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ast year Cycle Source announced that the SmokeOut would be returning to the Rowan C o u n t y Fairgrounds for the first time in a decade. Early in my career, The SmokeOut was the “go-to” event for all of us “Chopper kids” in the Midwest and the East Coast. Back then, social media was nothing like what it is today. The community that we all orbited in wasn’t an online community. We would all look forward to the ride down as much as we looked forward to the actual event. The hijinks along the road to the SmokeOut often provided more fun, more good stories and by the end of the weekend was a large part of the overall experience. Let’s face it, who remembers that time we did that thing, and nothing happened?
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April ‘22 - May ‘22 - CYCLE SOURCE MAGAZINE
In 2005, my business partner, was nearly 20-years ago. We Evan, and I built and repaired were the new kids on Detroit’s motorcycles as a full-time “West Side”, and there were some shops around us that were the OG’s, and they got the good work. Names like Steve Broyles and Gary Milligan are just two that I’d say lit the way for Evan and me to have a craft to hone. So, needless to say, heading to an event like the SmokeOut was a pivotal move for us to learn more about where we were headed (career-wise), and it would be the place where we could assert ourselves within our peer group. Back then, builders like Paul Wideman, Pat Patterson, Brian from Black Sunshine, and ourselves were vocation. I had been married for all full of piss and vinegar and 11 years, and Evan was a single were ready to party the entire dude fresh out of university. way to, at, and from the Rowan Fairgrounds. What We made our living repairing, County welding, and fabricating as happened was an epic story many bikes as the general that I, for one, will never forget. public would send our way. This We left Thursday morning at
