BJ: How long have you been riding motorcycles Digger?

Digger: Well sir, I was raised by a single parent for a while and when my Mom did get married again she had the, well actually I had the good fortune of her marrying a guy that liked motorcycles and he had a 650 BSA Rocket back in the day. This was in the late sixties, and a few years after they got married he came home one day with a couple of Honda CT 70 Mini-Bikes and taught me how to ride it. I was thirteen and I was smitten.

BJ: What year was that?

Digger: That was 1970. I've been riding almost forty years I guess.

BJ: I can imagine what a thrill it would have been if my Dad had brought home a couple of motorcycles. 

Digger: Yeah, and you know not all kids would go crazy over it but my brother and I just kinda' connected with it and to this day he and I are both motorcycle fanatics.

BJ: On your website you list your interest, among other things, as camping, hiking, computer programming, parenting and motorcycle maintenance. Do you do all your own maintenance on your motorcycles?

Digger: Yes sir I actually do. After a couple of years of riding that little Honda 70, I got a job and I was riding it so much my Dad made me buy it from him and so you know just having little jobs like mowing the grass and baby sittin' for people and stuff like that if the bike broke down I couldn't afford to go and have someone fix it. My Dad was working twelve hour days so when I rode bicycles I kinda' learned how to work on 'em myself so it was natural for me to start working on motorcycles and I did it primarily because I couldn't afford to have someone work on it for me. And I just kinda' kept doing it and now that I can afford to have someone work on my bikes I don't do it because I feel I do a better job myself. So yeah I've always worked on my bikes. People think I'm crazy but even to this day you know with that Gold Wing, I saw that you also have an '05 Gold Wing too, I change the rear tire myself and everything. So it's just something I learned how to do along the way. I wouldn't say that I'm the world's best mechanic. I'm meticulous and slow but my stuff seems to hang together. 

BJ: I'm Like you, I do the same thing, change my own tires and all that. I just don't trust the shops anymore.

Digger: No....You know it, it used to be, when I was a teenager, hanging out at bike shops and stuff the mechanics that I ran into were generally middle aged and older and they all knew what they were doing but now days it just seems like that the quality of work in the shops..... My wife had an airhead BMW about ten years ago and it fell over in a moving crate. I was working for NASA at the time and I didn't have time to work on it so I took it to a shop to do the work that it needed and they did a lousy job. I ended up having to do most of the work over myself. The thing was leaking gas and everything when I got it back so I'm like you. I just really don't trust the mechanics anymore. 

BJ: Yeah, I'm certainly familiar with that. You mentioned your Gold Wing but you own a few more bikes too. Right?

Digger: Yeah I umm, I don't drive a car anymore. I sold my old truck back oh, couple three years ago now because I wasn't driving it much after I left NASA and even when I was with NASA I rode a bicycle to work most of the time. I've never been much for four wheel travel anyway and I've got nothing but motorcycles now. Each one of 'em has a purpose. My Gold Wing is for business trips when I'm with my wife and I have a 2001 ST1100 that I use for business trips when I go by myself. I actually like that bike better than the Gold Wing as far as comfort an all that goes. I know it sounds strange but its just kind of a personal fit kinda' thing. The Gold Wing is mainly my wife's bike, I'm just the driver. Then I have, for around town duties, I have a 2001 Suzuki Savage that I picked up almost brand new and a couple years back I bought a couple 2007 KLR 650's and I'm in the process now of modifying those things so my wife and I can start to do a lot of International Adventure type travel and stuff like that. So I've actually got five bikes in the garage.

BJ: I've always thought I might like the ST 1100, even more that the 1300, but I can't afford more than one bike so the Gold Wing fits my all around riding habits best I guess. You use to race too some, right? 

Digger: After I finished high school when I was between High School and College I raced enduro's a bit. That was back in the late seventies. I had a Can-Am 175 then I started riding street bikes and I kinda' put the dirt bike thing away and then later on in my Air Force career in the early nineties I moved to Edwards AFB and they had a moto-cross track right on the base. My brother was also living out in California and he was racing moto-cross at that time so he talked me into buying a moto-cross bike and I raced moto-cross for probably a good ten years or so. I finally quit racing moto-cross when NASA had that terrible accident with the space shuttle, the Columbia crash. I was involved in the investigation and that kinda' took me away from my dirt bikes. After that was all over I just said well heck, I haven't ridden in a year or so now and I'm gettin' too old so I sold it.

BJ: How many bones did you break?

Digger: I was pretty lucky. I broke a couple ribs, but you know I didn't really know they were broken until later on when I joined NASA and they took some X-rays and they told me that I had had some broken ribs. I just thought I'd bruised my chest real bad. The worst accident I had blew my ACL and right before I left NASA I had the re-construction operation and got that fixed. Those were mainly during my earlier years of racing. After I had been racing four or five years I didn't crash quite as much. But yeah, it's tough on the body.

B.J: Did you win a lot.

Digger: I didn't win often. I do have some first place trophies but I tell people that it was only because all the fast guys were someplace else that weekend. 

BJ: I understand that from racing cars in my youth. Now, I'm kinda' puzzled here. I see you used to tend bar and work on typewriters. How in the world does one go from tending bar, fixing typewriters and bumming around the country on a motorcycle to space shuttle pilot? That's kind of a long row to hoe seems to me and ordinary people such as myself would dismiss the possibility as soon as they thought of it. I may have thought about being an astronaut but it never crossed my mind that I could actually do it. What drove you to pursue such lofty goals? 

Digger: Yeah, it does seem impossible. I do a lot of traveling around the country speaking at schools and stuff like that and I speak to them about the impossible dream and the impossible goal. You know as a kid growing up on motorcycles I always liked the excitement and the adrenalin and that kinda' stuff. It took me a couple years after I was done with high school to kinda' find my way and while I was trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life I was doing a lot of travel on motorcycles and working odd jobs around the country and of course, you know, not having a lot of money.. I remember one night I was camping and I forget where it was, probably some where I shouldn't have been because I could rarely afford campgrounds back in those days. I was on a bike trip going somewhere and I was reading a little science fiction magazine in my tent that night and there was an article about a space telescope NASA was thinking about building and the advantages of having a telescope out there in outer space and get a better view of our universe. And I remember falling asleep that night, and I remember this vividly, thinking you know what, this is crazy but I would love to someday be involved in space exploration in some form because I thought that would be a very noble pursuit. I had always liked exploring on my motorcycle and going new places and I thought that if you just extend that to exploring outer space it's also very important for our society and I remember falling asleep that night thinking it would be really cool to be involved in that someday. And it was probably a year or so later I finally decided that I wanted to be a fighter pilot because that would be a lot like riding a motorcycle and you know it would really be fun to be a fighter pilot and actually get paid to have fun. But I discovered that you had to go to college in order to be a fighter pilot because in the Air Force and the Navy you had to be an officer to fly jets. And as much as I hated school I decided that I needed to get that education and so went back to school and got an engineering degree at the University of Minnesota. While I was at Air Force pilot training I learned of the space shuttle program and that they hire pilots and I thought you know I'm just gonna' try to do that cause I remembered reading that magazine that night on that motorcycle trip and how cool it would be to be involved in the space program and now I'm a pilot so I figured I had as good a chance getting on with NASA as any other pilot and I just kinda' set my mind to it. I had a lot of setbacks and bumps along the way but if you got that goal kinda' hanging out in front of you always pick yourself up and dust yourself off and put your head down and go after it again no matter what people say. and I just never gave up and bottom line is I got lucky one day and NASA hired me and I got a chance to fly the space shuttle. I share this story with kids and I tell them no matter how ridiculous your goal is do something every day that gets you closer to that goal and you never know, you might get lucky. But if you don't try then you're not gonna' get there and that's for certain.

BJ: I certainly admire you're accomplishments but I can't imagine being that driven by anything. I can imagine it but that's about as far as it goes. I also read that safety is one of your passions and a lot of your work in the Air Force was "risk assessment". Does this obsession with safety carry over into motorcycles too? 

Digger: Yes sir it does. But I always balance the risk with the payoff. I wear a helmet and I wear protective clothing. My motto is if you're gonna' do something stupid you'd better be smart about it. I was made aware of that philosophy when I was a test pilot at Edwards AFB. I use to do a lot of testing of F-16 engines and the F-16 has only one and I would go up to altitude and shut it off and see if I could get it started again. And, if you don't get it started, well you've got a big problem. Suddenly you're a glider and not a very good glider either because an F-16 is very heavy with little bitty wings. And I saw that the way we tested engines out there was we stacked all the odds in our favor. You tested your backup systems, you did a few practice landings that you'd have to do if the engine didn't start and by the time I got to the test mission to the point where I'd shut the engine off I had already been airborne twenty minutes gettin' all the odds stacked in my favor and that's pretty much how I approach motorcycling. I don't ride in shorts and sandals and I get out there and practice in the parking lot and such. But I fully realize that ridin' a motorcycle, twenty or thirty thousand miles a year is not the smartest thing to do especially with my wife on the back but we stack the odds in our favor. To do something that stupid has to be a lot of fun or I wouldn't do it. That's kinda' like the risk vs. the payoff. The payoff for me is so great riding a motorcycle that I have to stack the odds in my favor when I am riding. But I don't go overboard. I don't ride slow but I do try to ride smart.

BJ: Yeah, well you know I've always heard that riding a motorcycle is like flying without leaving the ground. I'm not a pilot so I wouldn't know but I've always wondered if it were true. You yourself have said that riding motorcycles is a great substitute for flying jets. Would you care to elaborate? 

Digger: Well sir, I'll tell you, a lot of people ask me if I miss flying. Now I spent 22 1/2 years in the Air Force and NASA and every day of those 22 years I had an airplane with my name on it. Every job I had involved flying. I didn't have any desk jobs during that time and when I left NASA I turned my back on the whole flying game and I have not touched a stick or a yoke since. And I don't miss it one bit and that's only because I ride motorcycles a lot. Having flown a lot of high performance aircraft and having ridden a lot of miles, I'm closing in on 400,000, I can truthfully say that the stimulation that your brain receives is very similar between flying fighters and ridin' motorcycles in challenging conditions. Now if you're on I-80 heading across Nebraska with no traffic, no your brain is not being stimulated. But if you're riding your motorcycle at a brisk pace on a twisty road with traffic to deal with and maybe a little bit of weather thrown in, your brain is being stimulated in much the same fashion as it is when your flying fighters and if regular riders want to know what it's like flying fighter jets all they have to do is think back on a stimulating ride that they've had and that's about as close as non pilots can come to high performance flying. Riding motorcycles is a whole lot like flying and that's why I don't miss flying.

BJ: You've mastered some very challenging aircraft Digger and you're obviously considered the best by your peers or you never would have landed that seat in the Columbia's cockpit. Do you feel that your two wheel peers see you in the same light?

Digger: Well, when it comes down to actual competition when I was racing I was just an older guy in his thirties that started racing and I worked hard at it and I worked hard at the conditioning and everything and I would like to think that I was a pretty good racer. But to tell you the truth I wasn't really that talented. Any success I had at moto-cross, came as a result of hard work and luck But as far as out riding street bikes, I consider myself more skilled that some and less skilled than others. Actually, I was a better pilot than I am a motorcyclist. I could never make a living as a motorcyclist because I just wasn't that good but when it came to flying I was above average. My riding skills aren't quite as developed as my flying skills were and there's a certain amount of conservatism in my riding that I sometimes didn't have as a pilot. 

BJ: With your constant involvement with motorcycles jets and rockets, do you see yourself as a power freak?

Digger: (Laughing) Most people would probably think that but I don't really see myself that way. Now there's no doubt that when you light the afterburner on an F-16 you're gonna' get a rush and there's no doubt that when the clock counts down to zero on the Space Shuttle you're about to get a rush and that's some cool stuff. But when I ride my motorcycle I rarely ride over my heard and when I do it's because I've made a mistake. But I'm not the kinda' guy that gets on the throttle real hard and stuff like that. I think more than a power freak I see myself a freedom freak. I love the freedom you have on a motorcycle. You feel free, you feel like you're part of the environment. You're engaged and at no point can you ever let your guard down and that's pretty much what I like. I don't necessarily go crazy on the power end of it but I love the engagement and the challenge. If you want to torture me put me in a car on the Interstate for eight hours with nothing happening and I am just bored beyond tears. But if I'm riding my motorcycle for eight hours I've had a good day because every minute of that day I'm engaged and observant and actively a part of what's happening and that's probably the main thing I like about motorcycling, it is not a passive activity.

BJ: I of course agree 100% My wife and I were forced to ride home in a car last month because of a rear tire failure in the Ozarks and we were bored to death. I noticed that you were awarded the AMA's Hazel Kolb Brighter Image Award a few years ago. What did you do to receive that award? 

Digger: Well, when I was training for my mission with NASA, they told me I could pick ten non-profit or sports related type businesses and fly little mementoes for them into outer space and being a guy that grew up in Minnesota I contacted the Twins and the Vikings and I flew little things for them and I contacted my school and all that kinda' stuff but one of the places I contacted was the American Motorcyclist Association. I've been a member almost twenty years and I was fully on board with their activities with government lobbying and fighting for our privileges, I hesitate to call it rights. So I admired the work they did, called them up and asked if they'd like me to fly something into space and they came up with an AMA banner and I took it with me on my mission. A couple months later I thought, to deliver it to the AMA I could mail it back or I could fly up there in a NASA airplane and deliver it but in the end I decided I'd just stuff it in my saddlebag and ride it up to Ohio on my motorcycle from Huston. Then, when I got there they surprised me with the award. I was very flattered and of all the awards I've ever received I put that Hazel Kolbe Award up there on the top shelf. Like Andy Goldfine up there in Duluth, I believe people that ride motorcycles are good people and if we can get more people on motorcycles, well we're gonna' have more good people in this country. 

BJ: When you first learned of your assignment as the pilot of STS 109, did you lay in the bed that night and kinda' pinch yourself to make sure you weren't dreaming. Or did you have to work to hard to get there not to believe it? 

Digger: I expected that I was gonna' be on a mission but when they asked me to be on the mission to the Hubble space telescope I remembered that little incident in the tent that I told you about and I thought you know life is truly strange. I read about the idea of that telescope back in the seventies and now the telescope has been built and launched and I'm gonna' fly a servicing mission to that thing. I had about five minutes to think about that and the rest of the year was packed solid full of training and preparation for the mission I didn't have time to think about it anymore. When you're in the middle of something as intense as going into space you rarely get a chance to step back and access what's happening to you. I think I probably did allow myself a few minutes to think about how strange that was but after that it was all work getting ready for it.

BJ: I can, well I started to say I can imagine but I probably can't. On your mission as the Columbia pilot you circled the earth 365 times and now you and your wife Cheryl are planning, and I love your interpretation, a single low earth orbit by motorcycle. Have you set the launch date for your ride around the world?

Digger: Well I haven't set the launch date but its gettin' closer. One thing that's been gettin' in my way, and I say that facetiously, is this little business that I'm running doing a lot of educational outreach with schools and kids and that's just taking up a heck of a lot more of my time than I thought it would. It's taken away from my time with my KLR's and getting them prepared but we are probably start doing a lot of travel here in the United States to kinda' shake out the bugs in our systems and I anticipate probably starting International travel 2011, 2012 time frame is what I'm thinking. My kids have grown up and both of 'em are married and we're getting less and less reasons to just spend time and we're gettin' closer and closer to that goal. Definitely working toward it. 

BJ: You mentioned your company, One Eighty Out Inc. Can you explain briefly what your company does and how you came by that name?

Digger: Well, after I left NASA and retired from the Air Force at the same time in late '04 and my wife and I bought this house up here in Colorado Springs and decided we wanted to live here and the weather's great here for motorcycling and you're right by the mountains and all that kinda' stuff. Partly it was a motorcycle decision to retire in Colorado Springs but a couple months went by and we got the house in shape and one day we were kinda' staring at each other saying well what are we gonna' do now. You know we had both been so busy in our previous life you know raising kids and my career in the Air Force and we decided that we were still passionate about riding motorcycles and we were still passionate about the future of our country and to my way of looking at it the future of our country is in the future of our people and that means kids. And we thought, what can I do with my experience to inspire kids to get educated and take those hard classes and become educated in technical fields and science and become great Americans. What can we do? And we just decided that if I could share my story with kids all over the country that maybe we can inspire some of these kids to stay in school and take those hard classes and get educated. So we started our company, One Eighty Out Inc. and the reason we call it one eighty out is because a lot of the business decisions we make are one eighty out to what a wise business man would do. We make our business decisions based primarily on where we want to ride our motorcycle, If somebody calls me up with and has a very lucrative offer to do some public speaking in Minneapolis in January and they throw a buncha' money at me I'm gonna' tell 'em no because I can't get my motorcycle up there in Minneapolis. I don't travel on an airplane anywhere anymore. All my business travel is on a motorcycles. And you know, a business man would look at me and say well that's a dumb decision and you threw away a lot of money because you don't want to fly commercial jets. And I come back and tell 'em, well that's how we run our business, a hundred and eighty out from the way you run yours. We pick an area of the country we want to ride to and then my wife and I get on the phone and start sending e-mails, contacting schools and colleges and science museums along the way and then we string together a business trip. 

BJ: So it wasn't just about money with you?

Digger: No. I'll tell you what. If I had been concerned about money I would have walked away from the Air Force after seven years and started flying commercial airplanes. But my wife and I made the decision a long time ago that you can either have enough money to be comfortable and happy or you can bust your tail and get a whole buncha' money and be miserable and that just isn't what we wanted to do. We have enough money to be comfortable and it allows us a lot of flexibility in running our business.

BJ: You're an extraordinary person and you've accomplished extraordinary things. Do you consider yourself special or do you see yourself as an ordinary guy that just kicked in the right doors. 

Digger: Well, I have a few talents in the cockpit and that's about it. And I'm a hard worker. I don't give up. I decide what I want to do and then like the tortoise, I start plodding toward that goal and I just don't stop. But no, I'm nothing special. I'm just a kid out of the projects that worked hard and caught a few breaks along the way. 

BJ: Does your wife or any of your children ride? 

Digger: Well sir, my wife does ride. Back when we were dating I taught her to ride. When we were younger I used to have a Yamaha three cylinder shaft drive 750 and she and I used to trade off occasionally. She would do the riding and I would be the passenger or I would be the rider and she would be the passenger. She's had a couple bikes over the years. She had 500 Honda Silverwing back in the early eighties and in the early nineties she had an airhead BMW R100RT. She's actually a good rider. She's been riding for a long time but on our business trips she rides with me on the back of the Gold Wing. She just finds that more relaxing. We got a couple KLR's in the garage and one of 'em is hers and she actually likes riding that bike more than any other bikes she's ever had. Both of my kids wanted cars when they were in high school and so we told 'em we would loan them the money for the car but they would have to pay for the insurance. And we both know that insurance for teenagers is expensive but they both discovered that they could have a motorcycle and liability would be relatively cheap. So my son had a 750 Virago in High School and my daughter had a 250 Honda Rebel. And my son still rides but he's had to put his away for awhile. He's got a Suzuki M109R that he bought the day after he graduated from the Air Force Academy. My daughter sold her bike before she went to college and she wants to get another one but she just hasn't done that yet. But yes, my wife rides and both my kids ride. 

BJ: So you are a motorcycling family. You know, you don't act like a celebrity. My hero worship for pilots and the space program and astronaut's goes way back and I don't mind telling you, I was a bit intimidated about this interview. But your status doesn't seem to have affected you. You come across as an ordinary guy, just another motorcyclist. 

Digger: Well, to tell you the truth and I don't share this with a lot of people but you know all the flying I did over the years eh, I was never passionate about it. I liked it, it was a great way to make a living but I was just never passionate about it. I'm passionate about riding motorcycles and as you know we can't choose our passions. Sometimes you live your whole life and you never find what that passion is. But I found mine at a young age and its limited me in a lot of ways. I've never taken up golf, I fished and hunted as a kid but when I got older I never did much of that mainly because all my spare time was taken up with motorcycles. I don't regret it but that's just the way it worked out. So I'm a motorcyclist more than I am an astronaut, fighter pilot, test pilot or anything. I'm a motorcyclist first and foremost and we both know that bikers are the best people in the world. 

BJ: You call yourself Digger, I've read that a combat pilot's handle is given to them by their brothers in arms. How did you get tagged with Digger?

Digger: Well sir, sadly I'm gonna' have to tell you the truth and the bad thing about the truth is that the story is that it's very boring. When I was in the Air Force I flew a couple different jets and as you know there's a lot of competition between flying communities in the Air Force and when I first started flying I flew the A-10 Warthog and my call sign back in those days was Spider because I was kind of a skinny guy. Then when I started flying F-16's years after that they asked me what my nickname was and I told 'em and they said well, you're just a filthy, dirty A-10 driver we gotta' give you a new nickname and they just had a guy that left the squadron and his handle was Digger and they said we're short one Digger we had a Digger leave and we need a new Digger you can be Digger. And I told them that I despised that name with every fiber in my being. Well unfortunately, my squadron Commander was standing there and he put his arm around me, smiled and said, well that's why we're gonna' call you Digger.

B.J: Sounds just like the military. 

Digger: Yep, yep. It stuck and now even my wife calls me Digger sometimes.

BJ: Well you seem to have taken to it. I see you use it on your web site and in the motorcycle forums...Anyway, I think it's kinda' cool. I also noticed on your website that you and your wife met the President and the First Lady. What was that like?

Digger: That was after we flew in space and he invited us to the White House as a crew and we spent half hour or so with him in the Oval Office. And I actually managed to get into a little bit of trouble that day. You may know that President Bush was an F-4 pilot back in the day. I think he flew in the Mississippi Guard AKA the Magnolia Militia. He knew a little bit about the flying game so my commander, Scott Altman, was a Tomcat Pilot in the Navy and so the President started talking some flying stuff with us and you could tell he was having a good time and then he asked us, well what's it like up there in the space shuttle with the negative gravity and I had to correct the Commander in Chief and tell him that it wasn't negative gravity it was just an absence of gravity up there. You're not stuck against the ceiling like you would be with negative gravity you just float around. It's just zero gravity. He kinda nodded and about fifteen minutes later he brought up the negative gravity thing again and I corrected him again. At this point my commander elbowed me in the ribs and whispered, Digger, quit correcting the President. 

BJ: In other words, if the President says there's negative gravity then there's negative gravity right? 

Digger: Yeah. You just nod your head and make it work. 


BJ: I got a question here this nutty biker friend of mine wanted me to ask. Forgive me, but I told him I would, so here goes. He wanted to know if the life forms you encountered in outer space were as bizarre as those you bump into at Bike Week or Sturgis?

Digger: (laughing) Well, one of the cool things about the Hubble Telescope and the other observatories we have in outer space now is the discovery of more and more planets. Not only that we are actually learning that some of these planets are earth like. And in answer to your question, I think you would have to go to a lot of planets to find aliens as strange as some of those you see at Daytona or Sturgis. (Laughing)

BJ: (Laughing) I think you would too.

Digger: (more serious now) What happens there is just another chapter in the whole motorcycling universe and to me, all bikers are good bikers. 

__________________________End of Interview______________________________

From here on the interview sort of melded into a bull session between two motorcyclists.

BJ: Well, I appreciate this Digger. The Interview will probably come out in the March Issue. After our November issue I guess they take a break up there in Minnesota it's so cold with all that ice and snow.

Digger: Everybody jumps on their snowmobiles.

BJ: Yeah, and ...well the editor of the magazine actually owns a Ural with a side hack so he can ride in the winter too.

Digger: Cool.

BJ: You bet. That's the way he gets around in the winter. But eh, I really appreciate this. I could talk to you all day. If you're ever through Memphis look me up.

Digger: We actually did some work up there in eh northern Arkansas I think last spring so we weren't to far from where you're at. 

BJ: Is there anyplace I can get photos. I know that's NASA's got photo's but I don't know if they're for public consumption or if I'd be violating copyright or what if I grabbed one of 'em.

Digger: They are for public consumption. What I can do is on your link there on the GL1800 forum I can send you a link with a bunch of photo's that are releasable from my mission that NASA has. They are high res and you can download whatever you want. 

BJ: OK. And eh, I'd love to have a photo of you on that Gold Wing. 

Digger: Well, I can do that one better. I've got a photo I can send you with me standing in front of the Gold Wing with a buncha' kids. 

BJ: Yeah, that sounds good. 

Digger: I think they're with a school we visited in South Carolina and the kids wanted to come out and get a picture of them with the motorcycle. The kids love the motorcycle. I have the yellow one and my wife and I always make a show of it when we pull up in the parking lot at a school and something about the motorcycle it makes me a lot more approachable to the kids and they really like that. 

BJ: My friend has a yellow Gold Wing, an '09 and we just got back from Key West and on the whole trip down there and back, it was about six bikes, the only one that got any attention was that yellow Gold Wing. They didn't even pay any attention to mine, they went straight to that yellow one. 

Digger: You know early on in this interview we talked about safety and that was the reason I picked the yellow color. You know if I'm gonna' do something stupid and rack up tens of thousands of miles on this Gold Wing I've gotta' get what I consider to be the safest color available. At first my wife hated it but now she likes it. But I've always kinda' liked yellow myself so I didn't have any problem with it right from the get go.

BJ: Well, I have yellow helmets and I bought that color because of safety and man you can see me coming for five miles you know and sometimes people will say man you need to get your helmets painted and I say hey look, the Blue Angels have blue airplanes and they wear yellow helmets so if it's good enough for them then its good enough for me. But I mainly bought them for safety. 

Digger: If people are noticing the yellow and blue then they're noticing you and the way I tell it when people ask me about the yellow color. well you saw it from a long way away right and they go yeah and I say well I tell you what, if someone's gonna' hit me on a motorcycle I want it to be because they wanted to kill me, I don't want to die by accident. 

BJ: I heard that. I think that's the reason they paint school bus's yellow, I've heard that anyway because it's the most visible color. 

Digger: I don't know. Maybe it is but we've had a lot of comments on the color of ours over the miles I can tell you that. 

BJ: Have you had any problems out of your Gold Wing?

Digger: No. It's been a great bike. The first thing that ever really happened was just on my last trip. We just got back from an 8500 mile business trip and our last gig was in McCook, Nebraska, over there in southwest Nebraska. And the bike sat in the motel. I had a lot of work there and the bike sat in the motel parking lot for a couple days and got it got real cold one night and when I went out when we were ready to leave for Colorado I noticed a little bit of coolant dripping out under the cowling. So I just figured some of the hose clamps were coming a little bit loose but eh. I got the bike in the garage now and I'm fixing to tear into it. I use a kind of phase maintenance type philosophy on my Gold Wing. I eh, I pretty much just change tires and oil and put gas it for 32,000 miles and when I get to that 32000 mile point I stop and I tear the Tupperware off and I kinda' do all the maintenance things all at once. But this time I think I'm probably gonna' maybe pull the gas tank out of it, and tighten up all the hose clamps everywhere. There's gotta' be at least couple dozen of 'em. But other than that bike has been a remarkable machine. It's been incredible.

BJ: Yeah...eh, the only problem I've had, you may have read it on the website, was a tire separate, belt separation coming back from Florida. I've never had that happen ever on any motorcycle. I didn't know what it was. Took a while to figure it out and I finally ended up leaving it in the Ozarks and rode home with the chase car. 

Digger: What kind of tire was it?

BJ: It was a Metzler ME 880, and I love those things for the grip and handling but eh, and I will admit that five miles before I got home I center punched a pot hole that was so violent that it popped a speaker grill out and so that may have eh, just finished it off.

Digger: I would love to be able to run Metzler's and Avon's and even Bridgestone's and stuff like that but my trips are so dang long that I pretty much have to buy tires for durability and that means I'm on Dunlop's. 

BJ: I used to do that to. I used to say that I like the Dunlop's because of mileage I guess. Then I bought a set of the ME880's and we were going up to ride Deals Gap. I just could not believe how those things stuck so I've been on 'em ever since.

Digger: Yep, I run an ME880 on the back of my ST1100 'cause I ride that a little more spirited and on the Gold Wing I'm always ridin' two up so we take it easy. But yeah, I love those Metzler's and I got one on the back of my ST1100 too. 

BJ: Well, a friend of mine is the tire guy for FedEx and he rides with us and he got down there and looked at that tire and he told me that all tires have a less than 2% failure rate and he said this doesn't mean anything. Go ahead and buy you another Metzler. So I did. 

Digger: Yep. Yeah I mean I wouldn't shy away from it if it's a one time event and it doesn't happen all that often.

BJ: Yeah, I used to, before I retired I couldn't afford them either but I promised my wife that I would get us outta' debt before I retired and I've been retired a year now and with no bills all of a sudden it seemed like I got a raise if you know what I mean. So I can afford those Metzler's. 

Digger: Yep, I feel the same way. For us leaving the Air Force and leaving NASA came right along with eh gettin' rid of the kids and I probably have half the money I had before but we're doing fine because we just don't have the expenses. 

BJ: Well, your company is it doing OK, I mean um, everything going all right with it? 

Digger: Well, eh, we had a problem with cash flow and I, um, being a fighter pilot I guess all those years I didn't know anything about running a business and actually lost quite a bit of money the first couple of years but then we started doing things a little bit different and what I can tell people now is I can say hey I just got back from an 8500 mile motorcycle trip and it didn't cost me a dime. So what the heck.

BJ: Well, again, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to talk to me.

Digger: Well, it's my pleasure and I'm sure we'll meet down the road some day. I get all over the place and maybe you do too. If I could ask one favor if you can send me an e-mail when it does get published I'll call it up and read it and save it and all that kind of stuff. But I would really like it for my archives if MMM could send me a couple of hard copies with the article in it.

BJ: Absolutely. I'll see that you get hard copies as soon as...he usually sends me about sixty copies. I can go to your website and send them to your company address right? 

Digger: Yeah. Actually just send us an e-mail and I'll send you my snail mail address and yeah, I'd love to have a couple copies...

BJ: Yeah, I can send you, if you want ten or a dozen of 'em but I'll make sure you get copies. And what they do is, they run the hard copy and then last month's issue will be online version and your story will eventually be online too. Anyway, thanks again. I really appreciate it. I could talk to you all day but I know you got better things to do than talk to me. 

Digger: Nope. I'll tell you what, if it's got to do with motorcycling I don't have anything better to do. Since we just got back from that 8500 mile business trip lasted two months and I've got a mountain of paperwork here at the house and I hate doing that so I've enjoyed this hour of playing hooky this morning. 

BJ: Well look here, while I'm thinking about it we were on line looking at some of the post's you had made that was my way of trying to find out a little bit more about you and you had something you pulled out of your toolbox with that knurled knob and that little cable you know.

Digger: Oh yeah, yeah.

BJ: You put that online and ask if anybody knew what it was and we read the replies and of course a lot of those guys are just a bunch of smart alecks and we laughed our heads off at some of those replies...

Digger: Yeah. You know eh, turns out I've been able to decipher, based on, you know if want answers on that forum you've got to be a detective because you'll get little bits and pieces from different people. You know my wife has been a nurse forever and I finally showed it to her and she says well you dumb jerk I know exactly what that is. I gave that to you back in the seventies when I was going through nursing school. It was something she was going to throw away. She'll do that. She'll bring home stuff that's not sterile anymore and stuff like that and I'll look at it and I'll say you know I can use that in the shop. So, it's great having a nurse as a wife. 

BJ: Yeah, my wife works in the medical field too. She runs an ENT clinic. Anyway the best answer out of that whole group was, and the guy must be a real gear head, he said I don't know what it is but if you're gonna' throw it out I want it. (Both laughing)

Digger: Well you know if you do your own work you never throw anything out and I find myself using little parts that I've had in my drawer for thirty years. I'll pull it out and say well I can use this on my Gold Wing you know.

BJ: Well, I wish I was an engineer like you so I could do a little bit more, there's things I'd like to do to the bike that I'm just not capable of. I have two brothers that are engineers but they won't help me 'cause they're not interested in motorcycles. For instance on the bottom of the Gold Wing you know that coolant recovery tank. A friend of mine on his '09 had a welding rod, the old type welding rod; go right through it so we were trying to figure out how to build some sort of guard on it. I finally just wrapped mine in metallic tape. I put about three layers on it and I hope that will help a little.

Digger: You know, if you take that tank out of there there's one bolt. The bitch of gettin' it out is those little hoses that are hooked up to it. There's these little wire clamps and you gotta' get those loose. But if you can get that tank outta' there and set it on your bench you can come up with something real easy. I just made something out of galvanized steel riveted some stuff together on it with pop rivets and um I hold it on some long zip ties. And every now and then one of the zip ties break but I use three of 'em and I just replace them whenever they break. I don't know if I've ever had anything hit that little guard but it sure is worth the peace of mind having something down there. 

BJ: There is. That's a poor design I think. But I've had it out. I know what you mean about those little hoses.

Digger: If you look at my post's those chintzy little spring clamps I threw them as far as I could and I went down to NAPA and I got some spring clamps and I use them and I actually had a little leak in that area at one time and I kinda' fixed that up so um, There is a buncha' little things on the bike that could be done better and if you get into it and start taking stuff apart you're likely to put it back together a slightly different way. You come up with ideas how to make it last a little bit longer. I'm a big believer in, you know motorcycles are not the same quality that you're gonna' find in cars. It's just because, well I don't know why it is. I don't think the profit margin's there or something like that. You know Honda makes very little money on their motorcycles compared to what they make on their cars. But the basic engineering design of the bike is great it's just that some of the little details could have been done a little bit better. You know guys like us are more than capable of making those little fixes to it ad making it into a better machine that'll never break down on you. 

BJ: Yeah, yeah it's eh certainly a good bike. This is my third one by the way and prior to that I rode Harley-Davidson's for years. I've had my licenses since 1965. But I rode Harley's for years and eh...but I haven't got as many miles on bikes though as you have. I'm kinda' like a guy said one time, I owned several motorcycles before I got my first motorcycle. 

Digger: I bought a Gold Wing in 1981, a GL1100 and I guess I was only 24, 25 years old at the time, it was right before I got in the Air Force and it was a stripper you know, it didn't have a fairing or anything on it but I put a Windjammer Fairing on it and I bought some of the Hondaline luggage that looked like Samsonite luggage and I put that on the bike and I kept that bike for twenty years and put 125,000 miles on it and I loved it and my wife loved it and when I sold it I bought that ST1100 and my wife didn't care for it that much. She didn't like the back seat so that's why I had to go and buy another Gold Wing. 

BJ: You said you go on all your business trips on the Gold Wing. Do you pull a trailer?

Digger: No sir we don't. But when we're on a trip we're packed about as full as you can pack that trunk and those saddlebags.

BJ: We've got a Bushtec Trailer and eh you know I don't even know it's back there. It only weighs 125 pound. The reason I bought it, I was at a rally one day and the founder of Bushtec, John Preston, picked that trailer up about two foot off the ground and dropped it, and it was empty, and it didn't bounce. I could not believe that trailer wouldn't bounce. So, it sold me right there and I had to buy one. 

Digger: Yeah, I've got one of those Bushtec front fender extenders back in '05 whenever I bought my bike and eh, I paid a pretty penny for it but it's good quality stuff and I haven't, knock on wood, I haven't had any problems with it cracking or anything like that but I did take my time installing it that's for sure. So I think they make good stuff. 

BJ: Bushtec?

Digger: Yeah.

BJ: Yeah, the trailer I've got right now is a '94 and I bought it new. I'm putting a new seal around the lid this winter. I've got to put that on, other than that I've never had any trouble out of it. 

Digger: Yeah. Yeah. 

BJ: It's been...It's got half again as many miles on it as the motorcycle has I guess.

BJ: You live in Colorado Springs Now?

Digger: Yes sir.

BJ: We were out there and went to the Flying W Ranch a couple years ago. bunch of us did. In fact we stayed at the Eagle motel .

Digger: Yeah we go out there every other year or so. 

BJ: It sure is pretty country out there. I can certainly see why y'all settled there. In fact, years ago when I was with Greyhound I went to the Air Force Academy Chapel for services one Sunday morning.

Digger: My son eh, my son graduated from there and he's in Afghanistan right now.

BJ: Is he a pilot?

Digger: No. He wanted to be a pilot turns out he had color blindness so he's a security cop. He's a first LT. out there and this kid is eh, how old is he? He's twenty five years old and he's got a 160 people under him out there...security troops. So I just eh, I just say a little prayer for him every night.

BJ: Well, I will too then Digger. Appreciate it again for all this time you're giving me. And of course wish you're son the best. How long has he got before he comes home?

Digger: He eh, he just got over there about a month ago so, they could extend his tour and everything but so far looks like he'll be coming back in April or something like that. 

BJ: Yeah.

Digger: But, eh I've read a couple of your column's when I was getting ready for this interview and all that and I'm lookin' forward to eh, looking forward to seeing your work on this one. I think you do good work. You're a good writer. 

BJ: Thank you Digger, I appreciate that. Like I said I could talk to you all day but I will end it and thanks so much and I'm glad I asked you now. I'll be looking for you're post's on line.

Digger: Sure. Most of my posts are maintenance related but I get on general forum too. 

BJ: If you run into a blue gold wing out there and the riders are wearing yellow helmets it's probably us...(laughing)

Digger: Well, maybe we'll stop and have a cup of coffee or something. 

BJ: Yep. Sounds good. Take care of yourself . Thanks again. 

Digger: You betcha'.