Driven to Ride

Ari Henning makes difficult look easy. That is, the host of “The Shop Manual,” RevZilla’s popular DIY video series, is able to convey with authority and clarity highly technical subjects related to motorcycle maintenance. If you don’t know Henning, you might think he is quoting directly from an actual shop manual. In reality, he knows those crucial details like the back of his throttle hand.

Henning inherited the ability to confront the uncomfortable from his ex-racer father, Todd. “There was this sense that, ‘If someone can build something, I can figure out how to take it apart.’ Seeing dad fix anything, whether it was a motorcycle or the dishwasher or the furnace, imbued in me, ‘You can figure this out.’ So I never hesitated to take something apart.”

That blind dive-into-the-unknown approach stretches beyond the shop to the open road. Henning and lifelong buddy Zack Courts’ often-comical “Common Tread XP” travel capers have been seen by millions on YouTube. “There’s this perception people seem to have that, when you leave your zip code, you’re more likely to have a mechanical or something,” he says. “That never bothered me.”

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Jared Zaugg remembers the exact moment that motorcycles entered his life. He was an impressionable teenager, who, like many younger siblings, thought the world of his older brother. “He was super cool,” says Zaugg. “One day, he comes riding up to the house on a motorcycle he borrowed. I don’t even remember the brand or model, but that was it. I thought, ‘That’s for me.’”

Thanks to his parents, Zaugg was raised around vintage automobiles. So, a deep interest in and an appreciation for machinery from a bygone era was already part of his genetic makeup. Which explains why he naturally gravitated toward vintage bikes. Not because they were less expensive, Zaugg notes. They weren’t, he acknowledges, but that’s where his personal tastes took him.

“Driven to Ride” podcast host Mark Long digs into Zaugg’s wondrous “Legend of the Motorcycle International Concours d'Elegance,” which celebrated the art and history of motorcycling. “Having motorcycles on a golf course at a resort on the ocean was unique,” says Zaugg. “It elevated motorcycles to the same level as motorcars, works of art worthy of admiration and presentation.”

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Do you remember your first motorcycle ride? Chances are, you were a teenager or maybe even younger. Ken Hill is an exception to that rule of thumb. In fact, the California native didn’t purchase his first motorcycle, a Honda CBR600F2, until age 30. He began road racing the very same year. Now in his early 60s, Hill is considered the top riding coach in the U.S.

“I always wanted to race cars,” Hill admits to “Driven to Ride” podcast host Mark Long. “I couldn’t afford to race cars, so I said, ‘You know what? I’ll race motorcycles.’ I’d never been to a track, never seen a motorcycle race. I was time-crunched. I was finance-crunched. To do something that I wanted to do, and to do it well, I had to structure it.”

A successful racing career led to instructor roles at the Freddie Spencer High Performance Riding School and the Yamaha Champions Riding School. Hill ultimately founded his own one-on-one coaching business, Ken Hill Coaching. “There’s nothing better than riding well,” he says. “I believe anybody can do it if they have to have the discipline and the right methodology.”

khcoaching.com

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A Swiss-born adventurer, photographer, and vlogger, Nathalie Depierraz has spent most of the past decade traveling by motorcycle throughout Europe and Africa. Known to her audience as “Nata On The Road,” she leads a largely nomadic life. “I would dare to say I’m a pro traveler,” Depierraz tells “Driven to Ride” host Mark Long, adding with a laugh, “I’m absolutely not a pro rider.”

For Depierraz, her choice of motorcycle—a Royal Enfield Himalayan 411 that she refers to as “my little tractor”—is simply a two-wheel tool used to achieve her greater travel goals. “Not that the bike doesn’t mean anything,” she concedes, “but I would never take my motorbike to just go around for an hour or something like that. That’s not my type of riding.”

Depierraz equates the travel experience to breathing oxygen—she can’t exist without it. With that in mind, risk, real or imagined, melts away. “For a lot of people, it’s scary,” she admits. “‘What if I don’t make it?’” And no other form of transportation provides the independence of a motorcycle. “I can go wherever I want, whenever I want,” she says. Who could ask for anything more?

Check out Nata on the Road on Instagram and YouTube.

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You’ve no doubt seen Tom McComas flash across the big screen, usually falling off a building or wheelying a motorcycle through rush-hour traffic. That's because he’s a bonafide Hollywood stuntman. McComas credits his career choice to a best-selling self-help book, “What Color is Your Parachute?” Summing it up, he says, “Figure out what you like to do, and find out a way to get paid doing it.”

McComas discovered his first love, motorcycling, growing up in Chicago. Bitten by the competition bug, he road raced for six years before discovering he could get paid to crash bikes. “I thought, ‘I’m not afraid to fall down. I like to fight. Let’s go!’” His big break? Doubling actor David Hasselhoff on the popular 1990s television series “Baywatch.”

McComas has since chalked up hundreds of appearances in film and on TV. “Getting into stunts was so difficult,” he says in reflection. “There’s a lot of rejection. I’m really grateful to be in the position I’m in, because I don’t go to work, I go to 

play

. Some days are better than others, for sure, but it’s amazing you can make a career out of doing what I do.”

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