Where it started
My Grandfather who created a car called the Fordillac in the 1950's. Simple by today’s standards he stuffed a 1950 Ford with a big Cadillac motor. He was an engine builder and spent plenty of time in the hop up engine building field and could always be seen at the Indy 500. The top two pictures on the right were photographed at Indy in the mid 50's. You can see the original Pagoda scoring tower (this was re-created last year for the Indy GP race) that’s him in his Fordillac.
Of course he passed speedmadness bug to my father, who in turn passed it on to my brother Mark and I.
At age 6 I started karting. We had a twin Mac 9 race kart that was awesomely fast and after a few crashes dad decided maybe motorcycles would be better ... um less dangerous?
He bought a Bronco (Italian!); I believe 60cc, next a Bridgestone 100, a few Bultaco's, Yamaha's and Husqvarna's.
During Jr. High and High school my brother and I worked in a few different motorcycle shops. During that time I had a chance to attend quite a few AMA Inter AM and Trans AM races and after seeing a rider from Michigan, Mike Hartwig I decided that I wanted to race!
I Joined the Army in 1975 and worked as a helicopter mechanic for 3 years. During that time I won every race held by the then ARMY racing organization at Ft Lewis Washington and quite a few AMA races in Washington State before coming back to Michigan. CLICK HERE to read more on my adventures in the Army .
Prior to getting out of the service I married my first wife. I was 20 years old and I think she was 18 or 19. Not a well thought out idea (more on that later). We decided to move back to Michigan once my military service was completed.
My first job out of the military was as a Mig and Tig welder. I lucked out and worked for a guy who taught me a ton about the art of welding and fabrication, and still dabble in it today.
In 1979 I went to work for my sponsor Dynamic Cycle in Troy Michigan which at the time was a Yamaha factory support shop owned by Mike Connors.
I was dealt a huge blow to my dirt bike career when I landed off a jump on to a rider who changed his line at the last minute. End result, another rider hit me directly in the back at high speed, breaking my back and I think it was 7 or 8 ribs. After years of on and off back pain I saw a doctor in 1987 where he determined that the fractures to my back and ribs had not healed and that the constant back pain would be life long. It has been a nagging reminder as I get older. Although I won the District 14 championship in 1979, I went into semi retirement from dirt biking.
My brother Mark and I had both won many races around the country and quite a few championships during the Michigan Mafia heyday. We both competed in the National Hare Scrambles Championship as well. In 1979 I finished 2nd in the first ever National Hare Scrambles championship. Mark won the 1982 AMA National Hare Scrambles championship, one upping me.
Around 1981 I joined my father in the car radio field. Specifically we worked in the Classic Car industry. I spent a few years learning electronics and old cars (his hobby that he had now turned into a business). In the end I guess I was a part of the company on and off for about 15 years. During that time we designed some way radical audio gear for classic cars before my dad passed away in 1998. For sure we would have been the monster garage of collector car audio if I had kept the company alive. CLICK HERE to view more on my time with the Classic Car Radio Company.
In 1983 my now ex wife (divorced in 1985) convinced me to move back to Seattle. That became a blessing and a curse. My marriage fell apart and I went through some down moments. I'm pretty sure that she hated sportbikes, and I learned how much she enjoyed bars & booze. The last year with her was the train ride from hell, full of pain, lies, deception and wasted words that lead nowhere. The end was a relief for both of us.
At that point our split was just what I needed to regain control of my life and within a year I was back on track and began heading in the right direction.
Despite the pain of my divorce, the move to Seattle was time well spent. I spent 7 years living there (1982-1988). During that time I worked for Jim Boltz and the Lynnwood Cycle Barn where I developed a pretty decent sportbike market for his company. I started riding sportbikes in 1984 on a Honda VF500 Interceptor. I worked with a lot of factory reps during that time to build what was then the biggest sportbike store in the northwest. I'm told that I sold more Metzeler tires than any dealer in the western region during that time. (Metzeler ME99's and ME 33 Lasers.... wow, we've come a long ways since then!) CLICK HERE to read more on my adventures at the Barn.
As much as I loved the Cycle Barn and the people there, the pay as a parts guy did not satisfy my spending habits. Thus, I accepted an offer to work for Magnolia Hi-Fi, (at the time a massive audio/video dealer in the Seattle area. (Now owned by Best Buy). I did a ton of home theaters, a lot of troubleshooting and further learning of the electronics business. CLICK HERE to view my Magnolia Hi Fi adventure.
During that time, with my friend Toren Younquist we rode just about every twisty road in Washington State and California as well, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Northwest Canada. Lots of memories of some awesome pavement and some incredible scenery!
By 1988 I had grown a little bored with the home theater business, living in rainy Washington and with few ties to the Seattle area I decided to head back to Michigan to run The Classic Car Radio Company with my father again. Little did I know that the real blessing to my move to Seattle and my subsequent divorce would begin to play out at this point in my life.
I August 1988 I ended my life in Washington, jumped on my Honda VFR-750 with three thousand cash in my pocket and rode from Seattle to Detroit, with a few detours along the way. Glacier National Park was the big stand out of the ride. I rode thru 2 feet of snow in August on the Going to the Sun Hwy and ya it was a tedious ride. My dirt bike years got me through the slick and sometime scary road conditions, after which I wandered up to Baniff and hit every winding twisting back road I could find on a north eastern route back to Michigan. Got stopped once for 125 mph in a 55 mph zone in Montana, but the cop was cool and I believe it was a $15.00 ticket for energy speed.
When I finally hit Wisconsin I encountered the most insane rain/hail/wind storm I have ever ridden in. After 3 or 4 hours I finally threw in the towel and pulled off at Wisconsin Dells to find a room and a place to dry off a bit.
I found riding by myself to be the ultimate way to leave the past behind me and it gave me a lot of time to think and ponder the future. Riding a sportbike across country was not all that you'd think and uncomfortable at best. The trip took me 5 days and was roughly 3500 some odd miles. But I have to say that I enjoyed every minute of the journey.
Returning home I found a new challenge and that was to learn as much about electronics, computer assembly and programming, designing high end car audio systems and running the company. It was also good to re-unite with my family and old friends and to start my now crazy tatoo collection.!
I was however thrown into the fire when I got back to Michigan. I think I learned more in 3 years than most guys do in their entire lives about running a company from top to bottom.
I quickly learned that running a business with a lot of employees is not as much fun as one would think. But you learn to understand people and how different we are as individuals.
Thanks to my work with Jim Boltz and the Cycle Barn and Len Tweeten and everyone at Magnolia Hi Fi I really felt ready for this challenge. I can't say enough about these two individuals whom I feel are two of the finest businessmen that I have ever met. Their will to succeed and the way they treated their employees should be the standard by which all companies are operated. I learned a ton from these two companies.
During that time and starting with absolutely no computer knowledge at all, I computerized the The Classic Car Radio company. This was the beginning of computerization throughout the world and it was an ongoing learning process for me, at process that continues to this day.
I taught myself how to build computers, learned DOS, OS2 and Windows. I then began coding a database for the company. Writing code was a whole new learning process for me and was something I found a deep interest in. I really learned a lot about Microsoft products (the good and the really bad sides). At the same time I was designing state of the art audio equipment that no other company offered for the collector car industry, which we sold worldwide. I see now some ten years after we shut down CCR that the industry finally has a radio that is a close copy to what we offered, yet still not as complete in functionality as what we designed, assembeled and sold.
I also started a computer consulting company "Infinity Technologies" in tandem with Classic Car and suddenly was dealing with a lot more employees, a second building and about 20 outside companies. I was enjoying myself but there were loads of headaches.
During that time I bought, restored and sold a few homes which gave me a nice chunk of change for the future.
In May of 1998 I met and married my wife Karoline. The second blessing in my life. She is an incredible person who teaches me something new everyday and has given me more than I could have ever dreamed possible in terms of financial security. By the time I met her she had achieved her Masters Degree in Finance and had traveled around the world. Her vast knowledge of finance has made it possible for me to live a life far beyond my expectations. My goal had been to retire at 55, she sped the process up a few years and she made my dream a reality at 48.
The key to our relationship is that we live by 100% commitment to each other. We are achievers and together we share a lot of ideas and goals. She is not afraid to speak up when things aren't going as well and she doesn't hide behind her parents ideology.. She is a very strong, very brilliant woman. She really helped me set a standard for my life that continues to profit for me to this day.
In the spring of 1998 my father was diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer. His struggle to fight the beast was short and within 6 months he was no longer up to the battle. It was a time of great sadness for my mother and I. He passed away with little fanfare (considering his contribution to the Classic Car market) and during that battle. During those six months I struggled with the reality of losing my dad and finally decided that the business could not go on without my father who inspired me to create and to deal with the day to day insanity that is a small business. I closed Infinity Technologies and Classic Car Radio which led me to my next job as a Network Administrator, web designer and computer consultant for which I worked until I went into semi retirement in May of 2006.
This website "speedmadness.com" came to life sometime around 1995 or 96. I originally spent a lot of time on the EXUP forum when I owned my 1994 Yamaha YZF-750 and made many friends there. So many people liked the work that I had done to the YZF, and I was getting so many questions about the bike that I delved in to HTML coding and set off to design my own purpose built website that revolved around the bikes. Speedmadness for many years was more of a "how to" for sportbikes that featured hundreds of photos and instructions on how I built, bought or installed aftermarket products on my sportbikes. The site has changed and most of the tech articles I have written on my bikes no longer included in the site as you see it today. Since most of the bikes are now dated I have simply built pages with a photo history of the bikes. See the "My Toys" link
As the site grew I added areas that covered my trips to the West coast and Deals Gap (see the "Riding" link) as well as Daytona and Laguna Seca for those who had never seen these awesome roads and sites and races.
From 1997 through 2002 I made close to 20 trips to the Tennessee/Georgia area (Deals Gap) riding a great majority of the twisty roads that area has to offer. From 1989 through 1994 I continued to travel to Seattle and to Laguna to ride my FZR 1000 with Toren. Check out the RIDING link for more on these trips.
I worked the Daytona 200 for the folks at Pirelli/Metzeler in 1996 which was a monsoon year there. I spent 5 weeks working the FUSA and AMA races, and yes, it was a lot of work in less than perfect conditions. Over the years I have been to at least 15 or 20 AMA and World Superbike events at Laguna Seca, hundreds of AMA National motocross and Supercross, Flat track and Supermoto events. Of course I still love dirt bike racing! and Supermoto is friggin AWESOME. CLICK HERE to view our photography from the 2006 AMA Detroit Supermoto or the 2007 AMA Detroit Supermoto. And this year (2008) Karoline and I made it to the inaugural Indianapolis Moto GP as well as the utlra famous Indy Mile.
During 2000/2001 Speedmadness was getting around 2000 hits a week and it was the information that I provided on the bikes that I was building that led sportbike riders worldwide to the speedmadness website. Back then, there simply was not a lot of information that was easily accessible and I was trying to make that possible.
CLICK HERE to see what other riders who have used this website in the past had to say about my work and the website.
Around 2001 I started spending more time on the race track than I did on the street. The Speedmadness site took a short hiatus around 2002 as I began concentrating my work with STT and their trackday company. Karoline and I had spent a fair amount of time working with STT in helping them build their business before moving on and starting our own trackday company, Trackoholics which successfully ran limited rider cost effective trackday events from 2002 through 2005.
Click Here to view the retired Trackoholics website. There are a slew of cool track reports and pictures as I have left the site up exactly the same as the day we shut everything down.
During that time we formed a small Midwest race team "Trackoholics Racing" which competed in AMA and WERA regional and National road racing.
Nathan Dressman, Randy Sherman, Rick Knuckles, Jonas McCluskey, Bojan Miljkovic, Dave Thiel, are riders who won a few WERA regional and National road races and championships between them while riding for Karoline and me.
During the Trackoholics era I was interviewed on Open Road Radio mainly due to the fact that we ran a no crash policy at our trackday events. However the interview was set up after a high speed sportbike chase in Chicago and why trackdays could help to stop those kinds of events where sportbikes were involved. CLICK HERE for more on this interview..
I began attending the INDY Dealer show in 2002. This is the biggest event in the USA for vendors showing off their new products and it is a must see show! A very cool show, with a lot of very cool stuff. CLICK HERE to view photos from these shows.
In addition to Trackoholics and Trackoholics Racing in January 2005 I began helping a group in California to build a new trackday company Take it 2 the Track.
By the end of 2005 the amount of work I had going on, all of the travel and my full time job began to take it's toll on me and I decided that it was time to shut down Trackoholics and the race team operations.
I continued to work with TI2TT until May of 2006 when I decided to take a complete break from the motorcycle business. I decided to leave my full time job and I headed into semi retirement. Again thanks to Karoline I was able to do this so early in my life.
Although I do not have children, I have had an awesome time throughout the years working with some incredibly talented kids like Tim Bulger whom I hired when he was an 18 to work for Infinity Technologies. Tim is now a Senior Network Architect at R. L. Polk and Company and may be the smartest guy I have ever met. Another was Joe Cilluffo whom worked for me as an electronics tech at Classic Car and has gone onto work with BMW and Alpine Electronics in GPS development and runs his own classic car radio repair sevice on the side. Just to name a couple, there were so many more who I am very proud of.
I'd be remiss if I did not mention all of the kids and adults that I have worked with in motorcycle roadracing and those who worked as instructors with our track company. These were my kids at one point or another in my life and I am proud of what they achieved and I enjoyed mentoring them at one point in their lives.
Through the years I have worked with many sponsors/partners for my own businesses, my racing career, as well as helping racers secure outside sponsorship. There is a laundry list of great people who have helped me and I have to say thanks to all of them for helping. A massive thank you goes out to my parents who have supported me throughout my life.
I have finally become bored with retirement (as in I needed to find something challenging to do until my wife retires) and have gone back to school to complete my A+, S5, Network+, MCP, MCDST, SCA, CCNA and CCNP certifications as well as taking a bunch of art and web related classes. I am also working to bring a major motorsports park to the midwest. Something we hope to have formal plans together by the end of 2008. This is currently a work in progress. In the mean time I continue to do some computer consulting work for a handful of companies. See my portfolio
I hope that everyone who wanders through my site finds something that helps them enjoy the sport of motorcycling, motorsports and extreme living as much as I have. And of course if you have a question, by all means drop me an email.
