MOTORCYCLES: THE POOR MAN’S SUPERCAR & THE MOST HONEST MACHINE EVER BUILT

MOTORCYCLES: THE POOR MAN’S SUPERCAR & THE MOST HONEST MACHINE EVER BUILT

Why Old Bikes Still Matter, Why New Bikes Still Inspire, and Why Motorcycles Will Always Be the Truest Form of Freedom

I didn’t fall in love with motorcycles because I saw a cool commercial.

I fell in love with them because I needed an escape.

A real one.

When I was young, cars were dreams — Ferraris, Corvettes, Mustangs — beautiful, powerful things I saw pictures of but could never touch. They were like trophies you had to be born into wealth to even get close to.

Motorcycles were different.

Motorcycles were possible.

They were the first machines I ever looked at and thought,

“I could actually own one of those.”

And once that idea got into my head… that was it.

I bought my first motorcycle the same way I bought everything back then — by earning it the hard way. I didn’t have much, but I had determination, stubbornness, and the willingness to push a mower and carry a weed eater across entire neighborhoods just to buy the things my soul connected with.

That first bike wasn’t glamorous.

It wasn’t fast.

It wasn’t famous.

But when I rode it, something inside me switched on.

Freedom has a sound.

And that engine was the first time I heard it.

THE FIRST LESSON: A MOTORCYCLE DOESN’T LET YOU LIE TO YOURSELF

The first thing you learn on a bike is that everything you do matters.

How you breathe.

How you focus.

How you lean.

How you brake.

How you think.

How much you respect the moment you’re in.

A motorcycle doesn’t let you drift into autopilot the way a car does.

It doesn’t let you pick up your phone.

It doesn’t let you hide behind a steel box.

It doesn’t let you daydream your way through life.

A motorcycle will wake you up.

Whether you’re ready for it or not.

When you’re riding, it’s just:

you, the machine, the road, and whatever honesty you’re willing to bring.

That honesty shaped me more than anything else.

THE ERA OF OLD BIKES — WHEN MACHINES WERE SIMPLE AND MEN WERE MECHANICS

I rode a lot of vintage and older motorcycles early in life — and to this day, those machines still mean the most to me.

There’s a kind of purity to old motorcycles you don’t find anywhere else:

• Carburetors you can rebuild with your hands

• Engines that talk to you

• Frames that vibrate with personality

• No computers, no sensors, no electronic tantrums

• Just steel, gas, spark, and willpower

A vintage Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki… man, those bikes will teach you everything.

They break just enough to make you competent.

They run just enough to make you loyal.

They reward you just enough to make you love them.

I could diagnose an old bike with my ears.

With my fingertips on the valve cover.

With how the throttle felt under load.

With how the exhaust sounded when it wasn’t happy.

Old motorcycles make you a mechanic whether you want to be or not.

And that’s why they’re perfect for survival.

Not because they’re durable — because they’re knowable.

You can understand them.

You can fix them.

You can keep them alive.

And when the world gets complicated, simple machines become priceless.

THE ERA OF PERFORMANCE — WHEN MOTORCYCLES TAUGHT ME SPEED, RISK, AND PRECISION

Eventually, my life turned into speed.

Fast machines.

Legitimate race bikes.

Aprilia RS250 two-strokes.

Ducati superbikes.

Yamaha R6s with engines that scream like they’re alive.

I spent years immersed in this world:

• wrenching

• tuning

• racing

• rebuilding

• perfecting

• customizing

• learning through pain, failure, and tiny wins

At Rever Corsa, I built motorcycles people couldn’t buy from the factory — machines so refined, so dialed, so powerful that they were basically the motorcycle version of a scalpel.

Those bikes weren’t tools.

They were living things.

And they demanded respect.

Racing them…

Riding them…

Those years taught me something no philosophy book ever could:

Skill is freedom.

Not speed.

Not horsepower.

Not bragging rights.

Skill.

The ability to control a machine…

to feel its traction through your boots…

to sense the road through your body…

to predict what the tires are about to do…

to stay calm at the edge of physics…

Those skills carried into every part of my life.

And they saved me more times than I can count.

THE ERA OF REBUILDING — WHEN A MOTORCYCLE WASN’T A TOY, BUT A LIFELINE

When everything fell apart — the shop, the business, the relationship, the house, the empire I built — motorcycles weren’t a hobby anymore.

They were a reminder.

A reminder that I had survived before.

A reminder that I had rebuilt machines more broken than myself.

A reminder that motion heals what stillness suffocates.

A reminder that simple things can carry you through complicated times.

I didn’t have to ride far.

I didn’t have to ride fast.

Sometimes I just sat next to the bike and listened to the engine ticking as it cooled, the way metal settles after being pushed.

It felt like breathing.

It felt like something honest when my life was full of lies.

It felt like truth.

That’s what motorcycles have always been for me — not excitement, not danger, not rebellion…

Motorcycles are truth.

The kind only movement can give you.

MODERN MOTORCYCLES — COMPLICATED, YES, BUT CAPABLE BEYOND BELIEF

Today’s motorcycles are incredible — almost supernatural in their engineering.

Traction control.

ABS.

Ride modes.

Perfect fueling.

Crazy reliability.

Suspension that chairs could envy.

Handling that seems to cheat physics.

A modern bike will take you across states, mountains, deserts, and forests with such confidence that you forget how far you’ve gone.

They’re complicated — absolutely.

They’re harder to work on — without question.

But they’re also the most capable motorcycles ever built.

And still?

They’re affordable.

A used modern adventure bike or naked bike costs a fraction of a car.

And it will outperform nearly everything on the road.

This is the miracle of motorcycles:

They scale with your life.

Old or new, cheap or expensive — they always give you more than you paid for.

WHY MOTORCYCLES ARE THE SOUL OF THE UNENCUMBERED LIFE

Because the unencumbered life is about dropping the weight you don’t need.

A motorcycle forces that.

You only bring what matters.

You only take what fits.

You only keep what you can strap down.

You only move with what you can control.

Motorcycles are:

• freedom

• mobility

• skill

• simplicity

• challenge

• capability

• humility

• honesty

• survival

• joy

And that’s why they fit so perfectly in this philosophy.

A motorcycle doesn’t make you free —

it reveals whether you already are.

Old motorcycles teach patience.

New motorcycles teach capability.

Both teach awareness.

Both teach presence.

Both teach survival.

Both teach you how to live in a world that is constantly trying to make you numb.

Motorcycles aren’t just part of my story.

They are a chapter of Unencumbered.

And anyone who learns to ride — really ride — will understand exactly why.