So who are you all in real life?

[Endopotential]

Is Buddha really in the FBI's witness protection program, as an old thread suggests?

Does ShowBizWolf's hair really look like that in real life?

What does Watcher watch after?

I've really enjoyed being part of this forum for the past year.  Thanks to you all, I finished a build project that I really enjoy.
This place is full of great information and good cheer, absent all the drama and obscenities of other places.

But wondering who everyone really is.  Or would you all prefer the quiet anonymity of the net?

I'll volunteer - my name is David, and during the daytime I'm a medical doctor.  But I'd really rather spend my time tinkering in the garage, and then testing out my handiwork on the road.
I leave in Pacifica, an easily overlooked town just 7 miles SW of San Francisco.  I resisted the temptation of getting a motorcycle for years, looking after folks who crashed theirs.  But so glad that I finally joined the club.  It's one of the best parts of my life.  You can't live in a bubble forever...

Cheers to everyone! 

[Endopotential]

OK  so sorry, brain fart.  I've checked out this site for so long that I spaced that the top thread has all the introductions.  I didn't go through all 142 pages to figure out who is who.

Mods, please feel free to delete this thread, or merge it with the other one.

But maybe all the regularly active or new members can chime in?

[mr72]

But maybe all the regularly active or new members can chime in?

I don't think the introductions do what your post did for most of us.

BTW my name is Josh, which is easy enough figure out from my signature. By day I am a technical marketing manager for a software company in Austin, and I live in Cedar Park TX, a suburb. I also moonlight playing music and writing novels. And I'm a serial hobbyist, do-it-yourselfer and addicted to building things so I take on all kinds of projects, the latest has been an epic deck project, house remodeling, and I am about 90% finish building a pub in my house. And I'm a pretty avid cyclist and mountain biker. I could go on and on about my various hobbies and projects. Actually I think the GS500 is pretty much done. Now it's in repair and maintenance mode, which is less interesting so I just ride it.

I rode motorcycles as a kid and only started back up here in my mid 40s as my dad wanted me to ride with him... similarly he rode motorcycles when he was younger and quit when we all moved to TX in the 80s because it's quite hazardous, and he only got back into it again about a year ago sort of as a pre-retirement gift to himself. I've never owned a road motorcycle until the GS, but I feel like I was born to be on two wheels so I ride as much as I can.

EDIT: In case anyone is interested, I have written two novels and I'm working on a third. Hoping this will become a sort of retirement career for me. Go check them out! joshkarnes.net, or on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Hindsight-Daedalus-Book-Josh-Karnes-ebook/dp/B017E71C4O/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1493950059&sr=8-2-fkmr0&keywords=author+josh+karnes
https://www.amazon.com/Griffin-Paradox-Daedalus-Book-ebook/dp/B01K99BZPK/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493950059&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=author+josh+karnes

[rscottlow]

I agree with Josh. I like the thread. No anonymity here, as it's all out on the web anyway.

I'm Scott, a 28 year old guy from a small town just north of Cincinnati, Ohio. I was born here, and have lived here all my life. I'm an insurance underwriter for a national carrier based out of Cincinnati, but this is a relatively new career to me. I worked in the mortgage industry prior to this. I'm married with two little kids at home, which is probably an odd time to get into motorcycling. My dad rode when he was young, but hasn't owned a bike in the better part of a half-century, long before I was born. I had toyed with the idea of getting a bike for several years, but finally was convinced when my little brother signed us up for the MSF course and then went out and bought an SV a week later. As soon as I got that brand new TU250X out of first gear at the MSF course, I knew I wanted a bike of my own. So, even though my wife wasn't crazy about the idea, I bought one. Most of my weekend and evening time is spent with the family, so I'm commuting with the bike a lot more this year in an effort to get more miles under my belt. The remainder of my hobbies were mostly put on hold when I bought a house and had kids - there's just not enough time to go around! I rarely call a professional for help with anything, so in addition to working on my cars and my GS, I have redone the roof, flooring, kitchen cabinets and countertops, and bathroom in my house over the past three years.

[Darkstar]

I work for Yamaha, gathering competitive information...kidding. My real name is Tom, my Darkstar alias refers to my love for the Grateful Dead. I've worked in the electronic imaging field for 20 years, particularly in color science and printing. Messed around with dirt-bikes and four wheelers in the 80's. Didn't buy my own moto until I hit my 40's because I was afraid I'd die riding it, pretty sure that will happen anyway, but I'm enjoying myself. Did a ton of research before finally settling on the GS. Got it from a woman who stored it in a garage and rode it very little, so she still had all the original hang-tags and stickers and documentation, but also didn't keep up with the maintenance. That's what brought me here, and I'm very grateful for all the time folks here have invested in helping me. I'm currently out of work because my industry matured, so i ride a lot, but I'm running out of cash. Anyone know an old couple with a garage loft, I'm willing to change my name to Fonzie.

[Endopotential]

Well a big hello to Josh, Scott, Tom and the rest of you out there!

I'm gratified you feel the same way about meeting (at least online) all the people we've been writing to all these months.

Maybe if you all agree - it'd be nice just to have a single post from each individual member.  If you have additions, please modify your original post. 
Let's try to save any digressions for separate threads.

Hoping that this can be an singular thread where we can poke in to easily figure out who is who, rather than having it branch out into a thousand different directions.

[ShowBizWolf]

Hahaha my hair USED to look like that! Pic of me from 2010 (although currently it's getting back to that) :


My name is Brittney and I'm a 33 year old gal, happily living with 4 cats and working in the lab at The American Red Cross for the past 8 years.

My '98 GS was/is my first motorcycle, I bought it in 2012 and taught myself to ride. I also drive the Johnstown Turtle Van (find it on facebook!) and have a (heavily modified) '94 Dodge Spirit.

I have a degree in Fine Arts from Indiana University of Pennsylvania but I'm not using it. I love beer and being a homeowner.  Often times on my days off I can be found at my Dad's auto repair shop which has been open since 1972. I've always enjoyed learning from him and working on my vehicles.

I'm always looking to expand my ShowBiz Pizza Place and TMNT collections. I also have a fair amount of Bewitched memorabilia.

Love being a part of this forum!

[MichaelM3]

I get great pleasure from maintaining and repairing all sorts of things. Really not into coaxing that last horsepower out of a machine that was never designed to give it - that I did 'way back when' with MGBs and rally cars. Now I get joy from seeing an 'old' things doing what they were designed to do (that goes for me and the machines).

Other than that I'm an academic in media and communication in Newcastle (the one in Australia). Both my area of study and my geographical location have seen so much change. Newcastle is (for good or evil) the worlds largest coal port - it's a city that had a very strong heavy industry background. I used to work in a steel mill here, a seriously dirty and dangerous place. All that changed, now the city's largest employers are the region's health service and the University. Likewise, the media and communication industries have seen radical change. For an academic that's ideal - it gives us stuff to talk about 

[user11235813]

Well I am an ordinary idiot (in the nicest possible way) much like everyone else here. What I mean by that is that I have skills that I could teach to anyone here, unlike say the skills required by Einstein to learn the geometry of Minkowski four dimensional curved space in order to formulate his general theory of relativity.

However believe it or not, but I have developed a ground breaking completely new paradigm in sexual philosophy that is a deep as it is broad. I'm not a certified academic which is kinda good because that was the point of the above paragraph. I have solved all the problems that people have in their relationships as well as the ones they don't even realise are problems because it appears to be normal and accepted. What are my qualifications I do not hear you ask. I've done it. Over a period of 30 years with one remarkable woman, it's has been a rollercoaster that is barely believable and at one stage I did not think would ever end much less have me still alive at this point. There are no children involved obviously because it's been full time all the time. I've been down every dead end, followed everything to it's logical conclusion, I was tested to the brink of insanity and I truly believed many times that this madness would not end. So you can believe me when I say it's no wonder no one has worked it out. I feel blessed and chosen for this. She is a woman who is some sort of ethereal other worldly creature with a light that shines bright living in a world of grubs who want to snuff it out, which would have happened. I on the other hand annoy people because I don't really care about anything other than solving the puzzle that we are all presented in life. Of course I did not understand all this till about 15 years into the relationship. And if I knew what was going to evolve, I doubt I'd have signed up. But I probably would have. I have discovered stuff that nobody knows. But like all good science if you can prove me wrong, good luck.

It will be a book maybe a movie one time, but at the moment I'm concentrating on the most urgent and serious problem facing the world namely the non education of the coming generation of children regarding what they need to know in this Brave New World of internet pornography and bullshit.

I was listening to an audio book the past week, or a couple actually, I'm not sure which one it was, could have been The 4% Universe by Richard Panek, a fantastic journey into the story and the many subterfuges behind the groundbreaking discovery of Dark Energy, or the cosmological constant or Lambda or whatever you want to call it, in 1998. The other book was Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics, which is also the story of the gestation of String Theory and a rare insight into the politics of theorists at University and how science moves forward, so I'm not too sure which book this came from but there was a bit where physicists have a choice to go with what's popular to go with their heart, job security or intellectual honest to oneself. And Lee Smolin related a tale of one of the Faculties who wanted to hire and their requirements were you don't have to teach, you don't get tenure but you have to have something new, interesting and exciting their only requirement, and this is the point of this lengthy paragraph, is that it doesn't have to be right, it just has to be reasonable. Because this is the only way science moves forward.

My work is both right and reasonable, it's perfect, it's flawless, it is a paradigm without injunctions, it's not based on anyone else's stuff, it's all original and able to be followed with the same logical ability that we see every day on this forum in tracking down a mechanical problem. All I see in academic publications are ever more intricate descriptions of the problems. I explain the problem and provide the solution. Not a theoretical solution but stuff so obvious that it's must be embarrassing to academics whose job it is to work this stuff out. The proof that they know nothing is the solutions that are given to the problem of internet pornography with regards to young children. with an entire world full of think tanks what have they managed to come up with... er  how best to filter it how best to ban it, FFS is that all you got. It makes me angry that self professed experts go up before the public and talk utter bullshit while a generation of young people who are being destroyed.

The problem is the peculiar self reflexive nature of the subject matter. For example it doesn't matter what sort of a person you are anyone can be an artist if they have that particular talent, like Picasso for example he was a sublime artist but a pathological psychopath, or all the other peculiar sexual problems of famous physicists like the painfully shy Dirac, or Einstein's problems he got caught up in in his marriage despite his extraordinary ability. In this work however the only credential worth anything is an examination of the person's life you have to have lived this work to teach it. I didn't set out to do anything, just tried to solve those normal relationship problems that everyone is familiar with, the only difference is that I stuck with it and determined to solve what I could. I am about to begin publishing on my website but at the moment I've got a few months of organising all my work first.

Left school at 17 to work in a professional processing laboratory in a basement in Sydney 1973 hand processing E-3 and C-22. I got the mumps one day at work and was sent home so I thought I'd drop my Harley 350 (aermacchi) in for a service on the way, a car moved sideways into me and I went sliding down the road, no damage other than a little graze on my ankle, our family solicitor got me $1000 for that and I bought a ticket and went to London and thus began an extraordinary journey leading to the defining moment when an 18 year old waif literally walked into my 32 year long life. Me and a friend had set up a enterprise in the old electricity substation in Redfern Sydney making slides for Audio Visual presentations. All done by hand using traditional methods which were far superior to what computer printing could do in those days. And thus began the second part of the scarcely believable journey I mentioned earlier and out of which came this work. It's like magic. Now I just write and will moving into a rented house in the hinterland of Queensland surrounded by some excellent motorbike roads to clear my head and maybe bushwalking up all the peaks of the Glasshouse mountains.

Seriously you can see by this and hundreds of similar stories of people who apparently have everything, wealth, fame, power to a limited degree, even some talent.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2017/may/04/who-let-brad-pitt-fashotainment-gq-style-shoot-interview-happen

Oh well you asked and this is what you got.

[Watcher]

My name is Ben, I left my Chicago home of 27 years last year for the blue skies of Tucson Arizona.

Been in and out of several jobs over my life, from package handler to machinist, and decided that riding motorcycles was my passion (also why I left Chicago, can't ride year-round because of snow).  Got my MSF certification and got hired by a company in AZ and now I teach new riders all about how to use a clutch and turn their head.
I also currently work part time, possibly full time soon, at Cycle Gear, which to the uninitiated is a motorcycle parts and apparel store.
I couldn't be happier with my current lines of work, and although I've been down on my luck for the past several months things are finally coming up roses!

On my 7th motorcycle, been riding for about as many years, and I refuse to own cars at this point.  Currently on a 2000 Ducati Monster 750, but I did have two GS500Es, a 1996 and a 1997, among a few older Suzukis, a Honda CB500F, and a Buell Lightning XB12SS.

Outside of motorcycles I'm an avid PC gamer (where Watcher comes from, way back in the days of Counter-Strike, more about that in a thread in the off-topic section about usernames).  Mostly first-person shooters and some limited RPGs like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Dark Souls.
I did used to mountain bike back in Chicago, was part of a local organization that partnered with IMBA and I have my blood sweat and tears in some of the single-track trails.  Currently don't bicycle but with a mountain in my "backyard" I'm sure to get back into it.
I'd also like to get involved with HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) and learn to swordfight.  Would be a fun little side project.  One of those utterly useless skills that's totally badass.   

[J_Walker]

I'd also like to get involved with HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) and learn to swordfight.  Would be a fun little side project.  One of those utterly useless skills that's totally badass.

First rule, get a sword with an unscrewable pommel, to end them rightly.

[Big Rich]

I like threads like this....

Let's see..... My name actually is Rich, but no I'm not a big guy. I'm 36, married with a 5 year old son. Also a machinist, but not the useful kind..... I do large scale / high production work. There's a 99.9% chance that I have worked on something that you have benefited from......

I grew up in the military (which means I moved around a LOT) so I never had a motorcycle as a kid. I did spend a good bit of time outside though- hunting, fishing, hiking, biking, golf, etc, etc.. But about 10 years ago I was diagnosed with discoid lupus. Everybody has an idea what lupus is, but that's systemic lupus which is the "bad" one. Mine is more of a skin disease that is really affected by UV light..... and my life changed dramatically! Since I have very limited exposure to sunlight, I drifted towards motorcycles (atgatt takes a new meaning for me). More will be added later I'm sure.....

When I was growing up, I hated moving to a new home (and sometimes a new school) every year and a half. But for the past couple years I've been daydreaming of living a gypsy-ish lifestyle.... and I really want to travel at a slower pace than I did as a child. Motorcycles (and bicycles) give me that opportunity. Speaking of bicycles, I have been getting back into that heavily too. I'm planning (too early to say for sure yet though) on riding from Pittsburgh to Washington DC this year. .

That's enough for now..... I'll add more later though.

[the_63]

My parents named me Christopher, but I'll only answer to Chris. Nicknames include Biddy and big sexy  I'm a 30 year old Welshman who relocated to the east coast of the UK nearly 4 years ago to study to be a nurse.

I was always kept from dangerous things like powertools and motorcycles as a youth. When I was 14 I started to take an interest in cars, specifically the modification and aesthetics of them. At 18 I decided I wanted to learn to ride but my mother and my girlfriend said no, so at 21 I dumped my girlfriend and at 26 I abandoned my mother and left for university (after I became a personal trainer, had my own business, ran it into the ground and spent another year in college to be able to apply for uni). 3 months later I had my full motorcycle licence. 

In August 2015 I became very depressed and turned to alcohol to help deal with that  One day I came across a 1999 GS500 for £500, so I bought it 

My username is the number I wore playing american football for my uni, UEA Pirates and their the only sports team at the uni with a number 63. Therefore I am THE 63.

Chris

[qcbaker]

Name's Quinn, and I'm 23. I study computer science and work in IT Security. Like Watcher, I'm an avid PC gamer as well (PM me your Steam ID, Watcher!). Other hobbies include hiking, fishing, and rock climbing. I also play a bit of guitar. As for motorcycles, I rode dirt bikes as a kid, but wasn't able to get a street bike until last year. My dad has owned bikes my whole life, so I've always wanted to ride. Finally being able to do it feels like realizing a dream.

[Watcher]

I'd also like to get involved with HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) and learn to swordfight.  Would be a fun little side project.  One of those utterly useless skills that's totally badass.

First rule, get a sword with an unscrewable pommel, to end them rightly.

No, I'm not throwing the pommel at my enemy and compromising my sword handle at the same time...

I won't hesitate to do the Mordhau, though.

[dominickbuff]

hi my name is Dominick i am 20 and and in college for i.t .... i am currently a shelf filler at my local grocery store and I also am a huge fan of gaming computers my current rig is a z97gaming 5 ,24 gb of ram , titan black sc , 4460 cpu , and 3 curved monitors 

i wanted to get into motorcycle riding years ago but my parents were hell bent against it but one day my grandpa showed up with a honda rebel 250cc to get me into riding 
you should have seen the look on my parents faces it was priceless.... now 3 years later and im finally able to afford a new bike 

[Suzuki Stevo]

Stevo, Aerospace Painter, look up in the sky when a Boeing plane flys by and see my work!
49 years riding, 29 bikes later....Lean and Believe! 

(Bikes are my Real Life  )

[KGSB11]

Well I am an ordinary idiot (in the nicest possible way) much like everyone else here. What I mean by that is that I have skills that I could teach to anyone here, unlike say the skills required by Einstein to learn the geometry of Minkowski four dimensional curved space in order to formulate his general theory of relativity.

Oddly enough, unrelated to your post, I spent several hours yesterday on Youtube trying to understand 4-dimensional space and Hyper-Cubes.  Because I'm a nerd I guess.

[KGSB11]

Name is Bob and have been around the Sun 31 times; I was born in suburbs of Detroit but have lived in the Illinois for the last 20 years, currently living in the Fox Valley area about 30mi west of Chicago.

During the day I am a Plant Operations Engineer for a large housewares product company; I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA in Operations (my name, KGSB, is an abbreviation of DePaul's graduate school).  I have a wife of 9 years and two girls (5 and 2).

I am generally new to motorcycling; I spent many a good time on dirt bikes in Michigan, but last time I threw a leg over was about 10 years ago.  Took the MSF course in October, rented a Harley in November and I purchased my GS from a college student in Indiana on Superbowl Sunday and have put about 250 miles on the clock since.

Like rscottlow, many weekends are with family, but the weekday commuting is where I rack up most of my miles.

[pliskin]

Hello, my name is Simon and I like to do drawings