It was part of nature at that point: A Conversation with Parker Zamarelli

Who is Parker Zamarelli? A salesman in Nashville with seven bikes in a two-car garage. He bought his first motorcycle before he knew how to ride one, took it apart the same night, and has been in the garage ever since. He is taking an airhead bobber to Barber this year that he pulled out of a Kentucky backyard with a tree growing through the swing arm.

Why did Parker get into motorcycles you ask? - Because he wanted to save money on gas. That's literally it. The man who is moto obsessed and making magazine spreads, literally stumbled into the hobby.

He was fresh out of college, driving a big truck to a job in Ohio, and he was sick of it. He figured he would pick up an old crappy Honda, fix it up, instead what he got was a 1994 BMW K75 RT. The guys at work called it the Green Goblin, because it was big and green and pointy and ugly, and Parker looked at it the way anybody looks at a full-fairing eighties tourer when they are twenty-two years old…“You want me to buy that thing?”

Then he went home and Googled it.

What came back was a K75 cafe racer, fairing gone, plastics gone, the machine underneath finally visible. “You can take all that garbage, that fairing, all the plastic, all that junk, and there's a really cool machine under there.” He paid a thousand dollars. Parker rolled it into the garage and stripped it to the frame that night.

He spent the next year out there. Carved a tail out of foam, fiberglassed it, welded in a hoop. He worked in a shop environment, which meant that when he needed something welded he walked into work with a six pack and asked a buddy to hit it on his lunch break.

Cafe Racer magazine ran a bike show in Pennsylvania, about an hour and a half away. Parker rode down that summer and won first place.

“I got to see other people's custom bikes in person. And I was like, this is a whole scene.”

He got addicted fast.

The next one was the Progressive show in Cleveland, back when they ran a builder class you had to be invited into. He won his class, and met the people who were doing work well past his level, actual fabricators with actual skills.

None of Parker's skills came from motorcycles. It came from Legos and K'nex, from go karts, from every shop class his high school offered. At sixteen he rebuilt the engines in two four wheelers off YouTube, which was his first real wrenching.

“My dad couldn't tell you the difference between a flathead screwdriver and a Phillips. No shade to my father, but it did not come from him at all.”

But when Parker gets motivated, it's hard to stop that train.

Which brings us to the airhead.

After the K75 he wanted an air-cooled BMW badly, specifically a 1978 BMW R100C, and the ones on Facebook Marketplace were running two grand. Then he found one in Kentucky for five hundred dollars, seven hours from his house.

He hooked up a four by eight trailer behind a Chevy Colorado and drove down with his fiancee. The guy lived up in the hills. He came out on oxygen. He was not in good shape, and he pointed around the back of the house.

The bike was half under a tarp. The wheels were buried in the dirt. The forks were twisted from a wreck. There was a tree growing through the swing arm, not a full tree, but a tree. There was moss growing on the motor.

“It was part of nature at that point.”

It did not roll. So Parker dragged it around the house on its side by the front wheel, and while he was dragging it, it started raining. He got it onto the trailer soaked and covered in mud, paid the man, and asked his fiancee to drive.

He was so filthy that he took his jeans off in the truck at the bottom of the hill rather than get mud everywhere, and settled in for the rest of the drive in his boxers.

Then the flooding started. The Ohio River had put water in the fields on both sides of the road. Then it started snowing. Not flurries. A blizzard.

“I'm like, what is going on? Is this bike cursed?”

Then the truck started fishtailing, because a light truck with an empty bed and a loaded trailer behind it has no weight anywhere near the drive wheels. His fiancee said she did not know what to do. Parker reached over and steered from the passenger seat until they stopped.

Then he called a Chinese fire drill, got out into the snow in his boxers, ran around the truck, got in, and went to engage the four wheel drive.

It would not engage.

Six and a half hours home took nine and a half. At one point he was driving up a hill sideways because sideways was the only way he could find traction.

He got it in the garage and pulled it apart. Bent wheels. No title for the frame. Holes in the tank. The motor, at least, was not locked up.

Three years later, that bike is his favorite thing he has ever built, and it is the one going to Barber. If you dont have plans already, you can check out Parker's work at Barbers Vintage Festival.

He had to source a new frame and a new front end. He had the tank repaired. He resealed the top end and cleaned up the motor. Every black piece on the bike is powder coated. He had a solo seat mount fabricated at work and welded it to the frame himself. He laced the wheels, powder coating both the hoops and the hubs. He ran a dual disc BMW front end, put a slash two headlight bucket on it with an R nineT headlight inside, and cut down a slash five airbox so the filter sits visible off the back of the motor with the pipes running straight into it.

Stainless pie cut exhaust. Lowbrow fenders. Motogadget buttons, so the wiring in the bars runs to one unit and two wires run back to the controller. Kellermann signals. A GPS driven Speedhut speedometer with a BMW roundel in the middle of the face. A completely custom harness he built himself, and a battery relocated under the tank where you cannot see it.

He also designed the gas cap, and the company he works for cut and anodized it for him. Why? Because Parker is literally obsessed with this shit.

He rattled all of that off while looking at a photo of the bike on his wall, because it has been a couple of years and he wanted to get it right.

You might be asking yourself where this guys shop is, but the garage is two cars wide and holds seven bikes, all lined up with the rear tires against the wall. Above them are racks with the bottom shelf set at exactly bike height and the other wall is the lift, the toolboxes, the welding tables, and a bench he built out. Tanks on the shelves. Trophies and plaques on the wall. A beer fridge. No air conditioning, and an eighty dollar orange fan from Home Depot that he says moves air like a tornado.

He and his fiancee have been together eight years and get married in October. Neither of them has ever once parked a car in a garage.

For a guy who builds cafe racers, he has a line he will not cross, and it is not the one you expect from that scene.

“I don't believe in customizing a nice vintage bike.”

He owns an R90S. It is stock except for a Hoske exhaust, because he likes hearing it, and the original pipes are on the shelf and are staying there. He is building another one around a spare R90S motor he is buying from a friend, and he is comfortable doing it because the motor and the frame will not match numbers, which means the purists have nothing to be mad about. Basket cases get customized. Clean survivors do not.

I asked about the original bike. He is going to redo the K75 from the ground up, and he has told himself he is not allowed to ride it until he does, because it is a beautiful bike sitting drained and unridden and he is embarrassed about it.

Typically I share the takeaways, but I asked Parker directly if he had advice for a new builder and he said: “Buy the bike that already has a parts market.” Parker built the K75 back when nothing existed for it and he had to make everything himself. Now there are bolt on tails and shock kits for it. Start where somebody else already did the hard part.

Parker's bikes have shown at all the events below…

• AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days – 2nd Place in my class

• Garage Brewed Motorcycle Show – 1st Place

• Handbuilt Motorcycle Show in Austin, TX

• BMW MOA National Rally in Lebanon, TN – 1st Place

• Fuel Cleveland

• Cafe Racer Magazine show - 1st Place