Paper Street Orgin Story

While I've been building bikes for a living for over 20 years Paper Street Customs is just shy of 10 years old...so settle in and I'll tell you the long version about how we got here.

When I was a kid all I wanted to do was ride Harley's and play football.  And growing up where I did I was fortunate enough to do both.  I spent a lot of time on the back seat of my father's shovelhead.  And once I hit high school I had even more opportunity to play football.  Actually I wasn't even given the choice.  My wrestling coach was the Freshman football coach and he informed me one summer day that football practice started the next week and my attendance was mandatory.

While playing football was a dream come true there was just no way owning a Harley of my own was going to happen as a high school kid.  Hell I was lucky to just have a truck.  And when my efforts on the football field landed me a scholarship to college, right about the same time wide tire Evo's with 6 figure price tags came along, the idea of motorcycles started getting further and further away.

Fast forward to 2001...the summer between my junior and senior year.  I was a year away from graduating with an English Degree specializing in Technical Writing.  Driving across the country to complete my summer internship at a software company in Atlanta I found myself stopping for the night in St. Louis.  After grabbing a quick dinner I settled into my hotel room and turned on the TV.  As I was flipping through the channels I came across a guy beating the hell out of a piece of aluminum sheet metal with a black mallet.  You guessed it...Jesse James.  Motorcycle Mania.  As cheesy and cliché as it sounds that's how I wound up here.  I spent that entire summer in a cubicle writing Help Files for software knowing damn well I was never going to come back.  Something about him hand hammering that gas tank and putting it on top of a pissed off rigid chopper just stuck with me.  I went back to school for my senior season and fulfilled my obligations on and off the field.  I did graduate.  And I promptly turned down a job back in Atlanta so I could "build bikes" (Side note...most of the guys I worked with at that software company are 7 figure earners now.  So maybe this is a cautionary tale.)  I quickly learned there were no shops willing to give a twenty something kid with no experience a job.  So back to school I went...to the American Motorcycle Institute in Daytona Beach, Florida.

While I was in school I hit up every shop in town for a job.  One sunny Saturday afternoon I wandered into Mad Creations Custom Cycles and scored my first job in the motorcycle industry.  For $8 an hour.  Most of my friends and teammates were out there making six figures a year with their education and here I was sweeping floors and living in a two room shithole on the beach.  And not the nice part of the beach...the part where homeless people sleep.

After I graduated from AMI I stayed on at Mad Creations full time.  Looking back I couldn't have asked for a better place to start.  It was a one stop shop.  We had everything... machine shop, fab shop, bike building, and paint and body.  We occasionally did service work but the bulk of the work was fabrication and paint.  And I was fortunate to work with some great guys that were willing to teach me if I was willing to learn.  One of those guys was Big Mike Gleason.  Technically he was our painter but he could do anything.  He taught me how to TIG weld.  How to run a mill and lathe.  Helped me hone my fab skills.  When the fab shop was slow I'd help him do bodywork in the paint shop.  I'm very grateful for the time I spent working at Mad Creations.

This was 2004.  Choppers were all the rage.  Orange County Choppers was in full swing, The Biker Build Off, V-Twin TV, Rolling Thunder, Build Or Bust...you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing choppers.  The shop was booming, monstrous choppers and pro street bikes with 300mm rear tires, massive billet engines, obnoxious paint.  It really was a wild time to cut my teeth in this business.  When I think back at some of the price tags those bikes commanded even I can't believe it. 

That fall me and another guy from the shop had to take a bike down to the legendary Shark Lounge.  They wanted to have a bike on stage during Biketoberfest.  For those of you that don't know the Shark Lounge is a landmark strip club in Daytona.  Known more for its negative attributes than the positive ones...which I can't even think of.  While we were setting the bike on stage the owner starts telling us how one of the bouncers and the DJ got shot at the club a few days earlier.  The DJ was killed and the bouncer lived but was out of commission for a few months.  Still making $8 an hour I went back that night and got myself a job.  Replacing a bouncer that had gotten shot in the club may not be the brightest idea but I remember justifying it to myself with the thought "what are the odds it'll happen again?"  Fucking idiot.

It was a pretty grueling time in my life.  I was chasing my dreams of building custom bikes during the day at Mad Creations and slaying dragons all night down at the Shark Lounge until 2-3 in the morning.  I'd go home and crash for about 4 hours and get up and do it all over again.  After a particularly scary night at the club I asked my boss at the shop for a raise.  I had this rehearsed speech in my head about how my skills had developed and what I could bring to the table but he didn't even need to hear it.  He bumped me up significantly and I was able to quit bouncing.  As rough as those times were when I look back on them now almost 20 years later I can't help but smile.  It was one of the best times of my life.  And I try to keep that frame in mind now when things get hard...20 years from now I'll probably look back to today and realize this was the best time of my life.

But like everything else, nothing lasts forever.  After about 3 years at Mad Creations the owner came in one Saturday and informed us all he was closing the shop.  Originally from Wyoming he was sick of Florida and wanted to return west.  I had just moved off the beach to a lot nicer area.  One where I didn't have to worry about homeless people shitting in my Florida room.  That's a screened in porch for those of you that don't know...and that happened.  I walked out one morning to grab a banana off the tree in my yard and there was a big country shit in the corner of my porch.  Fucking Floridaman is a real thing.  Anyway I had moved into a nice little place up in Ormond Beach across the street from The Iron Horse Saloon and was really sweating how I was going to pay my rent now that I was jobless.  I even went back to the Shark Lounge but they were staffed up.  So I took a job at J&P Cycles as a Technical Rep and found myself right back in a cubical.  I would advise customers about what parts fit their bikes and basically take sales calls all day.  I learned a lot of valuable information about Harley fitment but it was a far cry from building bikes.  And the pay was shit.  It didn't take me long to realize this was not something I wanted to do.  The problem was I couldn't find a job in the saturated Daytona bike scene.  So one Sunday afternoon I started firing off resumes to every shop I could think of in any place I thought I might want to be.

I got a few hits but nothing I really wanted to do.  It seemed like everywhere was just looking for service techs.  And while that's a good job I just didn't want to do oil changes all day.  Then about a week later I got a phone call from the HR lady at Big Bear Choppers in California.  At the time they were a massive custom production manufacturer pumping out about 6 bikes a day.  I had applied to be a welder in the fab shop. The pay seemed good, even for California, and I was excited to be heading somewhere new.  So we scheduled a day for me to fly out and interview.  Thinking I'd be asked to take a welding test I spent the next 5 days working for free in a buddy’s hot rod shop welding anything I could get my hands on.

The day before my trip to California I was at home when I got a phone call from Kevin Alsop, the owner of Big Bear Choppers.  Turns out they had a "management position" open in the Warranty Dept.  The reality was they'd just fired the Warranty Manager and the GM at the time was filling that spot in addition to his regular duties overseeing production.  When they gave him my resume to let him know I was coming out for a interview to work in the fab shop he saw my education and background and sold them on the idea that I was a perfect fit to fill the Warranty spot.  I tried to explain to Kevin that I wasn't really interested in a desk job and that I wanted to build bikes.  He countered back that the Warranty job paid almost double what a welder would make, full benefits, PTO, 401K, etc.  So I flew out and interviewed for it.  They offered me the job and even paid to move me from Florida to California under the condition that I start the next Monday.  So I flew home a day early and spent the next 3 days packing fugitive style, loaded all my stuff onto a truck, and jumped a plane back to California.  

The Warranty job wasn't exactly what I wanted to do but again I learned a lot of valuable information.  I worked with the engineers on root cause analysis to see what parts were failing and why.  I learned about manufacturing, taking parts from prototype through testing and on to a finished product ready for sale.  We made everything in house except the motor and transmission.  Those came from S&S and Baker so I got to work closely with both companies to improve the bikes and drive warranty cost down.  I learned about dealer networks, how to set up a dealership, sell through, flooring companies, etc.  It was a crash course on motorcycle manufacturing.  But I still got to go to bike shows and some days when I had my Warranty work done I'd hop on the line and help build bikes under the guise that I was furthering my knowledge of the product.  But in reality I just wanted to work on bikes.

Within a year I'd reduced the average Warranty claim cost per bike from $133 to $77.  I implemented an RMA program, dealer technician training, and even wrote and published my own Flat Rate Job Manual for the dealerships.  Kevin couldn't have been happier.  I was the perfect employee.  All I wanted to do was work. I didn't have friends, I didn't have a family, I'd come in on the weekends and learn about any aspect of the business.  And it paid off.  At the end of my first year they decided to replace the Fab Shop Manager...with me.

With all the success I had in Warranty I was immediately back to square one.  The Fab Shop had fallen way behind production, hence firing the previous manager, so I walked right into the shit on day one.  All of the sudden I had to learn about purchasing, sourcing materials, scheduling production and managing over 20 employees, inventory control, blah blah blah.  I just wanted to build fucking bikes!

Within a month I had the Fab Shop back on schedule.  By working with the engineers again we increased productivity by 10%. I learned about line balancing, process improvement, one piece flow, 5 S principals, Kaizen, Kanban...I started reading books about the systems created and implemented by Toyota.  I didn't know it at the time but I was basically becoming a process engineer by proxy.

And you know what I got for all my hard work?  More work.  I'd proven that I could take failing departments and turn them around.  So the powers that be decided that the Final Assembly shop could use my help too.  But they didn't want to replace me in the Fab Shop...I was going to be overseeing both shops.  A job previously done by two guys was now mine along with my Fab Shop duties.

In addition to my 20+ Fab Shop guys now I was overseeing another 10 guys in the Assembly Shop where the finished bikes rolled off the line.  This brought another layer of learning and knowledge to my skill set.  I was responsible for the final quality check on every bike before it left.  We brought two new models to the market during this time.  Back with the engineers again, I learned about compliance in foreign markets so we could sell our bikes legally to Europe, Taiwan, Korea, Australia, and Brazil.

My time at Big Bear Choppers gave me insight to small volume manufacturing.  I think that's been tremendous as far as making and selling my own bespoke line of parts now.  I was also exposed to a lot of fun stuff during my time at Big Bear.  While our main focus was building production customs we still got to build some full blown customs.  We built bikes for celebrities like Criss Angel, Oscar De La Hoya, CMT TV.  We did an episode of Biker Buildoff, we filmed shows for FX network, The Worlds Most Expensive Toys, Behind the Name, and some show called Sons of Anarchy...I've never seen it but I hear its ok.

I honestly had it in my head that I was going to work at Big Bear forever.  I had grown close with the owners Kevin and Mona and had proven time and again that I was a producer.  It didn't matter where they put me I was going to succeed.  Mainly because I didn't have a backup plan.  I envisioned myself one day being the General Manager overseeing the entire company. 

Then 2008 happened.  The housing market crashed.  The economy went into the toilet.  Unemployment spiked.  And people stopped buying $50,000 toys.  The company started struggling.  We had massive layoffs and salaried employees had their pay cut...some by as much as 50%.  I struggled through it as long as I could but eventually I was let go too.  It wasn't too long after that they filed Chapter 11 along with all the other custom giants like American Ironhorse, Big Dog, Hellbound Steel, Swift...the list goes on and on.

I was in a long distance relationship at the time with a girl in Salt Lake and being jobless took away every excuse I'd given to not move to Utah.  So I rented out my house in California and hit the road.  If you think the job prospects in the bike industry were slim in California they were non existent in Salt Lake.  After about a month I took a job in a steel shop fabricating steel beams and occasionally off road parts like control arms for lifted Jeeps and whatnot.  It wasn't a bad job but it wasn't anything that I wanted to do forever.  In my heart I knew I still wanted to work with motorcycles.  I was doing small side jobs but I didn't really have any equipment of my own yet so I was pretty limited to bolt on customizing.  It was dumb. And Salt Lake wasn't much better.  Its a nice enough city but it just wasn't for me.  

So when a friend in Georgia called me and asked me if I was interested in coming to work for him as a welder/maintenance mechanic in a food grade facility I told him to give me two weeks to put in my notice and break up with my girlfriend and I'd head that way.

I won't bore you with the details of this job.  Its pretty much what you'd think.  I did a lot of welding and a lot of mechanic work on industrial machinery.  Boilers, ammonia refrigeration, transfer machines, pumps, compressors, etc.  We worked like 80 hour weeks but I still found the time and had the income to start building bikes again on the side.

One day out of the blue I got a call from my friend Mickey.  We had met during the Big Bear days when he was one of our dealers.  Now he was working for a shop in Dubai.  He had met a couple guys out there that were looking to open a shop and they wanted an American to run it.  They approached him but he was still under contract with his current shop so he gave them my name.  Within a week I had an expediated passport and was on a flight to Dubai.  I spent almost 2 weeks in Dubai during Middle Eastern Bikeweek.  We rode choppers all over the Emirates my first day and ended the night at the base of Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.  Over the next few days I helped them set up the shop a bit, met with other shop owners, and basically just enjoyed Dubai as a tourist.  The people over there were convinced Mickey and I were WWE wrestlers and wherever we went they'd shout "John Cena!" at us.  I enjoyed my time visiting but I knew I couldn’t live there.  There was a lot I loved about the culture there but there were a few deal breakers I just couldn't come to terms with.  So I headed back to Georgia and plugged away for another year building bikes as a hobby, riding, and hitting events like The Smokeout and Big Mountain Run.  In the fall of 2013 Mickey called again.

By this time he was working for the Big Bear Choppers European dealer in Switzerland.  If you wanted to buy a Big Bear Chopper in Europe these were the guys you had to go through.  But when Big Bear tanked they had decided they wanted to start manufacturing their own line of custom bikes.  They set up a facility just outside Budapest, Hungary and needed a man on the ground to run things.  I had pretty much made up my mind that I was done in the South and wanted to move back home to Colorado.  So once again, I gave my notice, put all my stuff in storage, and hopped a flight to Europe.

I guess I'm just a big dumb American because it was pretty evident to me that I had no desire to live in Europe either. I was set on heading back home to Colorado but I spent the rest of 2013 in Hungary and Switzerland building their fixtures, training guys, and helping Mickey develop what would become their two production models.  

I finally found myself back in Colorado in 2014 and I was happy to be home.  I had a pretty good chunk of money from my time in Europe...turns out your dollar goes a lot further in Eastern Europe than it does here.  I think I literally only spent $800 the whole time I was there.  I headed out to Oregon to pick up an FXR I had bought from my brother.  He ran a Harley dealership and had taken this thing in on trade but it was pretty far gone so instead of throwing it on the sales floor he made me a pretty decent deal.  While I was there he decided he wanted to chop his shovelhead so he sent me back with the frame so I could get going on that.

I still didn't intend on doing anything with bikes full time.  To be honest I've always enjoyed just doing it as a hobby.  Its a lot more fun and way less stressful.  So I took a job in the oilfield working as a robotics mechanic.  Basically I would rebuild machines used to torque drill pipe at the end of their service life and then commission them back on the rigs.  I loved it.  It was challenging but it was also a lot of fun.  I worked with some great people...and to be totally honest the money was great.  I was working Monday through Friday in the oilfield but every night and every weekend I was in my garage hard tailing frames, making gas tanks, building FXRs, and chopping shovelheads.  This was when I built the first bike under the name Paper Street Customs.  It was a little 1977 Shovelhead bobber I called Evelyn McHale.  While it was still in raw metal I accepted an invitation to the second Handbuilt Show in Austin.  The bike was getting some decent attention so I finished it with paint and took it to Vegas to debut. I wound up taking 2nd place at the outside show of Artistry In Iron and won Best of Show at the Cycle Source Ride In Show, landing me my first magazine cover.

My main goal in going to Vegas was to try to become an Invited Builder for Artistry In Iron.  At the time it was thee premier show in the country.  It also had the biggest prize purse in the industry...$10,000 along with a $10,000 diamond bracelet.  And while I didn't win an invitation at the outdoor show I got enough positive feedback from my peers and guys I admired to make me think I was on the right track.  About six months later 2016 happened and oil took a nose dive when it looked like Hillary Clinton was set to become the first woman president.  One by one my department was laid off until it was just me and my boss.  Eventually my day came on March 13 and I got my walking papers.  That night I was on my laptop sending out resumes when I got an email from Artistry In Iron inviting me to be a builder at the next show.  I wanted to vomit.  This was the goal I'd set for myself but I felt like it was slipping away because I didn't have the income to throw at a build like that.  So I put all my bikes up for sale...Evelyn McHale, my FXR, my black chopper, bikes I never thought I'd get rid of.

I made a few calls and pulled a few favors and got myself on a crew welding stainless process piping in Iowa a few weeks a month.  And since I was going to be out of state half the month I didn't see the point in paying rent.  So I moved all my stuff into storage.  I knew what I wanted to build for Artistry In Iron but I wasn't sure how I was going to pull it off being basically homeless.  One day I figured out my welding job was about an hour away from Al Emerson's shop in Iowa.  Al and I had never met but we talked a lot on Instagram.  He was and still is one of the best frame builders in the industry.  So I asked him if he wanted to collab on a frame for my build.  I spent two weeks in Iowa welding pipe and then spent Memorial Day weekend holed up with Al and Kris in their shop building a stainless steel rigid chopper frame.  I had already scored a panhead motor from my buddy Trent Schara so now the only thing left was everything else. 

I spent that summer welding pipe in Iowa a few weeks at a time and building what would become my blue panhead Medusa in a small shop I rented in the mountain town of Gunnison.  My plan was to move back to Georgia after Artistry In Iron and work full time for the welding crew.  But by the time the show rolled around I knew this was it.  I was going to take a shot at building bikes for a living.  After Artistry In Iron ended I came back and moved everything into that shop.  I couldn't afford to rent a house and a shop so I had to live in my shop.  Luckily it had a shower and I converted an office into a bedroom.

My panhead garnered enough attention that I was invited back to Handbuilt and from there got an invite to the first In Motion Show.  I built a little orange shovelhead bobber for that show using a 1978 FXE that my brother gave me under the agreement that when I sold it we would split the profits.  Well after he saw the finished bike he decided instead of money he wanted me to build him a bike using another 78 FXE he had stashed away.  This became the blue bobber "Excitable Boy".

It wasn't easy and I was living in a fucking garage but I was making a living...barely.  I had a friend in town that owned a fab shop where he made hand railing.  He also forged handmade knives.  He used to let me use his slip roll to make seat pans for Bare Bones Leather and in exchange I'd TIG weld for him when he needed it.  One day I was in his shop as he was fitting up some knife handles made out of acrylic blanks.  They had a cool marbled look to them that I really liked.  I didn't know what I could use it for but thought maybe I could find a home for it on my brother's bike.  Maybe a shift knob or something.  The next day I was getting my own bike ready to take to Daytona when I realized I needed new grips.  That's when the light bulb went off...I was going to try to make grips out of this material.  Surely if it held up as a knife handle it would work for motorcycle grips.  And my first production part was born.  I spent the next two weeks making as many grips as I could so I could take them to Daytona and try to sell them.

I set up a booth with Curt from Bare Bones Leather at the Tropical Willies Show and within 3 hours sold out of every grip I brought with me.  I had my friend Darren McKeag draw me up a shirt design and sold all those too.  For the first time I realized if I wanted to make an actual living doing this that selling parts was going to be a lot more profitable than building bikes.  Luckily my grips took off after that.  I was selling 8-10 pairs a week.  The downside was that became like sweatshop labor.  All I was doing was standing at the lathe all day making grips. But I couldn't complain.  It was paying the bills and allowing me to still build custom bikes along side the grips and a few other small parts I started marketing like motor mount kits and kicker arms.

That summer I got a call from Josh Allison from Crybaby Cycles.  He was building a bike for Born Free and as the deadline approached he needed an extra set of hands.  I stayed with him for 4-5 days and helped him finish up his build.  We worked well together and had a lot of fun.  Sometimes too much fun.  If you know Josh you know he's not afraid of the whiskey.  But the work got done and in return he offered to let me use his booth at Born Free to sell my parts.  

Prior to Born Free Josh was contacted by Paul Teutul Sr about coming out to Orange County Choppers and filming an episode as a guest fabricator.  Later that summer they asked him to come back and do another episode.

I was out on my morning walk early one day when I got a call from Josh.  Turned out they not only wanted him to do another episode they wanted him to do a few.  But he needed help so when they asked him if he knew anyone he gave them my name.  That was a Tuesday.  By Friday I was on a plane to New York and found myself working in one of the most famous shops in the business.  We spent 4 weeks building two bikes for two separate episodes. Before we left Paul and the producers informed us they wanted us to stay on for the entire season.  We wound up staying in New York for almost a year.  We lived in the guest house above Sr's garage like the fucking odd couple and drove a giant red H2 Hummer they gave us.  There was no kitchen so they let us eat for free at the OCC Café.  Needless to say most dinners turned into whiskey fueled all nighters.  It was like Chopper Fantasy camp mixed with Spring Break.  All we did was work all day building bikes and filming the show and all night getting fucked up at the bar.  But no matter what we showed up for work.  TV or not we were still responsible for actually building the bikes.  And they had to be functional proper motorcycles.  We didn't build any of the goofy "theme bikes" OCC was so famous for.

We eventually built 10 bikes in just under a year.  We were sure the show would get renewed and that we'd be moving to New York permanently.  Filming wrapped and we headed back home to wait for the call.

I've never been one to just sit and wait so I immediately jumped back into customer parts work and finishing up my brothers bike.  Discovery Channel offered a second season but it was under the condition Sr work with Jr again.  They wanted that drama...but Sr wanted no part of it so he passed.  With no more show there was no reason for me to go back to NY.  Josh wound up moving out and working for Sr full time.

My old oil field boss had been up my ass about coming back to work for him.  But in a different capacity...instead of working Monday through Friday I'd be in the field working 2 weeks on 2 weeks off.  This seemed perfect.  I'd be making really good money but still have half the year off to build bikes.  Once we found out the show wasn't coming back I jumped at his offer.  This was late 2019 and I was still living in my shop.  I commuted back and forth for my first few hitches but that was a pain in the balls so I decided to move across the state to Fort Collins so I could be closer to work.  I was thrilled to not be living in my shop.  Don't get me wrong, it was great as far as being able to work all the time and save money but socially...lets just say dating is hard when you try to take a girl back to your garage.  I found a nice little house about 25 minutes from the office with an oversized garage.  It was perfect for what I needed at the time and the owner was kind enough to give me a short term lease as I planned to buy something within the next six months or so.

The day after Christmas I got another call from Josh.  Turns out they were filming the farewell show with Sr and Jr building a bike together and once again they needed help.  Luckily I was on my days off so in less than 24 hours I was back on a plane and in New York. The truth was the film crew was off for the holidays for a week and Sr was down in Florida.  Josh needed someone he could trust to be at the shop on their own for a week and finish up the fab work on this bike.  (Now you understand why I refer to myself as a "fabrication mercenary".  I'll hop on a plane in a moments notice and fly around world to build bikes if the money is right.)  It was actually pretty great.  I had the whole place to myself.  I just showed up and worked.  My last couple days there I started feeling sick.  Like sicker than I've ever been before.  It was miserable but I finished up and headed to the city on New Year's Eve.  I had a flight out of LaGuardia the next morning.  

I was still feeling pretty lousy so while the idea of going out and hitting the town for New Years Eve was appealing I decided to play it safe and just go grab a steak and some drinks in the hotel bar.  I was in a really nice hotel in Astoria, Queens...which is my favorite of the five boroughs.  I was sitting at the bar finishing up a tomahawk ribeye and nursing my sore throat with some Jameson when an extremely attractive black girl came in.  She looked around the half empty bar and took a seat next to me.  She started making small talk and we wound up having a few drinks together and people watching the shit show that is New Years Eve in New York City.  At one point she leans over and tells me she has a bottle of Jameson in her room and asked me if I'd like to come up for a drink.  This is how sick I was...I politely declined, told her it was nice meeting her, and got the fuck out of there back to my room.  To this day I'm convinced she was either a hooker or I was going to wake up in a tub full of ice missing a kidney.  It's the only way I can rationalize my actions.

I caught my flight home and had one day off before my hitch started at work but I just couldn't shake this damn flu.  My whole body hurt, I had a horrible cough, sore throat, shortness of breath, chills, fever, it was miserable.  I went to the doctor and they gave me some steroids for the cough but told me it was just a severe upper respiratory tract infection.  I just had to wait it out.  For the first time in my life I ended up missing three days of work because I was sick.

I struggled through that hitch and started feeling like I was finally coming out of it.  Just in time too...The Progressive IMS Show was in full swing back then and they finally put Denver on the tour.  I entered my brother's bike which I had just finished up and Kyle Shorey came up from Texas with his little Triumph bobber.  We had a hell of a good time all weekend in Denver and both of us wound up winning our divisions.  My win in the Freestyle Class came with a hefty check and an invitation to the National Championship in Chicago the next month.  I ended up coming up short in Chicago taking second place to Jordan Dickinson's amazing knucklehead.  But I wasn't too bent out of shape about it.  Jordan is an stellar craftsman and his bike deserved to win.

While we were in Chicago news started floating around about some crazy Chinese Virus called Coronavirus.  I remember driving home and hearing them talk about the symptoms on the radio.  I'll be damned if they didn't list off every symptom I'd had just a few weeks before.  I never got tested (I've actually NEVER taken a test) but I'm positive that's what I had.  Hell I may have been patient zero.  I could be the one that brought it to Colorado!

By the time I went back to work two weeks later it was like something out of a movie.  They were claiming this virus could wipe out humanity.  Professional sports games were being cancelled, travel bans were put into place, and there was talk about a quarantine.  You couldn't even buy toilet paper.  I finished up my hitch and headed home for my two weeks off.  I had just picked up a little FLH cone shovel and my plan was to just clean it up and flip it for some quick cash.  I was out in the garage changing the fluids in it when my boss called.  Getting a call from the boss on your days off was never a good thing.  We worked 24/7 while we were on hitch so they typically didn't fuck with us when we were off.  He asked me if I'd be available for a conference call that afternoon because they were going to talk to us about restructuring our schedule to cut back on overtime.  Two hours later I got a text saying the call was cancelled.  That's when I knew we were fucked.  Layoffs were coming again.  Sure enough he called back a couple hours later and asked me to bring my truck, computer, and all my shit in the next day.

While I was driving over to the office the next morning I got a call from a friend who's father works for Homeland Security.  She told me that word was coming that a lockdown was going to be put in place and told me to go to the store and stock up for two weeks of being at home.  So I did all the layoff shit with my boss and headed to Costco to load up on supplies.  Like most people I didn't really think too much of it.  I'd lay low for the "two weeks to slow the spread", watch some fucking Tiger King, and be back at work once they lifted the travel ban and oil went back up.  But after two weeks things got weird and it was pretty evident the two weeks was going to be much longer.

I distinctly remember the moment I decided I was never going back to work again.  I got my final check in the mail and noticed that my official layoff date was March 13.  The exact same date I got laid off 4 years earlier.  I decided right there that I was going to make my living doing what I loved...building bikes.  I wasn't going to rely on anyone or anything to make a living.  So instead of just flipping that FLH I tore it down completely to the frame and started a ground up build with it.  I didn't even show it, I got it shot for a magazine, and then I immediately sold it and sunk that money back into my business. 

I hate to say it but I feel like Covid played a huge part in this.  Had I not gotten laid off I'd probably still just be doing it as a hobby.  Even if I was laid off under normal circumstances I would've just found another job.  But getting laid off when literally half the world lost their job in the same week?  And having to seclude myself at home in a town I'd just moved to where I didn't know anyone?  It's what I do best, cut out the world and bury myself in work.  It was the perfect storm...everyone else was secluded at home too.  And luckily for me and guys like me...they were all working on their motorcycles.  I got slammed with business.  Steadily I started getting more and more customer work.  Going from parts to full commissioned builds.  I built my Stained Glass shovelhead and took it to Sturgis where it won Best of Show numerous times and gained the attention of its future owner.  I expanded my parts line and started an E commerce webstore. 

I'm creeping up on 10 years of working for myself in this business.  But I feel like I'm still just getting started.  I know where I want to be and in my mind I'm still so far away from my goals.  I'm grateful for all the customers who are willing to spend their hard earned money on handmade motorcycle parts.  Even if its just a T shirt.  I'm grateful I get to wake up everyday and do the only thing that's ever made me happy.

Sometimes I wonder where I would be if I hadn't stopped at that hotel in St. Louis back in college.  What if I would've driven for another hour?  Would I be some software nerd sitting in a office?  Doubtful.  I believe in my heart this is what God put me here to do.  I think no matter what happens my path always leads back to this.  My whole life revolves around building custom bikes. It’s given me opportunities I otherwise would never have. I’ve filmed multiple TV shows, been featured in magazines, and travelled to every corner of the world because of motorcycles. Most importantly it’s introduced me to some of the greatest friends anyone could ask for. For that I’ll be forever grateful.