July 27th 2017

With the creation of my first blog post allow me to introduce myself...  

I am not what I consider fast, but I do consider myself to have moto in my DNA.  I prefer to refer to it as the MX chromosome, which mind you is not scientific, but nonetheless 110% accurate in depicting the way all of us who have ever touched, jumped, crashed, smashed, built, bought, sold, or flat out had anything to do with a two wheeled motocross machine.  I was born and raised in southwestern Pennsylvania, raced my first time at a local (dangerous) county fair, and stood in spectacular awe at High Point raceway, for the first time on a sweltering sunny Saturday in 2006, as RC and Bubba James Stewart shook the northeastern hills at speed I had not believed possible on any displacement of dirtbike.  There's that word...dirtbike.  

Bear with me if you will into a tangent that I think on often.  I spend a stupid amount of time driving for my job (well get to that soon enough) and that means entertaining myself with whatever nonsense I can concoct in the grey matter between my ears, but anyhow, the combination of the two words dirt and bike doesn't do it for me.  I don't mean that I don't like the term!  I love the term actually...I've spent most of the last twenty years, both wide awake and in the depths of REM slumber thinking of nothing else but "DIRTBIKE" and that my friends is why I insist on replacing dirtbike with some sort of MOTOCROSS stressing depiction of my first passion in life.  

I guess it has something to do with my perception of what we do.  We don't just take a bike with a engine or moto (thanks to the addition of the Alta Motors electric bike) out into the first patch of clear real estate we see and find pure and total joy in playing in the dirt.  NO NO NO not at all, at least when it comes to this guy sitting here armed with a keyboard and a weeks worth of career/job/vocation (call it whatever you want) spawned creativity and need to talk, watch, and straight up live moto, as the lifestyle has been dubbed as of late.  

Just take a look at your facebook, instagram, or whatever social media fixture your thumb is drawn to in times of idle neuro activity...

...that there is how I got to writing this first blog entry.  Be it the moto-minded ramblings of my subconscious, fine, but when you look through that feed...its not post after post of stock OEM bikes from the cookie cutter designs of Japanese engineering genius.  Nope, its customs.  Creations of our own grey matter.  That mystery organ that makes us not just humans, but human BEINGS.  That mystery organ which in conjunction with your eyeballs, takes in the sights and sounds of what someone across an ocean has created to pay their bills and reshapes, molds, or manipulates that product you can deal for on craigslist or pay top dollar for at your local dealer, into something that says, "This is how I moto though life"!  

There you have it...my fried Friday dissertation.  We moto through Monday through Friday or whatever type of work week, hitch, or schedule you have to get to that moment when we really get to be passionate about what activity we are doing.  Its the "Why" reason we wake up and work day after day.

Growing up I watched my Dad put on a USAir uniform and head off to pilot folks from here to there and everywhere, all the while wondering where I'd be and what I'd be doing when I was "grown-up", as I understood it back the.  What I didn't see was the "why" factor in his job.  I really couldn't understand it at that point...I couldn't get cereal off the middle shelf of a farm house pantry at that time.  One day I started growing up.  SLOWLY, but eventually forming my own "who" and my own "why", all the while still knowing that what I found to be my "why" for getting up and getting at it in the morning (or afternoon when I started into flowing gas wells) was not like my Dad's "why".  

Dad's "why" factor was flying.  He still loves it.  He'll always love it AND it was a reasonable thing to aspire to for a livlihood.  Just like his Dad who loved to train horses.  He always said, "I liked a horse".  Thats how he described the early decades of his life and Grandpa passed away somewhat peacefully still believing he was in a barn full of saddlehorses with the potential for greatness.  The point of all my rambling, yes there is a point, is this.  If you're a ten year old kid or if you know//have a kid that you see developing an interest in something, help them foster that.  

At the old age of 29, hahaha I look back fondly on the past two decades of living with the affliction of a motocross obsession.  I have come to realize that our passions are most often met at an early age, but realized later on.  If you're going to be sucessful in life you'd best get passionate about something.  My Dad said something like that to me shortly after I took the SATs for the second time.  I look back and laugh now because, although I still know very little, I know way more than that 18 year old I was, but I the one thing I know for certain is that I have had three passions in my first third of life: motocross, outdoors, and working.  The key was that I needed all three to shape my stubborn brain into what I needed it to become.  When you're passionate about something it forces you to be active.  When you're active you get tired.  When you get tired, but you're still passionate and wanting to be active you become disciplined.  When you become disciplined you train to overcome the fatigue that was holding you back.  When you acquire and establish a routine for fighting and overcoming fatigue you're some age of adult and see your life's experiences as the staircase to your success.