Hello and welcome to my column and to the first edition of Bike Nation Magazine.The name GeeDad that’s short for granddad. I was given that name by probably the only people on the planet entitled to and game enough to call me that. None other than my four beautiful grandchildren.
That’s right I’m a granddad and very proud of that and being a biker too and all at only 53 years young.
I meet the guys from BN at the opening of a bike shop in Dubai. We got talking about motorcycles and this great idea they had about the first ever Middle East biker lifestyle magazine. This was something I thought was sadly lacking in this part of the world and I was immediately impressed.
But like a lot of things you hear. I just thought it might have been someone’s false hopes or tall tales by some guys out to impress me. It didn’t take long to realize these guys were the real deal and they weren’t telling tall stories.
A significant amount of work had been already done getting their dream off the ground. So we shared a few ideas or as they say in some circles “chewed the fat “about what makes a good biker magazine. The BN crew managed to even get a few of their own ideas in to the conversation, as its been rumoured I can talk under water with a mouth full of marbles.
Anyway I was telling the guys about how I been riding bikes on the road for 35 years and been around the motorcycle scene worldwide for nearly as long. Included in my history I had managed to squeeze in riding around 38 different countries on lots of different breeds of motorcycles. Starting out back in early 1981 on Japanese multi cylinder super bikes, then onto the not so reliable Italian twins and American V-Twins, to eventually get my first brand new Harley in 1992.
In fact I’d ridden just about everything and every chance I could, both on the dirt and the bitumen, fast or slow and everywhere in between. Once the guys at BN found that out they started asking me about my adventures and asking me questions. And yeah I had a few tales from the road to tell and they asked if I could tell them.
One thing they didn’t know was in amongst all of those years riding and living the biker life I had also written a few motorcycling stories for some other biker magazines. So one thing led to another and there were inducements and bribes offered and eventually, I just suggested, “why don’t I just write them down?”
So now its official, I’m a contributor for BN and very excited about that and to be apart of the ride we are all going to take getting this publication out to you all.
