The Beginning

Let's go way back in time, Erik. What was it that first got you into motorcycling?
When I was little, growing up in Gibsonia, Pennsylvania, I always liked going places. I liked bicycles, sleds, ponies, horses - you name it. I just liked being out in the air versus in a car. When I saw my first motorcycle, I thought, "Man, it's like a car and a sled combined!" Motorcycling is fun and cool combined. After my first blast down the road, I was hooked. The very first ride did it.

What was your first ride?
It was on an old step-through Super Cub Honda®. The son of one of my mother's friends had one. He was 16, and I was 12. I begged him to let me ride it, and he said I could take it to the end of the driveway. But I just had to keep going, so I shot out on the road and took off. I had to, to avoid getting punched out!

Well, that did it. I got the motorcycle bug very bad. It didn't take long until my heroes were all racers. But eventually, I would develop a huge respect for the guys who designed the bikes, not just the guys who raced them.

I got my first official bike at around 14. It was a moped - a 90cc Perilla, three-speed with pedals. It was called a Slug hi - which is "Ram Jet" in Italian. The only time it made noise was when I pedaled, which was most of the time, since it had absolutely no power.

Next, I took a giant step up and got a 74 cubic inch Harley® in a basket. To be exact, it was a '57 Panhead in a '52 frame with KHK front end. Red metal flake paint and those crazy two-piece ape hanger handlebars, which would come loose and swing back and forth. You should've seen it! I'd shove wads of steel wool into the mufflers to quiet it down for the cops, but when I was really hauling, it would shoot these glowing balls of flame out the back. Man, that's cool stuff when you're a kid!

When I was about 16, a buddy of mine on a Harley Sprint beat me in a race down one of those twisty Pennsylvania roads. That did it. Beat by a Sprint! Here I am on my chopper, making all this noise and thinking I'm cool. I made myself some flat bars and figured there was more to motorcycling than just looking cool.

Then I got a Velocette with full Avon fairing, clip-ons, rear sets a roadracer on the street. It was the best bike around for a guy like me. It didn't take long for me to fall in love with riding instead of showing off. Then I went through a smorgasbord of Japanese imports.

Sounds like you had all the earmarks of a died-in-the-wool gearhead.
Well, I grew up on a farm where nothing ever worked, so you had to fix anything before you could use it. I became a tinkerer because I had no choice. Dad liked for us to fix everything and keep it going, so it was just natural for us to buy old stuff and tinker with it. He was the kind of guy who, when I'd come in the house on a freezing winter morning and complain about the battery being dead on the tractor, would say, "Can't you just turn the crank to start it?" It'd be frozen solid and five degrees and I'd be out trying to muscle that crank. That's just the way it was.

But Pennsylvania was great for Motorcycles. The Pittsburgh area where I lived was just a hotbed. Lots of racers around, so it was easy to get caught up, and there was always a friend to go with.

Well, then I started college but dropped out because of too many other interests. Soon I was spending all my time working in bike shops, riding, and going to night school for engineering. I was just starting to race motocross seriously when I got badly injured. Since I couldn't ride, I got a job as a mechanic for a road racer, which was cool, but he quit and I took over riding. All of a sudden I was a road racer. At that time I was racing what was essentially a 350 Kawasaki® single that I'd turned into a road racer, if you can believe that. I beat a lot of the big guys, too. That thing had tons of torque! It was very, very cool for me to beat them with an air-cooled single. My interest in tinkering combined with riding was already insatiable. Well, that's how I started club racing, and in a few years I was out there doing Formula One on a TZ750 Yamaha® and Superbike on a 900SS Ducati®.

That had to be expensive without factory backing.
Well, I had to do just about everything by myself, so I was machining parts, sourcing parts, building my own stuff. I spent every penny on racing, so I had no money to stay at hotels and eat decent meals. When I graduated from engineering school, I wanted to work at Harley-Davidson so I could put my passion and knowledge to work on Motorcycles - and get paid for it full time.