Dan the man

October 13th, 2023

What details of your life could you pay more attention to?

People often ask if you can go back and change parts of your life where would you go? For me the answer is always the beginning. I loved my parents they lIke many were a product of the times, my dad was always working, after his day job he would come home for dinner and leave for his night job he was the bread winner, provider. Mom was a stay at home mom, they had four boys so I imagine her job was far more difficult than dads.
The trip to my brothers house was awesome even with breaking down. It gave me a glimpse of a bigger world, a world I never knew, that stirred a feeling in me I grew to despise a feeling of imprisonment. I had allowed myself get very comfortable in my own world and realized there was no way I’m going to grow into the person I want to be if I stayed, but change is scary, and I was starting a family although my wife wouldn’t get pregnant for another two years it was what she wanted, me, I didn’t know what I wanted. After an awesome three day weekend we made it back home with zero incidents and Tuesday morning arrived with a touch of sadness as I saw how my mornings will be for the rest of my life, I was drowning in my own life with no one to save me.

September 14th, 2023

I think at that point in my life I wanted more for myself, but I was giving more of myself to others and that is a great way to waste your life. I was doing what I believe was expected of me, but I was always dreaming of being somewhere else. The memories were much more enjoyable than the present, in the shittiest of times I could smile because I was feeling the last ride I was on. The wind blowing through my soul as the sun warmed my face, the bike purring like a kitten and running flawlessly me knowing it was because of me and my talents.
I was a fat child, it was around middle school that I realized and started to realize it. I wasn’t very athletic just squeaking by in gym class, I was terrible at baseball, football and the like. My mother had to by me “husky” sized clothes, but I mostly got hand me downs from my two older brothers. We moved from our quaint cape cod style home to a bigger colonial house across town, I was thirteen years old and loved the life I was living. I had a great group of friends and spent a great deal of time with them, but we moved and I lost all of them. We moved closer to the city, a bigger and busier area with a more diverse population. That was the first time I saw a black person, at the new school there were kids from many different cultures, I learned early on to just keep your head down and mind your own business, much like prison. I would spend the next six years like that, not being able to fit in anywhere, I did find comfort in the arts drawing, painting, music and the like. Anything that I was able to do alone I would do. I lived in my own world and didn’t let very many people in, oh, I tried many times, but the people who called me a friend hurt me the most and I wasn’t prepared to deal with that and neither were my parents. I took quite a few years after school to begin to fit into my new neighborhood. My first job was at a gas station that was right down the street, close enough to walk every day. I was sixteen and struggling to find myself, the people I met working there helped shape my life.

September 7th, 2023

That simple walk every morning would help create a desire in me to kick my own fat ass and do something about my physical condition. I’ve seen and older gentleman running on my walks home from work, he ran in the street instead of the sidewalk. I wondered why (having never ran a step in my life) he did. One afternoon he was stopped on a corner waiting for traffic to pass and I asked him “why” he told me the asphalt was softer that the concrete sidewalk. That afternoon I put on my converse sneakers and began running at first not very far, but I was determined to lose weight be skinny so I kept at it everyday. I then had to starve myself, there is no faster way to lose weight than running and no eating, of course it’s unhealthy as all hell as I quickly found out. There were a lot on days of light headedness dizziness and cramps. It took less than a year mostly from spring into late fall, but I went from 205lbs to 160lbs. I read up on diet and nutrition and soon realized how much I was harming myself so I began eating clean and taking supplements that was at eighteen years old, 1978.
September 1st, 2023

We sat on the side of the road watching the cars go by soaking up the sun and planning my next move. It was a beautiful July day perfect really, bright sunshine the only breeze was from the passing traffic which wasn’t enough to stop the sweat that was already running down my face. The fact that O was wearing full leathers wasn’t helping plus the anxiety of not knowing where we we’re was not helping. I decided to push my bike to the next exit which didn’t look far but after a few minutes felt like miles away. Thank GOD I put on my leather saddlebags because by the time we reached the exit ramp I was stripped down to just my jeans and boots. There was a gas station up the road off the exit and like a mirage there was a Harley parked there. I belong to one of the guys working there, turned out there was a Harley dealership up the road a he went and got a new chain for my bike. He let me us some tools and after a couple of hours we were back in the saddle and heading to my brothers. It took a little more than an hour to find his place, he lived in a servents house on an estate property he must have heard me coming because as we rounded the corner he was standing on the street and guided me into the driveway which was loose pebble and caught me off guard and I nearly dropped my bike on its side.
I spent my first summer with my panhead riding throughout the state, building the bike myself I was constantly listening to it feeling it pushing it as much as I dared and after months of riding it felt confident that I could depend on it. My first interstate ride was to my brothers house on the south shore of Boston, a mere two and a half hour ride. My wife at the time and I left late morning on a Friday, the weather was perfect the sun warming my soul as we rode. The bike was performing perfectly as we cruised along, we were about thirty minutes away and out of nowhere the bike started coasting, I cranked the throttle the motor was running, but we were not moving so I rolled to the side of the road shut the bike down and walked around it two, three, four times before I noticed the rear chain was gone.

August 29th, 2023
August 27th, 2023

I have always been drawn to water, the mystics say it’s because I’m a water sign, Pieces twin fish. Astrology has always fascinated me much like religion and I respect both aspects but don’t hate me because I don’t practice. I prefer to keep my feet in both realms. Self empowerment and blind faith life comfortably in me. I thank GOD when things I cannot control work in my favor and I pat myself on the back when things work out the way I planned. Or like when my guardian angels watch over me and make sure I don’t kill myself doing something stupid. There were a few close calls in my life and a few over sights, more than once I would run out of gas in my van as I was pulling into a gas station, or a stranger helped jumpstart my van when the battery died. That’s why even in today’s world I’ll stop and ask if someone needs help. Traveling allows you to meet different people, expand our own world. I built my first Harley when I was in my twenties, it took fourteen months and less than two grand. I had been hanging around two local motorcycle shops for quite a few years and figured it was time for me to put everything I learned to the test. I did well.
My parents had four boys, we grew up in suburban Ct. near a lake the was our social hub, every kid in the neighborhood was there at anytime after school. It’s where we learned about life, mostly social life. We all had bikes and as we grew older mini bikes and go carts. My dad bought an old Yamaha for my brothers and I to ride and we shared and maintained it pretty well. Mostly my two older brothers used it and took care of it. I was maybe nine or ten and one of the dads down the street had an Harley Electric Glide, a beautiful bike. One Saturday he was coming up the street towards his house I was walking towards him he stopped and said “ hop on “ we road around for awhile and that was it, I was hooked. I was twenty one when I bought my first bike, a 1969 BSA lighting. I knew very little about it and this was long before Google and the internet. We asked people went to the library and got how to books and just did it. There was a lot of trial and error and if you learned you were confident enough to trust your work. There were a few times I got stuck on the side of the road, but some one was always willing to help. I rode that bike for five years two of which I did in the winter.

August 27th, 2023
My parents have four boys I’m three out of four the last is six years younger than me, there is a two year gap between my two older brothers and myself. We grew up in suburban Ct. we lived near a lake with a lot of woods and trails, all the kids in the neighborhood hung out there, playing hide and seek fishing we all learned how to swim in that lake, building fires to cook the fish we caught. Ice skating during the winter months thru all of our childhood all of our parents were nowhere near us. We were pre-teens with an abundance of imagination and completely self sufficient, truly the best of times. As we were entering our teens and our bodies were changing along with our chemistry the girls who were our friends, pals, BFFs suddenly became attractive in a I want to bang you kind of way. No one in my family ever had “the talk” and it wasn’t taught in schools yet. We had home economics and that was as close as we would get to sex education. Basically I learned about sex on the streets where no one was telling the truth the girls were still virgins and the boys were man whores. I was 21 before I even got an opportunity, at 18 I went from an overweight high school kid to a much leaner smarter young adult. I was so sick of how I looked and felt I made up my mind to do something about it. Exercise and physical fitness was just becoming a thing in the country and society, but I knew very little but I was determined to shed all this fat and be skinny. The first thing was controlling my diet which really wasn’t that hard at that age, the next was activity I started running mostly because I used to see an older man running by our house. Progress was quick within weeks I was dropping weight, that summer I went from 205lbs to 155lbs and felt like a new person. That winter I took up karate, because I was never really a team player karate was perfect it’s me against myself and if I wanted to be better I was the only one to make that happen. It was the 80s and Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris were the two guys making martial arts awesome. For years myself and some friends fought at an entry level just under amateur level. Many nights after the gym I was going home with 2 black eyes and some bruises only to have to listen to my mother lecture me.

August 27th, 2023
August 19th, 2023

At sixteen I got a paying job and a driver license. I would describe myself as responsibly irresponsible, I was still in high school and worked at night and drove around on the weekends. That was my life and I wasn’t alone, all the guys were doing it , it was the seventy’s an amazing time to be a teenager and the world was huge and me and the boys spent every weekend exploring it. It mainly involved driving to another state hitting the beaches if they had any or hiking in the mountains, we either camped or slept it the car. There were a few occasions where we ended up near friend of friends or a cousin that would put us up for the night. I had family from New York to Canada all throughout New England, turned out that was my world and I was pretty darn happy just exploring it. So I never made it any farther west than Buffalo and never farther south than Pennsylvania. So my big plans to see the world got put on the back burner as I continued to live life, not necessarily my own life, but a life I believed people wanted me to live. That my friends made for the worst possible life for me.
August 17th, 2023

I was never much of a traveler, when I was a kid my parents would stay home during the summer when my brothers and I were vacation from school. Mom didn’t work and Dad was always working, we lived in the suburbs near a lake so everything we wanted to do on vacation we could just walk to the lake and do it, swimming, fishing, boating or just hiking through the woods that surrounded the lake it was all there for us. Growing up in the sixties and seventies I feel I had an amazing childhood, lots of freedom to stretch our imaginations and build lifelong friendships. The neighborhood policed itself and always felt safe. As I was entering my teens my parents rented a cottage near the ocean which felt like we we’re going to another state, but in reality was about a forty five minute drive. Once we arrived it was like a neighborhood reunion as nearly everyone on our street rented cottages there in the summer. The only difference was the smell of the ocean was always present. The moms would congregate in one of the cottages planning the meals, the activities and what to do with the kids and husbands. As a pre-teen struggling to find my way and fairly overweight the last place I wanted to be was the beach… in a bathing suit that my mom picked out.