My lifelong journey down the Road to Patina began with mini-bikes and a green 1971 Honda SL125 in the blackened, strip-mined hills of northeastern Pennsylvania.

Nearly twenty years and a dozen or so motorcycles later, I was racing a Yamaha RZ 500 at Daytona International Speedway with other no-names like myself. We shared our spot on the grid with many other talented riders like future MotoGP world champion Kevin Schwantz and Isle of Man TT winner Dave Roper. Hearing the sound of Dr. John’s thundering champion Moto Guzzi resonating off the high banks of Daytona changed me forever.

In 1983, I came face to face with the Le Mans III in a Denver shop and was smitten. It was out of my price range, and I settled for a Yamaha RZ 350, but I never forgot the Le Mans.

A few years ago, on a whim, I found a beat up 1974 Yamaha RD 200 on Craigslist in Colorado Springs. Why the interest in this dirty dog?

There was an emotional attachment.

When I was 21, I lived in Georgia in a lake house with another motorcycle fanatic. He grew up on street bikes like I grew up on dirt bikes. His name was Steve and he bought the exact year and color RD200 with the intention of racing it. When I wrecked my car, he loaned it to me during what seemed to be the coldest winter in Atlanta’s history. I rode the 60 mile round trip to my office for months and fell in love with it.

Adversity is the glue for a lifelong relationship between man and machine.

I picked up the little blue RD with a borrowed truck and my 14 year-old daughter in tow. We followed the heavy kid and his pregnant girlfriend through the trailer park and down rows of a dilapidated storage facility on the outskirts of town. It was storage unit 421, my birthday. A sign!

My daughter glanced at the girl's bulging belly, she stared silently at the dirty woolen hat, bungee-corded around the extra 14 inches of foam bursting out the back of the seat. An attempt at…what? Why didn't he just trim it off? And why in God's name, a woolen hat? I asked for no explanation. There was none.

She questioned my sanity in handing over the four hundred and twenty five dollars. It was at that point that I discovered the art of dream making.

Fixing and flipping a motorcycle to buy one better or different.

Once “restored” and I use that term very loosely, because it really only needed a good cleaning, a brake adjustment, a tune-up and a new seat, the new owner paid me three times my original purchase price. Out of curiosity, maybe to see if it was just a fluke or lucky break, I decided to try to repeat the process, this time with a 1995 Triumph Thunderbird. The worst that could happen, I thought, was the opportunity to ride a different cool motorcycle if I could get it running. A close friend pointed out that I had already made my money when I handed over the 425 dollars in cash, not when I sold it.

It worked. The new fifteen-hundred dollar, non-running Triumph 900 triple and accessories sold for more than double my investment. But not before I put a thousand, very sweet Colorado back road summer miles on her. Many of them were on warm summer nights around the neighborhood with my lovely bride on the back.

RULE #1 – You Make your Money When You Buy, Not Sell.

Time, chance and an offer to trade the Triumph brought me to a neglected 1983 Moto Guzzi Le Mans III in north Denver. It was a former track bike.

I had an email exchange with Richard Backus, the editor of Motorcycle Classics magazine and simply listening to his perspective and following his advice opened my eyes and changed my life.

Although I did not trade, I did go back to buy the Le Mans III for a mere seventeen hundred and fifty dollars after I sold the Thunderbird. Make no mistake. It was rough, but it started and everything important was there. Its owner had inherited three bikes from his girlfriend’s incarcerated father.

He left the crown jewel parked out in the driveway.

I'd found my dreambike and at this point, it was already paid for.

All three owners of these fine machines shared common traits. They were non-mechanical, they had no emotional attachment to the motorcycle and they had life circumstances that prevented them from making their bikes roadworthy.

Flipping a motorcycle is not generally considered a respectable or admired practice. It concocts images of a stereotypical used car salesman.

In truth, like the bleeding heart liberal who rescues dirty mutts from the pound, I see potential in these tired old dogs and give them a new lease on life. Once proven mechanically sound and roadworthy, I don’t run an ad, I tell a story. Each and every time, that story hooks one perfect owner. This time the new owner does in fact have an emotional attachment to his new bike.

And so, what began as a personal vision and dream making has become a dream realization service for others. An abandoned or neglected motorcycle now serves its intended purpose.

Just this past summer, I dragged myself from a warm bed at 5am on a Saturday, met my brother-in-law and drove a few hundred miles round trip from Denver to Glenwood Springs. I did this to buy a beautiful, but rarely ridden bright red Triumph 955 Sprint with 11K miles on it for $2800 from a sixty year old guy. He had three other bikes in his garage.

Why all this trouble for the grand sum of one hundred and fifty dollars plus gas and a few spare parts? A simple investment in motorcycle futures. This one was for a former manager and close friend of mine.

He’s going to go on a long ride around Colorado this summer and he will undoubtedly get caught in one of our notorious mountain July rain, sleet and hail storms. He will have a near death experience on Red Mountain Pass during which he'll consider putting the bike up for sale for half its value just before Christmas. Why? Because he was going to rent a bike instead of buy one and spend a whole lot more for a lesser bike. He’ll have that life changing experience and either keep it forever and give it to his son, or offer it to me. Either way, we’ll both have made a good deal.

The Road to Patina is a pleasant one. It is not perfectly smooth, but it is perfect in its own right.

Perfection however, sometimes expresses itself in the way that your daughter is perfect, even though she made a few mistakes and maybe broke your heart a little along the way.

The Road to Patina is the one you are riding on that warm still summer night when you can talk to your girl without a helmet on at thirty miles per hour. On that road, you can smell her perfume at the stop sign. On the road to Patina, the sound of the valves of that 1978 Moto Guzzi V50 you just paid eight hundred and fifty dollars for is Musica Mechanika.

My brilliant second career is on that beautiful Road to Patina.

copyright ©2011 raymondroske

_{'The Road to Patina - Realizing Your Dream Bike' is a moto-journal written for those with a passion for or dream of buying, restoring and selling classic and vintage motorcycles. With a little luck, a lot of candles, a goat, a big hat, an accordian and a pair of those leiterhosen pants, it will be published in April 2012. This is the introduction.}