Kids Growing up AMCA
Brandi Riggle, Member #22892 | Published on 10/1/2019
Every lucky child grows up with the memory of family tradition. An annual time of wonder and something to look forward to throughout the years. My family treated me every Christmas to colored lights on a fresh cut tree. We decorated the pine, without fail to a warped Trans Siberian Orchestra album with as little profanity and broken glass that my parents could muster. To this day, I can still smell Blue Spruce, my dad’s hands and the must from the ancient tree skirt.
Pictured above are Brandi, Keara, Alex and newborn Harper working the Vendor’s gate at the Wauseon National
My husband grew up with the same childlike anticipation for his annual tradition. He can still recall the smell of 50 weight oil, metal, exhaust and sweet, sweet patina from attending antique swap meets with his dad. My husband can proudly say that in all of his glorious years on this Earth, he has YET to miss Wauseon, OH in July. Within a month of dating, I recognized and swallowed down the pill that I was never going to be his first love. I am a perpetual mistress to two wheels, a V-twin, and when he’s riding high, four cylinders. And I love it.
I was blessed with the privilege of embracing the antique motorcycle world and welcoming it into my life with stories of my husband urinating in the same sleeping bag as his father, sleeping under a truck with watchful eyes on a 1936 Knucklehead. He says he was three…my guess is he was 13 and wanted a rise out of the crew.
Evan and his dad, Mark Riggle taking a victory lap after Evan’s successful completion of the 2019 Cross Country Chase on Evan's 1942 Indian 4.
In April 2018, we brought our son to his very first antique motorcycle swap meet. He was seven months old and made his first successful “real” road trip out out to Oley, PA for the Perkiomen Chapter National Meet. We made local news as our chubby ball-of-boy gnawed on wrenches, perched in his custom HD wagon. That May, we saluted the antique motorcycle world from Centerville, MI and by July, we were geared up for the Wauseon National Meet.
Hudson Riggle on Dad’s 1915 Harley
The joy I get to experience, raising our now four children within the antique motorcycle community is truly unique. The friendships made along the way astound me every year. Our children boast Harley Davidson and Indian Motorcycle apparel in part of our passion and the love of those that helped raise my husband along his path. I adore seeing the niche craft in keeping these machines alive being passed from my father in-law to his son and now to our own children. It is an obsession known by few and it is one that I am so grateful to experience.
Keara Riggle on Dad’s custom 1938 Indian 4
So cheers to those that know the love of riding the antique, two-wheeled tractors of speed. Cheers to those that relish in the scent of oil, metal and exhaust. Cheers to those reading this that know the delight that comes with this phenomenal community, but mostly, cheers to our son someday soon, peeing in my husband’s sleeping bag on the hollowed grounds of Wauseon, OH.
Mark, Evans and Hudson Riggle on Evan’s 1936 Harley VLH