...or did I? Who knows, but a chance meeting led to a pretty interesting story.

A couple weeks ago I went for a ride down to the Grand Canyon and through Utah. Along the way I broke my riding sunglasses. Thought I had a spare set, but turned out I brought along 2 clear pairs instead of my extra sunglasses. It was cloudy or raining most of the time and I was spending much of my time in National Parks so I made do with my regular sunglasses and the clears. Friday I had planned to head for home, but the weather was nice so I decided to head the opposite direction and check out one more park. So I headed off to Arches National Park. After visiting the park, I decided to head into Moab, UT a few miles down the road to have lunch and see if I could find a pair of sunglasses for the road home. I found a small shop called Lone Rider on the main drag and decided to stop in. As I walked up, the shop looked like an old converted home, and there was a guy working on a Harley chopper in the garage.

I went in and he popped in from the garage and greeted me. He was a gray pony-tailed, bearded biker-type with tattoos and a few missing fingers, initially polite but not overly friendly. I told him I just needed a pair of sunglasses, he showed me what he had and I selected a pair. As he was writing up my order, he commented it was nice to have a customer that knew what he needed and actually bought something. He said, mostly he just works on bikes, and gets annoyed sometimes by the “weekend type” riders that stop in and just interrupt him, browse around and don’t buy anything and want to bitch about life and “leave their crap at his place.”. I asked him in passing if there were any dealers in town, mostly out of curiosity, but would have stopped for Harley dots (for aVol2) if a Harley dealer was there.

At that point, he said if you’re looking for a Harley souvenir I have a pin you might be interested in. He said “it’s a nice pin, and it’s got a little history to it that I could tell you about – unless you’re in a hurry.” I told him I was on a motorcycle and traveling alone…why would I be in a hurry? He seemed to like that answer. He reached under the counter and pulled out the pin.

His story....

“Live to Ride, Ride to Live” - that’s the slogan Harley’s been using for years he explained. “Lone Rider, Moab, UT is my shop” and the Delicate Arch (from nearby Arches National Park) is in the middle. Everyone knows “Live to Ride” came from the HA (Hells Angels) out of California… but “Ride to Live,” that was me. I can’t prove it, but that’s the truth. You can believe it or not, I really don’t give a damn. I’ve been around Harleys since I was 5 and I just reversed the wording on their slogan. It was just a personal thing to me. I rode Harleys with a buddy, and we rode hard and fast and side-by-side. A lot of guys were crashing and getting messed up or not coming home and I just reversed it to come up with "Ride to Live" – I meant it as a safety thing. It was just meant to remind my buddy and I to stay focused, ride safely and make it home.

I never cared about making any money on it, but my buddy was more of a money-hungry bastard than me and wanted to sell it to Harley-Davidson. He sold it to an HD dealer in Salt Lake City on a handshake and the asshole ripped him off. He turned around and sold it to Harley as his own idea and we never got any money or credit for it. I never got anything for it then, not going to try now and really don’t care anyway. If you contact HD and ask them about the slogan, they will tell you that “Live to Ride” was from the Hells Angels and “Ride to Live” came from a SLC dealer in 1972. Anyway, I can’t prove any of it, but it’s all true.

May or may not be true, but I bought his story…and his pin. What I thought would be a quick transaction turned into an enjoyable 30 minute conversation by two folks with seemingly, nothing in common. I think the fact that I was out on a 3300-mile, mostly unplanned solo ride struck a cord with him (to the extent that he even cut me slack for not riding a Harley). We talked about solo riding (his preference), my trip, group riding, biker “philosophy”, his disdain for “posers,” Evel Knievel (an old neighbor of mine), how we started riding…

For me it turned out to be a pretty cool ending to my day and my trip. It was 4 in the afternoon, I put my sunglasses on and headed home...just a quick, easy 950 mile trip home from there.

A picture of John, from his Lone Rider shop website.