Hard Ride, a Motorcycle Pilgrimage

It all started with my first motorcycle, this 1971 Honda CB 100, which I bought when I was 16. I chopped the rear fender to fit a universal tire and had many years of fun on the trails.

My first street bike was a 1970 Triumph Tiger 650 which I bought in 1982. My room-mate ‘Ace’ ( and best friend to this day) also bought a Triumph and we rode them everywhere. We also worked on our bikes a lot and we tore Ace’s Bonneville down to the last nut and bolt in our apartment and restored the whole thing over the winter.

In 1984 I moved up to my first Harley, a 1980 1000 Sportster. My brothers Derrick and Doc also bought Harleys and we attended the Canadian Harley Rendezvous in St. Thomas, Ontario that year. That was my first real introduction to the biker lifestyle.


In the late 1980′s I sold the Sportster to my brother and bought another Triumph Tiger 650. This one was also a 1970. I cleaned it up and had it repainted and decided that motorcycles were to be a bigger part of my life. That’s when I began to take a motorcycle mechanics course and opened my own shop, Riverside Cycle, in 1987. During those years I had many street and off-road bikes to play on and had collected quite a variety of British bikes and parts.
I still have this bike.

Riverside Cycle, 1989

When I blew a cylinder on the Triumph in the early 1990′s, I parked it and a few years later picked up this 1972 Honda 750-Four, but I was already into a few years of PSA and found I couldn’t ride much due to the pain in my hips and back. Landon now owns this old gem and actually had it running recently.

After quite a few years of no riding due to being ill, I bought this 1997 Suzuki Marauder 800. It was just a bit of a test to see if I could manage to ride again and I was happy that this was a comfortable little bike and I kept it for a few years gradually increasing the amount of distance and time I spent riding it.

My current bike, purchased in 2010, is a 2006 Harley-Davidson FLHTPI Police. I rode 15,000 miles on it the very first year i owned it, including the Hard Ride trip to Key West, which was the inspiration for this blog.