The Rides:

Click any of the images of a vehicle to the right for an in-depth look, background, and future plans of each of our rides that we currently own...

Below are rides I have sold and no longer own.

A picture of me is to the right. Also pictured is my wife, Melissa. We were enjoying an evening at Beaver Springs Dragway.

A bit about my

car & cycle hobby:

I became interested in motorcycles at a young age while cars came later. How did it start? LONG ago, I went to a birthday party for Mike Potts when we were just kids. He got himself a Honda 50 motorcycle for his birthday and I just thought I had to have one. My parents didn't go for it though. I had to pedal my bikes.

(Actually, I caught him half asleep. I think he said yes just to get rid of me!) It was 1978, we lived close to Zechman's motorcycle shop, and spent many Sunday afternoons pedaling down to gawk through the window. I knew what I wanted.

This is the period of time that Dave Lehr, another garage club member, had been working at my Dad's garage. He was always into dirt bikes. He taught me how to ride much better than I was doing by taking us out on Sundays to a place called "Westwood", a coal mountain. This was motorcycle heaven at the time. An entire mountain of coal to spend the entire day trying to climb. "Westwood" is no longer there as it was used to fuel a power plant the last few years. There is an ashbank there now, but not to the extent of size we saw.

The beginning of The car phase:

One day at work, my Dad came out to the shop where I was doing something or other. I used to clean tools, sweep school busses, and pump gas for money. He asked me if I was interested in buying a car. I said, "sure", and wondered what he was talking about. Well, he took me out on the lot and there was a guy with this brown car he was selling. Dad hopped in and said we wanted to go for a ride. Off we go.

I thought it was the coolest. It had a 4 speed transmission that threw you back when Dad slapped the gears. It had a four barrel carb that growled when he put his foot to the floor. It had cool wheels instead of hub caps. I loved it and said I wanted the car. It was so much cooler than the station wagons I was being driven around in by my parents. I bought my 1971 Olds Cutlass S at 13, almost 14, years old, and, wow, it was cool!

I drove the Olds every day to school and everywhere else. It was my driver. We went to Maple Grove for "Cruise Night" several times, pictured below, and lots of cruises and car shows. After a couple close calls in the snow, I came to realize that I should probably buy a beater and garage the car in bad weather. I bought an Old 1974 Ford F100 2wd with a 360. After a couple years with the truck, I decided to buy my first brand new car and sold the truck. I think the truck is still running.

Left: This is a picture from my high school days. Anyway, this was taken by someone in the Graphic Arts department in front of the school where we all parked and given to me as a gift.

The '70 'Cuda behind me was Mike Potts' car.It was 1986. I was working full time. My parents just bought a new Taurus and told me about a nice convertible Mustang at the dealership. I went down to check it out. It was white with a white top and a white interior. It had a V6 auto in it. NO THANKS. The Mustang GT caught my eye sitting on the other side of the dealership. This was the first year with port fuel injection. It had T-tops and the white paint with the GT stripes. I loved it and bought it on the spot. The hot cars of the time were the IROC Camaros and I had a couple friends driving them. After smoking them several times and many trips down the strip at Maple Grove Raceway, the Mustang GT was an upcoming muscle car again.

Joe Heberling talked me into traveling to Trailway Speedway in Hanover, PA to try a "flat track" race. I was hooked now. After they finally banned the three wheelers in 1988, I built (from scratch) my own "Frame" flat tracker and won several races. I upgraded by buying a brand new motocross bike in 1989. I even bought my first street bike, a Yamaha Virago, to ride with the others when not racing. I did quite well in the motorcycle classes on the 250, 500, and 600, but I made the move to the Banshee where I could really shine.

During this time, I decided to start racing three wheelers. I started by running hare scrambles at the Flying Dutchman, but graduated quickly to many other tracks and motocross.

I sold it and bought a new Chevrolet Lumina Z34 in white. I really did like this car. It ran good, had sharp looks, and was much easier on gas. I had no problem pulling the quads and bikes with a small trailer, so it was ideal.

The Lumina was great for the longer traveling I got into when I decided to race the national circuit. My first race was in Boyd, Texas, at TT event outside Dallas. It was hot and the competition was tough. I won plenty of races, but here I had to work at it. I wound up winning my first National event that I attended. It was great. I wound up getting myself in 3&4 Wheel Action magazine, Dirt Wheels Magazine, and ironically, Crash and Burn Magazine. I have them at home.

I had the Mustang till ‘90 when I sold it for a new full size Bronco. Wish I still had it yet, though, the Mustang not the Bronco. The Bronco was what I wanted to pull the race trailer because we were starting to travel farther and my Dad's flatbed truck wasn't cutting it any more. The Bronco lasted two years and I finally came to terms with the fact that I hated big 4 wheel drives.

While I had the banshees, I liked the RZ350 and was looking to buy one. While practicing on a frozen lake with the ice racing bikes, I came across a Yellow/Black RZ350 sitting in someone's yard. I bought it and rebuilt it. I rode this for years all over the country as I took it along to all the races I could. The bike can be seen by clicking it's picture to the above right. Years later I would sell it, but I eventually got it back.

My next National was a Motocross event held two weeks later in Texas as well. I had an issue with the quad. I used a different quad because the suspension geometry on my good Banshee was designed for flat track and TT events. The motocross quad worked much better suspension wise, but this weekend it wouldn't run right. It idled OK and full throttle worked fine, but all other times it would pop and miss. What I didn't realize was the throttle cable was hung up and would raise the carb slides at a different rate causing a vacuum imbalance. I took 3rd at the event even with the way it ran. I finally figured out the problem when we were back in PA and it was too late.

I wanted to have a first place District 6 trophy. District 6 was famous for having the fastest Flat track riders. My first place trophy for the National event hinged on the second place rider. There was one event left, the finals at Loretta Lynn's ranch in Tennessee I decided I wanted to get the District 6 trophy and the National trophy would only be lost if the second place guy did very well at the finals. Greed got me. I raced the final local race for District 6 and missed the final National. Carlton Brown, the second place national rider, took first and overtook me in the points. To make matters worse, my brother won the final event in District 6 and took first in the District 6 points. I wound up being second in every points race I was in. (Boy, if I could do it again!)

Thinking I was ready, I decided that paychecks were better than trophies and upped my class to the pro circuit. I went to the first race in 1992 at Daytona and won the series. I thought this was going to be great. I was to learn the rest of the year that the other Pro riders were just as good as me and some were better. I did OK after that by qualifying for every event I entered. I even finished every time in the top ten, sometimes in the top five. It was hard, hard, hard, though. After a bad accident in the Poconos, I came to terms that I was getting a bit old for this circuit and took a break from racing at the end of 1992. Little did I know it was the end of my racing motorcycles.

I bought a house in 1994, sold all my bikes, and settled down for a few years. What a boring time that was. I didn't even drive the Olds much. I did actually get to drive in a NASCAR driving school at Dover. It gave me my racing fix again. My brother Scott, Dave Lehr, and I took the school and enjoyed it thoroughly. Here are a couple pics.

After two bad relationship endings, I decided I wanted to buy a cool car again for myself. I was in the market for a new Corvette and was stopping by a local Chevrolet dealer to pick up parts and gawk at the Vettes. On the way, I passed a local Toyota dealer and they were unloading one of the new MR2 Spyders off the truck. I decided I would go by and check it out that night. I did a little research before on them and I knew they were very limited in production, a very capable handling car, and a convertible to boot.

I finally got the car picked up and when I got back to Pine Grove, it started hailing. I got my friend Laura to pick me up at my parents house where I could park it inside quick and their garage was full. The Spyder was so small I quick put it where we keep the garden tractor in a small breezeway. this car has been a great pleasure to own. I hear matchbox jokes to this day. It was a little underpowered, but the fun factor and rarity made up for it. It still gets people walking around it in parking lots whenever we take it out. Usually they're trying to figure out just what it is.

I owned this for a while when I got the urge to pick up a bike again. I hashed around the idea of buying a new one, but I kept coming back to my old RZ350. (The story about what happened with that bike is on my RZ PAGE. After two years of trying to buy it back, I talked him into it. I rebuilt the entire bike and got it back on the road. The bike was always fun to ride, but Melissa wanted a more comfy ride and I wanted something 4 stroke for a more dependable cruiser. The 2 stroke never really gave me any issues, even on long rides to Daytona and West Virginia, but you never really know.

We decided to buy a new Harley in ‘04. While looking at bikes, I considered ordering a new '04 but I saw an '03 100th anniversary 883r that flipped my switch. I went to the dealership to buy it and they sold it the day before to another person. I did a search on Ebay and found another one in Scranton at Electric City Harley Davidson. It only had a couple hundred miles on it.  I wish I would have drove it first. Though I like riding it, the bike is a bar hopper, not comfortable for long trips with two people. That was remedied in the future.

In July of 2005, we made another car purchase. We picked up a ‘36 DeSoto Airstream sedan and plan on restoring this eventually. I addressed some safety issues like suspension bushings and tires to get it road worthy. It took a while to land the license, but we have been using it to cruise ever since. Watch for things to happen as well as reading the background story to this purchase at my DeSoto page. This car is even featured in a Hemmings Classic Car magazine "Driveable Dreams" article in the May 2009 issue! (More details later)

Melissa and I FINALLY found a ‘65 Mustang 2+2 "fastback" that we bought on Sunday, January 28th in 2007. It was on the road for a short time, but we decided to begin the body restoration by Garage Club member Mark Brown. Also,  we have had a Jensen built 347ci engine put together. This engine came out as a 425 horse aluminum head roller motor with all '65 externals including new Holman-Moody accents and a weber 4 carb intake. Looks like we are creating a resto-mod.

The car had also been selected for a prototype Highland Daytona / Max G suspension "satchel link" suspension and left us in November '07. More details are here. Below you can see a picture of the car as it came back from Highland Daytona October '08. At this update in October, we began tearing it down for a move up to Mark Brown's for the body work to get underway. The pics below were taken shortly after it's return from highland Daytona.

With this purchase, I had to change my parking situation. I had cars parked all over Pine Grove and wanted them under one roof. In December '06 I began the process of acquiring land and planning a large facility to house the collection. I finally finished (in October '07) putting up a 40 X 60 foot Pole building to store them all. The process took several months. The subdivision, the deed's recording, and the permits took from December till August to finish up everything. The building took about a month to be constructed. The Summer of '08 was dedicated to finishing the landscaping, drainage, driveway, and dam repair to finish the project. Pics of the inside and out can be viewed here from my first Garage Club meeting in August of 2008 and the followup Garage Club meeting in August 2009.

During a September '08 "cruise in" event at Buddie's Log Cabin for their 30th anniversary, we had a special event occur for one of my rides. I was sitting in the new barn going over some stuff to get ready for the evening cruise. I decided to relax a little and read my new "Hemmings Classic Car" magazine that I just received. They have a column each month called "Driveable Dreams". This article covers original cars that are mostly unrestored, yet are kept roadworthy and driven as a part of experiencing history.

Anyway, this prompted me to decide to take our unrestored '36 DeSoto for a ride to the event. As fate would have it, a photographer from Hemmings stopped at the event on his was home from another event. The DeSoto caught his eye and he waited for us to return to the car.

I told him the story of how we found the car and our decision to keep it the way it is. He expressed his interest in doing a "Driveable Dream" article on our car. Of course I would agree to meet him at the barn to get some good photos in about two weeks. Well, the phone rang in two weeks and arrangements were made. It was quite an experience. The photographer and his Dad came to do the article and couldn't have been more friendly. He also toured the barn and wishes to do more of my cars as he gets approval. As mentioned before, the magazine article came out in May 2009. Read more about the ride and some of the details from the article on the '36 DeSoto page.

OK, that was a mouthful and then some. That gets us up to the end of ’09 with the collection. Stay tuned for more as our world turns! To be continued...

See my old racing photos:

See my old racing videos: