiritual sense

you could almost say, Namaste, you know,

it's that blending of the soul

of the motorcycle and you

and it's just this

perfect moment.

Everybody that rides a

motorcycle that's been around for a while

has got a personal connection

to their motorcycle

It's a person unto itself.

We all dream

about flying.

Well, when you ride

a motorcycle, you are flying.

You're flying through space

at the twist of a throttle.

When you ride motorcycles,

people always say hi to each other, you know,

you don't see people who drive

cars waving at everybody in a car.

They all have a bond, and

it's a bond that they share by desire.

The common denominator

is two wheels.

They are people that'll bend

over backwards to help ya.

You're not going to leave a comrade on the

side of the road without offering to help 'em.

There are some of the nicest people I've

ever met, are motorcyclists, hands down.

Being a motorcycle guy

cuts across every job description,

and you identify yourself

with being a motorcyclist,

first and foremost, before you're

a doctor, before you're an actor,

before you're a newspaper

tycoon, you're a motorcycle guy.

And that really levels the

playing field with a lot of people.

So you're talking to

a guy about bikes and then you find out

that this guy's a neurosurgeon,

and you're, like,

"Huh, I thought he was just some

guy who rode a Honda. "

If you ever get on

that bike, president of a bank,

a leader of a country,

you're in.

You could get out of work

totally angry, take a little ride,

and boy you don't get two miles

down the road, and all of a sudden,

you've let go of all of that

stress, all that anxiety,

and now you're...

you're free.

In my view people

travel in bubbles, a lot.

The motorcycle gets you

out of the bubble.

We can't know where we're going

if we don't know where we've been.

In the old days, you

know, there were thousands of people

that came out to watch

the motorcycle races.

Some of the greatest riders

of all time, Ben Campanelli,

Jimmy Phillips, Bobby Hill and

Bill Tuman, and Ernie Beckman.

Ed Kretz.

Ed Kretz was my hero.

They were badass,

they were real men.

Like rodeoing,

there was no money in it,

there was no prestige in it, you

did it because you liked doing it.

I would have loved

to have been around during that era.

You know, it was just

throw it all out there.

It was a great time

in racing for sure.

It's about tradition, I

wanna keep those stories alive.

I don't want these people

to be forgotten.

I think

it's important

to preserve the lineage.

I mean, it's kinda funny,

you go out and buy

a brand-new motorcycle,

it's hard to think that that

has roots that go back to 1901.

Motorcycles literally

were, you know, bicycles

that somebody finally came up with

the idea of putting an engine in it.

Kind of like the peanut butter

and jelly story, you know.

It's like, I think maybe

these two things might work.

Of course, if you got

an engine in a motorcycle,

the next thing is

you gotta start racing it.

When racing really got going in

the U.S. was through board track racing.

Small, circular,

banked wooden track.

Literally just

strips of wood laid end to end.

And all these bicycle racings,

they used a pacer,

that they followed behind, which

was a motorized, big, clumsy bicycle.

And then the bicyclists

would actually be in the draft.

And the pacer would get to a certain speed,

peel off, and then the racers would start.

Someone came up along the way one

time, with, like, an intermission.

"Why don't we put all the pacers out on

the track, let them have their own race?"

And they did that, and I guess

it went over pretty well,

but then it wasn't long they realized

the bikes themselves could go faster,

so they made them a

little less big and bulky.

That's the premise for

the Indian Company, the Hendees.

They were bicycle racers and

created this motorized bicycle

to help set faster

and faster speeds.

Then, you know,

here came Harley-Davidson

and companies that, uh, went into

production on the whole thing.

There were more than a

hundred motorcycle manufacturers

just in the United States.

Some of the designs of some of

these engines were completely insane.

They leaked.

They smelt like a beast.

You couldn't go to the local

store and have someone work on it.

You had to have a

basic understanding of 'em.

Which means that anybody

who had these early bikes,

you know, it wasn't a

convenience, it was a dedication.

It was all about the

racing and, predominantly,

the two major bike companies

were Harley versus Indian.

And these guys were out

there with these bikes with no brakes,

going around the track,

close to a 100 miles an hour.

You've gotta be kidding

me, horrible tires, horrible chassis,

lots of horsepower, how do you

manage that stuff, you know?

Well, you just do it until you crash and

then you figure out where to go from there.

It was a very dangerous sport. If

they went off the outside of the track,

they went through the fence and flew

through the air, into who knows what.

A lot of, lot of good racers

and young men died racing.

Until Henry Ford did his thing,

cars were basically for the wealthy.

So a young enterprising man,

who was a working man,

a working family, his dream would

be to buy a motorcycle and a sidecar.

My great-grandfather, Fritzie Baer,

had a '23 Chief with a sidecar.

Brought his pregnant wife to the

hospital in a motorcycle and a sidecar,

and the newborn baby came

home... in the sidecar.

Over the next five years, she

had another three more children,

and all four of us were

brought home in that side car.

You would had to have lived

through the Depression

to know what

the period was like.

People didn't have

a lot of money.

I can remember

when a can of pork and beans

and a roll was a wonderful

meal, I'm not kidding.

Fun was hard to come

by. Entertainment was expensive.

As people got into

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