Thirty Days and Fifteen Hundred Dollars: A Conversation with Tom Gosselin

Who is Tom Gosselin? Twenty years in the bicycle industry before he ever threw a leg over a motorcycle. A hardtail Sportster built in thirty days on fifteen hundred dollars, four and a half acres of Maine woods, astrophysics nerd because of Indian Larry, and a job with the BMW MOA.

Tom lives in the balance between BMW and custom motorcycles, and the reason we started talking at all was the show he is putting on with the BMW MOA at Barber, which runs inside BMW Motorrad Days. The show is called the Builders Best presented by BMW MOA during BMW Motorrad days, which happens to run at the same time as Barber vintage days October 9-11.

BMW owners are encouraged to be a part of the community shows Friday and Saturday and bring their motorcycles into the BMW Motorrad days area and park their motorcycles alongside the 25 custom builds as a celebration of the BMW community.

The MOA if you are not familiar, is the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America, an amazing organization I just learned about and the owners of the Anonymous Book, which we will get to later.

But lets start with Tom - A couple of years ago, he got laid off and was at what he called a tumultuous point in his life. So Tom did what most of us do when shit gets rough, he got on his bike. The first Born Free Texas was coming up, he had nothing going on, being the supportive wife she was, she told him to go. He and a friend rode from Colorado down to eastern Texas, and on day two they were crossing the plains of West Texas in the late afternoon with the sun going down. The late afternoon sun, a close friend on the road with you, the real world had finally melted away and Tom was 100% in it.

"Just this moment of calm came over me. No idea where I was. Everything just melted away." It lasted a moment and he has been chasing it ever since. "It was the sort of sensation that you will chase a lifetime to look for."

Back in the real world, Tom’s garage is a mix of rides, a KLR 650 his brother handed down, a Sportster chopper running a rigid frame and a rear brake only, a couple of Yamaha XS projects, and a shovelhead he swears will someday be a Harley longbike.

The KLR came to Tom in the way all KLRs arrive at your doorstep, needing a ton of work and parts. Tom has what he calls moderate skills for working on motorcycles and once he finished the bike, he took it on a 2,500 mile ride, which is either crazy confidence or just crazy, frankly I am not sure.

The Sportster came out of the Blue Collar Build-Off, which gives you thirty days and fifteen hundred dollars to modify a bike, not counting the donor. He brought the Sportster down to the front half of the frame, the motor and the transmission. New trees, new tubes, new wheels, hard tailed the frame. He figures he dedicated about a hundred and twenty hours on top of working full time, and while selling his house to move back to Maine.

I resonate with this style of building. You are close to the breaking point; you have all the energy in the world to survive. It's quite motivating.

When talking about his Yamaha XS, I told him about the XS I built with six overs on it (that's 6 inches over stock) which I rode three times before admitting it was not for me. Tom, who has ridden a set of six over all the way to Texas, was diplomatic, but told me that the XS neck is not raked for it, he said. Rake it, slacken the head angle, and it becomes stable.

He traces the appeal for that look back to fixed gear bikes and a BMX skateboard punk rock background. A little bit outlaw, a little bit silly, harder than it needs to be, but that's what makes it fun.

So how does that kind of guy end up in the BMW mix?

Two and a half years ago a coworker introduced him to Bob and Sue Aldridge, who were building the first Builder's Best Show. They knew how to stage an event. What they lacked was contacts in the custom world, and Tom was at Bike EXIF, which meant contacts were the one thing he had in surplus. He and Sue worked the phones and year one landed eighteen or nineteen custom bikes. Then Vermont. Then conversations with Ted, the MOA's executive director, about the organization's next fifty years, and here we are.

I mentioned before, but a big part of MOA memberships is the Anonymous Book. It is a nationwide directory of MOA members who have volunteered to help riders. You break down in Chandler, Arizona, you open it, and Johnny will put you up for the night and Stu has a trailer. There is an app and there is a physical book. You have to be a member for access, but nobody in it is screening you on what badge is on your tank.

Want in? Use the code Ammotoco at the MOA Member Forces page and it gets you a free year at the MOA -Anonymous Book included.

For the record, Tom does not own a BMW yet. He is buying one next year and cannot decide between an F 900 R and an R 18 bagger. Nobody at the MOA appears to think this is a problem, which tells you something about the place.

Which makes the last thing he said all the stranger. "I feel like I have a strong imposter syndrome for being within this industry." He came to motorcycles late and is surrounded now by people with enormous mileage and enormous knowledge. "I am just a guy that likes to build some things from time to time and a guy that likes to ride things from time to time." He does not have thirty or fifty thousand miles a year in him, so part of his brain says maybe he does not belong. But this is a guy who hard tailed a Sportster in thirty days for fifteen hundred bucks and rode a resurrected KLR 2,500 miles three weeks after finishing it.

I just write the stories, but in my opinion Tom’s journey says he more than belongs.

The Takeaways

• For new riders. You can start late and you can start with nothing. Tom did not throw a leg over anything until his twenties, after twenty years of bicycles, and he is the one assembling the custom show at Barber now. Nobody is checking your start date.

• For experienced riders. The bike parked next to you took somebody their whole winter. You do not have to want it, you just have to see the work in it.

• For all of us. Put your name down for somebody. The Anonymous Book only works because a few thousand people wrote their phone number in it for a stranger who might never call, and that is the entire sport working the way it is supposed to.