Childhood dreams can change like the direction of a Midwest breeze, floating from professional athlete to rock star to famous actor. In my early years, "Dirt Bike Racer" was all mine, a consistent yet odd dream for someone who had never seen a motorcycle race. I had no dad, brother, uncle or friend who raced. I didn't even own a dirt bike, for my father was a grain farmer in the 1980s. We survived on fish sticks, mom's haircuts, and dad's ability to fix just about anything. I was aware enough to understand fancy dirt bikes were out of reach, but I didn't realize we were poor until I enrolled in college and received more student aid than I had bills to pay. Racing would have to wait.
Still, I had dreams, mostly fueled by motorcycle magazines. On the rare occasion my family traveled to a shopping mall, I bolted for the book store magazine rack. I bought as many dirt bike publications as my hard earned allowance could afford. Every page was scoured, memorized, read and reread. I snuck them into my school book bag and pulled them out when the teacher's eyes were elsewhere. The dream stayed alive in those pages.
My first motorcycle came in 1983. It wasn't a real dirt bike, but I didn't care. I had a motorcycle. I could explore every inch of our 400 acre backyard with a twist of the throttle. Magazines were still important, though. We had no cable TV and the world wide web was a decade in the future. My sole source of motorcycle information was written on paper. I would eventually subscribe to the magazines and collect articles I thought would be useful in the future...when I was a racer.
That day came in June 1994. I'd graduated from college a year earlier and saved my meager earnings as a banking analyst. I bought a new Suzuki RMX250. One of my dad's farms, with its sparse woods in the flatlands of East Central Illinois, served as my training ground. I wasn't good. Magazines show what racing should look like, but the feel of it is personal. After my first race in 1994, that feeling was like a personal ring of torture. Racing was difficult.
I would get better. I would see and think differently. I would meet interesting people. And I would start writing. These are the pages of the best days. I remember them all.
