The following is a transcript of the video above featuring Drew Perlmutter.
Hey, I’m Drew Perlmutter. I would call myself a photographer. I always try and get up to anything creative: photo, video. I love motorcycles; try and tie that in.
I always kind of had an interest with anything mechanical, engines, and I guess the idea of knowing how to operate an entirely different type of machine is also what drew me to them.
I kind of romanticized the idea of becoming a handy person, and buying an old motorcycle, and learning how to work on it yourself.
You know one day when you just get into something and then out of nowhere takes over your entire life. It’s kind of what motorcycles were.
Motorcycles Are Everything
It’s kind of weird to think about that – motorcycles occupy a lot of my life. It is something that I’m very passionate about. It’s something that I try and tie into my career: mixing my creative endeavors with my passion for motorcycles.
It’s an adrenaline fix. It’s exciting, but with it becomes such a great community of other riders and creative minds. And I’ve found that with motorcycling it kind of touches every point in part of your life.
One of the most memorable experiences that I’ve had on a motorcycle, and I travel a lot via motorcycle, it’s easily my most favorite way to travel, I’m a big adventure rider – throw bags on dual sport, ride the mountains, hit the highway and just take off.
I’ve done a few cross country trips, but probably the most memorable and biggest trip that I’ve done was I rode from Atlanta, Georgia, 16,000 miles round trip to the Arctic ocean and back: Northern Canada, Alaska. I went out west; I went through the middle of the United States, and I just saw things that I had no idea existed in my own backyard.
There’s something to be said about being solo on a motorcycle, traveling in such remote areas, being disconnected from people, your phone, waking up in the sun every day, sleeping in a tent every day, seeing mountains being surrounded by mountains. It’s something that’s, so, I don’t know, invigorating, refreshing. It’s a reset. It’s a reset. You know.
I would say that that’s probably one of my more memorable trips. Any trip on a motorcycle is memorable. You know, I’m an adventure seeker, and that’s kind of why I ride motorcycles is to get that fix and to have those experiences.
This is my 1982 Gold Wing GL 1100; it’s the first year that they made the Aspencade trim package, which, there was the Gold Wing, there was the Interstate, then there was the Aspencade. You got the nice diamond pattern seat; you got a radio; there’s a cup holder; there’s a throttle lock. This is my land yacht. It’s my early retirement plan. It’s my daily driver. I drive this thing around Atlanta, which is a very heavy, big bike for these pothole ridden streets, but I love this thing. It’s old school cool, and now people are getting hip to them. Like they’re so cheap. I had one before they were cool with young people. I’ll say that.
Why Ride a Motorcycle?
Motorcycles are great. Motorcycles have done so much for me. They have given me experiences that I never thought I would’ve had before. I’ve traveled and seen places on motorcycles that I never thought I would’ve made it there, but that I never thought I would’ve seen before. They’ve introduced me to people – that has been the common ground between me and so many people, and established relationships based off of the shared interest in motorcycling and the motorcycle community. Yeah, it’s crazy how much I owe to motorcycles and what it’s done for me. It kind of is just part of my life now, which is weird to think about.
I think if you ask a handful of my friends, my defining characteristic would be motorcycles, motorcycling, which is so funny to me to think back, because there was a point in my life not too long ago where it wasn’t, I didn’t even have a motorcycle. And to now think that, that is what I am doing for a living, that is what influences a lot of my decisions. All of my friends, most of my friends are because of motorcycles. To be ingrained in such a cool caring community. I don’t know, I’ve learned to become so much more handy and mechanically sound and interested in how they work by buying old bikes and them breaking and me trying to figure out how to fix it.
Yeah. Yeah. Like macro zoom out me, like my relationship with motorcycles. It’s crazy how, and I think like a lot of people can say similar things, that are riders, that get it. Like if you know, you know. You get it sort of thing. It’s eat, sleep, motorcycles for me sometimes. It’s eat, sleep motorcycles for me all the time. Probably all the time.
They’re cool.
They’re fun.
Find me on the internet. I’m on Instagram Drew Perlmutter. Google me – Drew Perlmutter. Don’t Google me. Yeah, don’t put that.