uh I I he told me to buy tanyards I didn't know what a banyard was I had to look that up but I said okay I'm gonna buy Spaniards the only way I was really able to do this trip emotionally was to approach it as a filmmaker I got the motorcycle my first concern was that I was going through a midlife crisis I would buy this motorcycle and sit in the garage and I thought oh my gosh I've got to do something to make sure that that doesn't happen so one of the people that was following on YouTube had done this trip to all the national parks on this motorcycle I said that's it I will use the national parks as pearls on the Strand and I will that will pull me forward and I'll set myself a goal that I did for all the Western National Parks was was my aspiration foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] so I have around about 39 or so and it's last day of school Pineview high school and um say to my friend you know I think I'm going to go to the Harley store and I send a text to my wife and I said I'm going to go look at some motorcycles and she said is this your is this your midline crisis and I go I don't know maybe but I walked around looked at some motorcycles I get a text from my friend Eric and I might have been actually there at the Harley store when I got the text that said if we're going to remain friends then you're gonna have to tell me if you go to the Harley store and I was walking to school every day my father had an old Suzuki scooter that it was just laying in the garage and I got tired of walking so I thought well I'll try the scooter thing you know it was it was a time when scooters were not cool at all so my personal branding really took a hit but uh at the same time for whatever reason it was comfortable to me I enjoyed it and I started getting teased about this little scooter I was riding so I kind of made up this this uh future state where I was going to have a bigger motorcycle so I was telling all my friends I'm going to get a bigger motorcycle I'm ready to get interested in that so I started getting all the motorcycle magazine Cycle World and dirt bike and things like that and narrowed in on I was going to get a Kawasaki 175. I'd start out with a Honda 175 went to a Nighthawk 450 to a CB750 custom which was a brilliant bike and then I had some time off in between there while we were taking care of other life's curveballs and then I picked up the black bird the Honda CBR 1100 double X and that was the bike that was the machine that connected me to this whole concept of isolation present Focus mindfulness because on that motorcycle you couldn't think about anything else you had to pay strict attention to all the demands of the machine and the road and the conditions and you know everything that was going on anyway he said I got another bike you might be interested come and check this out so I met him at the uh what was that dealership it was like a it was a Yamaha dealership different Motorsports and and then this bike happened to be there and um and I looked at I thought it was awesome and I think I went back to it with Eric and Mindy and um she said why don't you get on it try it on just get on the bike and I thought okay yeah I will ask the guy if that's all right sure get on the bike like they're gonna tell you don't get on a bike I'm just putting my hands on the handlebars getting a feel for it and she says you look really good on that bike so so I blame her always for for this bike but then I was uh out on a test ride for it oh a man she feels good she felt so good by the end of the school year I'd been working as a bus boy riding my scooter and uh bought my first motorcycle Kawasaki 175 and almost immediately after I broke it in uh this was the end of my senior year I bought the bike and in July I rode it from Phoenix to Colorado Springs and back my first real long trip that I'd ever taken on a motorcycle and for a long time until just recently the last long trip I had taken a multi-night trip I'd ever take on a motorcycle Mindy and I put a lot of miles on that and bless her heart she was the one who you know rode pillion until she couldn't stand it anymore so he got her her own bike and when I was rolling back into town I had this moment where I got caught in a monsoon storm and I pulled into a bank teller uh you know overhang it was a Sunday and nobody was there and I just waited out this storm I just felt so empowered right so uh I don't know just it was a it was a sensation that I think probably stuck with me to this day about the freedom and the sense of power that motorcycles could give me uh and I I thought maybe this is too much bike a little too much bike for me it's a it's a 1700 class 1670 I think to be exact and um I wrote at home uh after I bought it thinking this might be too much bike it might be too much bike and then I took it on the highway on my way to Vegas found myself in one of those situations where I got a break or I got a motor through and I hit the throttle and realized no it's not too much bike it's just the right amount of bike and it's been nothing but happy memories ever since I love this thing I call it the Banff cycle b-a-m-f cycle it's a badass cycle so the Blackbird was a magical motorcycle and I didn't think anything could go through and surpass the experience of riding that bike circumstances I made it so I needed to get rid of that as well which is probably a good thing because I would either be dead or in jail one of the two and then a few years went by when I had to fill that motorcycle shaped hole in my heart with another bike and I bought a I found a used Kawasaki KLR 650. and for some people that would have been enough bike to drive you away from motorcycle riding um for me it was something that I could work on parts were inexpensive relatively and I could use it to do something I've always wanted to do which was go off-road and get away from the tarmac because I I had never done anything like that in the past and so that was a good bike to kind of break in my chops as far as off-road riding was concerned this all began when my wife said you know what are you gonna do when you retire and I didn't know I honestly had no thoughts about what I was going to do with retirement and it was coming up so I started looking around and for whatever reason I lived on YouTube and I started seeing motorcycle travel and my kids were scattered around the western states so I thought great I'll get something to travel and my first thought was a Touring bike so I get something comfortable I'd always sort of fantasized about a big windshield and a stereo blasting and all that sort of Comforts that a Touring bike would give me and I went down to the BMW dealer and I sat on an LT and and I went oh my God this was having not been on a motorcycle in 28 years it just felt immense the guy at the BMW dealer pointed me to his GS and said you should look at this and he was right that was he sort of could sense the the right category for me the GS again just seemed a little bit big for me um so I started as I started doing my research I narrowed it down to probably six or seven motorcycles and I went down to the Triumph dealer and saw the Tiger in just the appearance honestly lit me up I got him a tiger and I got maybe six blocks I thought everything about this tiger is better more polished more complete more um uh well made uh the engine was amazing and uh I I just kind of fell in love with it right and I stopped looking I thought okay this is it I don't need to look any further and I traversed the state probably 20 different times on that KLR commuting back and forth between Salt Lake and St George and taking the taking the roads less traveled there as a result of that which instilled in me even more of a desire to to do that um and with that desire came obviously a need to have a better motorcycle to go through and do that with at that point we were living in North Salt Lake and I went down to the local Triumph dealer and threw my leg over a used uh Triumph Tiger 800 x c and a ticket for a test drive and and bought it on the spot and I you know it didn't take me more than a half an hour because the bike was just remarkably solid intuitive it felt like an extension of myself I took it to Moab and did a lot of trails through there and motor camped with it and it quickly became a favorite so when I approached Addie about the idea of doing a Pacific Northwest tour it was obvious then at that point well we would need another motorcycle Addy would take the 800 XC and uh and then I would find something like that I was looking originally I was looking for an 800 as well but then I found a 1200 XC the Tiger Explorer 1200 XC in the same olivery as the first as the 800. so I found one down in Florida online I call them up during a lunch break while I was teaching I said hey I want to see more of this motorcycle I finally asked if they would just get on the bike with a passenger have the passenger shoot it with their phone while they're right so I could listen to it I can hear the gear changes and things that way and once I was satisfied that the bike was you know uh was good I bought it sight unseen really as you know physically unseen and had it shipped to Utah for less money than with the 800 cost me so I was like well it's meant to be you know it's one of those things so then so at that point then our stable held two tigers and Addie and I were able to go through and continue to prepare for that trip [Music] foreign I was planning to do she was very nervous about me getting another motorcycle I'd had a motorcycle when we first met put it away when we raised our children and then to get back to it her feeling was at my age and my you know uh and in our position going into retirement she didn't want me doing something so risky I think that's what it kind of boiled down to so we had a number of conversations about it and uh I was pleading my case I think for the third time late into an evening and I'd already you know been told you can get a motorcycle license but don't get a bike and it was sort of these teaser kind of things were happening which was very frustrating to me so I was kind of ready to to do something more material so I um I was just telling her passionately how much it meant to me and finally just gave up and went to bed and I woke up the next morning and there was a text from her that said you do what you need to do I'll deal with it so I thought this woman is amazing and she's kind of overcome her concerns so she came home from work the next day and came storming into the house and said did you buy that effing bike because it was sitting in the driveway I said yeah I have a I have a text from you that says you do what you need to do and I'll deal with it she said this is me dealing with it so I learned then that uh she communicated clearly but I hadn't listened clearly to what that happened which what she was saying not everybody understands the whole motorcycle trip right thing and I get it you know it's not for everybody um there's a a very short poem that uh kind of explains it for me and I can't remember the poem verbatim but it gets into the idea that it absolutely focuses you in the present the poem says something about how all of our fears really exist in the future and uh motorcycle writing the trip the journey forces you to concentrate on the present especially when you're at speed on a motorcycle you know it for me it gives my uh my OCD something to do while I'm riding along you know so it has a way to pull me out of the the present cares the things that might be weighing me down and puts me into a better state of mind and so to do that with people that you love to do that with people who share the same passion or who understand that same ability is pretty cool so Eric says to me we're doing a documentary we're filming can we borrow your bike that's the story I had in my head I don't actually know if that's the truth but at the very same time I I was taking youth Symphony kids to San Francisco to what if I were to ride at some point I'll ride the motorcycle at some point and the thought of writing that across the Golden Gate Bridge man I thought that's a great idea foreign [Applause] [Music] we had a lot of fun we filmed up beyond the Golden Gate Bridge I don't want to be 80 years Ed and I go back uh years a decade more yeah 15 16 years and I invited him to go on the Pacific Coast Highway trip that we were doing which was also being shot by my film students as a documentary and so we had the luxury really of having a film crew following us along we picked that up in San Francisco which was our turnaround that we're going to come back down the coast at that point and we had his motorcycle on a trailer that was with our camera gear just had a brilliant time with that so I wanted to not necessarily recreate that moment but to create more moments and share that passion with that Brian I met on a Triumph on his website and he was kind of paying attention to my YouTube channel when Addie and I were planning the Pacific Northwest tour when Eric and I first met he had shared that he was going on a trip up to the Northwest and I was going to go on the same trip and I asked him to share you know his itinerary and his his experiences as he went because I was going to learn from them and he came out to California and said you know why don't you go on a ride with us and he happened to live in proximity to where Addie was living at the time in Monterey California I came out to Monterey with my motorcycle and we decided to do just kind of a day trip and I asked Brian if he wanted to come along and so that's really that was our main introduction to you from the very beginning Eric and I felt I felt very comfortable with Eric and I felt like he was somebody that had the same sort of um interests the same sort of approach to life like his wife Sue talks about we were a walk on Friends kind of a thing you know it was this kind of this instant um good Juju you know this instant relationship that way with somebody that uh you know we could both relate to back and forth Eric let me in his family and he opened his sort of experiences in his heart to me and um it was easy it was easy to kind of fall into a friendship with him and I I just feel like we've known each other for so much longer than we actually have so our calls me [Music] um says I got a bucket list I want to go on a ride and I want to go with you and in that same conversation uh he told me that he had been diagnosed with a Cancer and he went on to explain what what uh kind of was I'm probably not going to make it through this um but oh [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]