From Harvard to Harley: The Wild Life of Americade Founder Bill Dutcher!

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Annick Magac interviews Bill Dutcher, the founder of Americade, an annual motorcycle rally, discussing his life and the origins of the event. Dutcher, a former Director of Public Relations for Harley-Davidson, explains how a vision born of desperation led him to create Americade, initially named Aspencade, after leaving his corporate job. He recounts his lifelong passion for motorcycling, beginning with a childhood love for bicycles and evolving into a diverse racing career and eventually a sales role in the motorcycle industry. The discussion highlights his competitive nature, his post-retirement dedication to teaching sailing and skiing to disabled individuals, and his philosophy of pursuing one's passions in life.

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AMERICADE RALLY

*** Photos of Bill Dutcher kindly provided by Victoria Zandonella.

Transcript

Bill Dutcher : Founder of Americade

Annick: Hello, my beautiful Motorheads. Welcome to FÉROCE, where we inspire you to live fiercely. I'm your host, Annick Magac. 

I was up at a Americade, an annual motorcycle rally that takes place in Lake George, New York for a few days where FÉROCE sponsored and I hosted the Ladies Coffee and Motorcycle club. I also was invited to give a seminar on podcasting. But the highlight, was doing my first LIVE interview with the founder of Americade Bill Dutcher in front of an audience.

Over the years I've heard a lot about Bill Dutcher and his infamous ability to tell a good story. He did not disappoint. Bill has had quite the life. He certainly knows how to live fiercely.

He ended the interview by saying "if there's something you love, do it". I hope this interview inspires you as much as it inspired me.

 * INTRO *

Annick: Thank you for coming. Uh, this is a very, would you like to have a seat? Okay. All right. So this is a very different and special episode for me.

I welcome everybody to FÉROCE. This is a podcast, a video and audio podcast, which we have just gone over and we're doing something a little bit different. Usually everything's prerecorded, but today I get to do a live interview, which I'm very excited about. Okay. It's like 

Bill Dutcher: diving off the high board. 

Annick: Yes, exactly.

So this is totally new for me and. I wanna start off and say that I did a little bit of research on you. This is Bill Dutcher, the founder of Americade, and this is what somebody said to me about you. Okay? 

Bill Dutcher: Am I gonna like it? 

Annick: We'll see, this man is one of the most interesting folks you'll ever interview. So bright with a brilliant mind, along with a penchant for speed.

But he's the most humble and kind man who's given his life to helping others. Oh 

Bill Dutcher: my God, I can't live up to that. 

Annick: So Bill, what made you decide to start Americade? 

Bill Dutcher: Whoa. It was the end of a long and winding road of my life. At that point I was, had just arrived living on the shores of Lake George. Rather than moving to Milwaukee, Harley wanted me to move to Milwaukee.

I had been the director of public relations for Harley Davidson and they, they consolidated in 1981 and wanted me to go out there and I looked at Milwaukee and I looked at. George and with my wife's encouragement, I said, you know, I think I'm getting off the bus. So there I was, no job. This is August of 81, which was a recession, and there were two things you couldn't do then.

You couldn't sell a house and you couldn't get a job. I had a house in Connecticut I was trying to sell and I was trying to get a job and I was coming up zero for zero, and about 10 o'clock one night I sat up in bed with, suddenly I had truly, it was a vision. I had been to an event and no. Ruidoso New Mexico called Aspencade, and it was a gathering of touring riders.

Drew a few thousand, never for the moment did I think I would be in relation to it in any way, but as PR director, my job was to schmooze and know everybody, and I suddenly sat up in bed realizing, wait a minute, this place is easily reached by lots of interstates. It's got a hell of a lot more population nearby and the motels are empty into early spring or actually late spring at that point.

I thought I might be able to make one of those things happen out here. This is a the man with no no income strung out. In fact, shortly after that, I got a terrible job with a industrial valve company, but it paid something and I was delighted to have it. So during that next, as it turned out to be year and a half, I got the thing off the ground.

I'd initially planned to have Aspencade happen in September 82, and as it turned out, Aspencade, as it was then named, was in. Middle of May 83. so what made me start it? Desperation. Desperation and suddenly a recognition that, you know, they say find a need and fill it. Mm-hmm. And I found a need, I mean, the thread that ties my life together as motorcycles.

I mean, I was a crazy bicycle rider when I was a little kid. I was always on my bicycle. So two wheels and movement is a lot of who I am about. So. I've rattled around in the industry in a whole bunch of ways. I've road race, flat tracked, Enduro, you name it, I've, I've done everything except hill climbing and competing and observed trials.

Excuse me. I haven't done Speedway either. I always wanted to do speedway, but if you name it other than that, I think the answer is yes. So I have a pretty good vision of what's out there in the motorcycle world and the opportunity to be able to create something that filled a need. Little did I know when I got this thing going, I.

I thought it'd be a little, you know, offshoot, a little side, side gig. Uh, but lo and behold, it grew and it grew and it grew. Uh, the first year we had maybe 2,500 people. It was as big as Aspencade out in New Mexico had been. And several years later I came to a fork in the road with a guy who had the rights to the name Aspencade And we ended up having come up with a name, something different.

And I thought, Hmm. Or actually my wife came up. She's the one that gets the credit on that one said, how about Americade? I said, no too many syllables because Aspencade, good, good trade names have minimum syllables like Honda, you know, just boom, boom, nice and simple. And Aspencade kind of flows Americade kind of starts and stops.

But I, I gave another thought to it and thought, wait a minute, this is a nationalized event. This would convey that notion, and it begins with an A. So the, I can keep a lot of the logos similar 'cause I created a logo. The guy never had a logo. I created this flowing thing that said. Aspencade. So any case, bingo did it and it worked better than I imagined.

And uh, Christian was in high school. That's my son who now runs Americade, owns it and runs it. And, uh, he was right there at the beginning of things. You know, I probably picking up trash or manning a gate or something. And, um, he's been part of it forever. And you know, again, little did I know it would be, I hate to say it, my legacy, 

Annick: right?

So how many people attend now? 

Bill Dutcher: It's hard to say. And here's why. Because it draws a lot more people to the area than walk through the gates. Mm-hmm. Believe me, we wish that, okay, a hundred percent of the motorcycles in town, were walking through the gates here. They don't, they come, they hang around. They might buy a t-shirt somewhere and, Hey, I've been to Americade.

So I've been careful never to state a number because the problem, there's an old joke about, you know, you know how to tell if a promoter's lying, see if his lips are moving. Well, I don't wanna be that guy. And if you. Talked to a promoter, said, how many people came to your, fill in the blank. He's gonna tell you a number, and then the next year you're gonna ask him that question again.

Well, he'd better make it a bigger number and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So what we often say is the police police have estimated it around 50,000 now. What's 50,000 on one day? Probably not. Nope. Over the course of the five days of the event, come, people come and go. 

Mm-hmm. 

Bill Dutcher: So that's my vague answer to a.

Specific question. 

Annick: Okay, I'll take it. I've 

Bill Dutcher: been consistent with that for the very reasons I mentioned there. 

Annick: Okay, that makes sense. So you had talked about when you were young that you started off on bicycles and then you obviously got into needing more speed and as was stated, you have a pension for speed.

So how did that develop? 

Bill Dutcher: Uh, I was 14 and a friend of mine had bought a Triumph, tiger Cub, 200 cc push rod, probably made, you know, 14 horsepower on a good day. And I did. Know anything about it, but he said, you want to come on over in the woods and ride this thing? Hell yeah, sure. I'd never ridden a motorcycle.

Actually, I was on the back of one once when I was about seven. My stepfather borrowed it from his brother-in-law or somebody, and I was in the back and he was a substantial sized man, and I was a scrawny little kid. And he gassed it and I fell backwards and I was terrified grabbing his belt. So that was my, uh, introduction to it at age seven.

But at age 14, I got on this thing and I, I. Didn't require any instruction is how do you put it in gear? What do you do? That's the clutch. Okay. You step on this thing and you run first. Okay, got it. And bingo, I knew how to do it, and by the end of the day, I was getting around faster than any of the rest of them.

Um, it just was meant to be, it was a hand in glove deal. So, however, then I ended up in college and, uh, oh, I missed a piece there too. Yeah, I sure did. Mm-hmm. Um, my life, my life has different pieces to it. I'd won a trip to Sweden when I was. 17, the year before I was gonna start college and it was a six week deal and then there was six more weeks before college was gonna start.

So I thought, well, I'll hitchhike. So this little tan kid wearing his leader Hosen, was hitchhiking across Northern Germany. And uh, first several rides I had were gentlemen that I was not particularly interested in getting a ride from. And so I got as far as Lear Germany, which is the suburb of Hamburg.

And if you've. Read Beatles history. You know that Hamburg has been actually for centuries back to the square riggers Sin City for Northern Europe. And the Beatles had their eyes opened when they played in the, you know, rath scale or whatever, and Hamburg. So here I am hitchhiking towards Hamburg. I get it.

I understand why some gentleman got confused. So I with a hundred dollars American, which back then, this show you how old I am. This was summer of 59, um, not that long after World War ii, the American dollar was very powerful and up for a hundred bucks. I was able to buy a very used 250 BMW single. It was probably, it probably didn't make much more power than that Triumph Cub, but it was mine.

It was, it was free freedom and I had a, I had a backpack, so I just loosened the straps and bingo. I was off to, off to the races in six weeks of riding that thing through Europe and I went over to Paris. I had a contact with an apartment there. I'll get a million stories about that, but it's not necessarily PG stuff.

And then back to Stuttgart. Um, Munich and over to go to Venice. Uh, yeah. And up through the Alps and oh my God, I mean, a motorcycle in the Alps. Wow. I finally did it again, you know, eight, eight or so years ago. Uh, big difference. Uh, but that really stuck the needle in my arm. I mean, after that, I was simply never the same.

I mean, I paid a hundred for it. I sold it for 25 bucks at a youth hostel. I was staying in youth hostels. Incidentally, in Germany, they won't let you in. Back then, who knows now, but probably the same. They wouldn't let you into a youth hospital if you had a motorized vehicle. Well, that wasn't too hard to figure out.

So I dumped the thing about, you know, a kilometer away with my backpack and walk in appropriately sweaty and, you know, dirty and, um, no problem. Uh, but anyway, so I finally found a guy who paid me 25 bucks for it in Rome and, uh, adios.

So in college, you know, the, I'd hear a motorcycle go by, it'd spring to the window.

It was always a huge. pull. Um, there's some pieces in the middle there where I, now that I think of it, it's been a while. I actually did flunk out at the end of my freshman year 'cause I had rotten study habits. Um, you know, was this from Harvard? It was from Harvard, yes. Uh, that's my dirty little sacred because 

Annick: Not anymore.

Bill Dutcher: And, and the motorcycle business in particularly now these days, very recently, uh, Harvard's flag doesn't, uh, draw you a little, doesn't get you too far. Um, I. I was kind of on the track to, with my classmates to be doctor, lawyer or merchant chief in Wall Street or something that none of that lit my fire at all.

I mean, I was just a kinetic freak in a, in the wrong place. Uh, but I, anyway, I. So spent two years out, uh, um, with the, the savings that I had accumulated by teaching sailing. I bought a Triumph 500 and rode it down to Florida, um, and discovered when I was hanging around with all the right, wrong people that I had a penant for and a certain gift for broad sliding on clay 'cause there were clay flats on a place called Dania.

And a guy from California who had a Triumph 650 taught me how to broad. Slide and, oh man, was this cool? And so I did that a lot. Um, and I went trying to get back into college 'cause I realized if you can get back in, if you can end up with a Harvard degree, it ain't gonna hurt you. So you're a moron if you don't try to get it.

So it took me two years to get back. In the second year I was working in, living in Manhattan, uh, living on 25 East 61st Street. Um, right a block away from Central Park, which I discovered, made a pretty nice road, race track and, uh, at the right hours I. And I've got a lot of stories on that, but I, I had the worst job at IBM, an acquaintance of mine Connections.

You gotta love them. A kid I'd raced sailboats with said, oh, my father works for IBM, you know, he, he might be able to get you a job there. I said, well, I need a job and I'll do anything. And sure enough, I, I went for an interview, got hired, and my job, oh, it turns out the kid's last name was Watson 

And 

Bill Dutcher: his father ran the place.

Oh, I didn't, I truly didn't know any of the above. I just, I got a job. Okay. Okay. Now you gotta wear a suit when you come to the office. 'cause back then, uh, Mr. Watson insisted everybody wear a suit and a, and a white shirt. And my job was to run the five part, they called it de collation machine. It's back when we had punch, uh, da data cards, punch punches, and there was five part paper and carbon paper and carbon in the air.

So I'd come in with my white shirt and I'd come about. Looking like a coal miner, but it was good pay. Um, it also taught me who I didn't really want to be. 'cause a lot of my coworkers were IBMers, man. They were IBMers. Then Thursday night was, you know, IBM bridge night and Friday night was IBM bowling. And Saturday was IBM golf at the IBM Golf Country Club. And it was the whole Stepford wife thing.

And I've never been, you know, I don't get along real well with bureaucracies. And I realized. Mm-hmm. That's not what I want to do. But anyway, so I, I did finally get back into Harvard and I crawled through, you know, I, I got my diploma. I felt like a marathoner who's gotten, you know, the last a hundred yards to the finish line.

He's just crawling there. I was not an academic, but I, I learned how to slide through as best as I could.

But in my junior year, I bought an old grieves motorcycle. Oh yeah. How's that work? Oh yeah. Stepfather at that point had gotten a pretty, pretty good job. And I came home one for Thanksgiving all skinned up.

'cause on my Triumph 500 I, I was trying to see where's the dirt tracking. I wanted to, I was fascinated by breakaway characteristics and I could feel when the. Rubber was starting to squirm a little. If, if your tire was a little underinflated, it squirms, if it's a little overinflated, tends to chatter. And I was really, there were these things called the Rotaries Elliot house Rotaries.

And I'd, I'd, I really was fascinated by it. Anyway, so I come home and I, I lost it a few times where blue jeans, you know, racing gear, you know, what's that? And uh, my parents said, well, you can't do that. It's gonna kill you. You know? What if we helped you buy a car BING My brain went. Yeah, sure. I'll sell that bike like you want me to.

So I sold the Triumph 500. I got I think 400 bucks out of it. And I spent 75 bucks on a single rail trailer at the Triumph Dealer in Boston and got this thrashed 250 2 stroke greaves motorcycle. And I'm now, I'm a racer man. Thank you folks. You didn't know you were sponsoring a racer, did you? And so I would tow this thing to the track and I.

Discovered I had an affinity for that and I kept winning stuff and um, ended up trading it in and getting a Bultaco at the time. I went the spring of my senior year, so I'm trying to be a student. I mean, I was, it's amazing. I graduated. It really is. Uh, but I loved racing and I had a gift for it. Um, and.

Uh, this is my, can you believe it story. The very day that I was going to graduate from Harvard was my first sponsored road race. Boston Yamaha was going to give me a, did give me a TD one. It was the twin cylinder air cooled two stroke, which at the time made more power than any other 250. And the AMA professional class required at the time that you road race two fifties.

So I must have gotten to practice on it somewhere. I'd been borrowing a guy's Ducati when I was in college too. He had a nice Ducati Diana that I was road racing with success using Avon green dot tires, which have a nice predictable breakaway characteristic. And so here's this hot shit, two stroke motorcycle shod with Dunlop Blue Dots didn't mean much to me.

I didn't, I can't even remember. I must have practiced like the day or two before and I had it timed out. I knew how long it took to get from Cambridge to Loudon and it was the first year of the new Breyer Motorsport track, and so he gray, oh, graduation, right by then I had Langle Lit's one piece road racing leathers under my gown.

With the arms. It was one piece, so they tied around my waist, so I just looked like a slightly porky student, and I had black boots all shined up. So the tips were just sticking out of, I looked like any other student and got my degree and then turned around to, went to the place my folks were supposed to be, to have a pic.

The mandatory picture, I mean, after all, they paid my basic tuition there, so I mean, I Sure. Sorry about, that's okay. I surely owed it to 'em and I went, I couldn't find them. They weren't there. Well, sure they'd been fighting. They've been arguing and they weren't where they were supposed to be. Meanwhile, the clock is burning.

My start was I think at one o'clock, and this graduation probably started at 10, and I knew how much time it took. Well, now I'm deep into the red zone. I have blown it, man. I am like 15 minutes short of the time it's gonna take to get in my old Corvair From here to there, it just isn't gonna work. Well, of course I'm jacked up like crazy, so I sped.

Oh, yes, I sped, uh, up route two through Concord fast enough. Thinking back then. They didn't have good radios, I thought, I bet I can get outta this town faster than they can radio. And I'm gonna be in, in, in, you know, in another town, in another state. And I come squealing up to the gate at Loudon and there's a, AMA official with his big old cigar in his mouth.

And I, let me throw, let me throw and get, erase my race. In fact, Kevin Cameron, there's an interview you gotta have Kevin. Kevin went to college with me. Oh really? Yeah. Kevin, interview him. Kevin, I talked to Kevin regularly. Um, Kevin was down on the grid and I dunno if it was Kevin or another guy named Avrum Gold, one of them, two of them are starting to push my bike in off the grid because they're just about to flag this thing.

And there I am arguing this guy with his white shirt and his white pants, and you know, I'm outta control of that. Let me throw God, Jesus threw whatever. Anyway, it didn't work. They off they went. And then he lets me through the gate. And so I come down there and I've got my leathers on. I mean, they were in the car, man.

So I'm, I'm trying to z pull 'em up and the, the, uh, zipper gets stuck at my, around my belly Button and I, well, the hell of it, it's a hot day. It's June, man, the hell of it, I'll be able to stretch it out on this bike. So I threw on my Bell Magnum helmet, which at the time was about the best helmet you could get.

I got it because I saw a friend of mine die on a track about a month before that, uh, got hit in the head and so it, I got the message. So got put on my Tandy helmet, which I, it wasn't the first time with the helmet, but anyway, stretch out on the bike and off I go. They, meanwhile, they've lapped, so I'm off somewhere before the second lap.

Off I go and I'm passing people, oh, okay. This thing sticks better than any bike I'd ridden before. It really stuck. It didn't slide. It didn't shake and skid. And I mean, this story I know is hard to believe, but I swear every word of it and I come out of one of the corners. There's, you go up over a hill and you gotta, you gotta, it's a confidence hill.

There's a tree and you gotta sort of go for the tree. Even though you the road, you can't see it. 'cause the road goes over the top. You have to commit to it or you're not gonna make your turn. You're sure not gonna be over on the outside to make your. Following. Right. Anyway, I go through that, right? And I feel like I'm being stabbed in the back with ice picks.

And I realize my leathers, which are open like a scoop in the front, must have scooped up a bunch of bees or a very veral wasp anyway, something is stinging the hell outta my back. So there was this moment of thinking, 'cause I hated being, I don't like being stung. And I had this moment thought, should I, the slowest corner just leap off this thing and roll on the ground?

Nah, suck it up. Be a man. So I sucked it. Up and I continued, and whether that's a factor as to what I'm about to tell you is the case or not. I, I don't know, but I know I was coming into the fastest turn on the course. It's a left-hander before a a right, that starts to go up the hill. And in any s bend, you always want to apex late on the first turn, so you're set up properly for the following turn.

But sure enough, the guy's on my line. So I have to come in over. In fact, if I think hard enough, I'll re I'll remember his name. He was Oliver Vorhees from Comac Long Island on a, on a Aermacchi. And I, I'm below him. And there was that moment where I thought, how bet I can pull this thing down just a little more.

'cause I hadn't felt it loose at all. And I pulled it down just a little more and it was like a bucket on the string done. And I, I let go. In fact, his, his wheel went right by there as I'm sliding off. So I, I was going around 105 because. The bike was in the, it was a five speed gearbox, and fourth and fifth were very close together.

It was geared for like about 115, and I can tell you what it's like to crash at a 105. There's a lot of rolling and a lot of bouncing, and the, the, the horizon goes flip, flip. Flip and, and you think you can stand up long before you can actually stand up. And this particular situation, it, it, there was a bit of a hill and that's a good thing because I went through the leather really quickly.

I've got just a little scar tissue on one elbow, and that was well before the nice gear we have now. And, you know, a couple of down I go again. And so I'm lying there thinking, oh, this, this could be bad. You know, I've never fallen at a speed like that. I'd fallen on dirt tracks at, you 

know, 

Bill Dutcher: 35. Or 40 maybe.

And uh, I'm lying there and I'm taking inventory. You know, let's not, let's not be hasty here. Let's, do we have legs and the, the boots are touching. Oh yeah, we got legs. 'cause I can touch my feet. Meanwhile, there's the sound of thundering, sound of hooves, the sound of corner workers. You lie there Son, we got help coming.

That's not what you want to hear when you're lying there and you can't see. Everything was a red haze, which didn't auger well, didn't portend to good things. And I'm lying there wondering what's going on up here. But let's take inventory first. Knees are working. Okay, now do, let's see if I can touch my knees with my hand.

You lie still sun you. Anyway, so I'm doing inventory. I got hands 'cause I'm touching legs. This is good. Kind of sticky. I don't know what that's about. And I'm reaching up here, why can't I see? And now there's a few more people. There's a little, little little huddle around me. I just can't see and I'm lying on my back there.

And I reach up and I'm scared. I'm scared. What I'm gonna find, I'm gonna f you know, it's, it's sta look, I was an English major at one point. I read Moby Dick and. Whenever they harpoon, Moby Dick was had thick lung blood and the thought of thick lung blood was on my mind as I reached up where my neck was supposed to be.

'cause I thought maybe I've ripped out a jugular or something. I don't know what the hell's going on here. Can't see. And I reach up here and I was scared I wouldn't find eyeballs inside my eye sockets. 'cause that's where I should be seeing from. And I reached up there and yeah, they're there. And then my knuckles drag across the inside of my face shield and suddenly there's sunlight and there's faces.

Because one of my flips, I'd gone through a mud puddle and it was. Kind of a red clayish material, and it all gone right up under my face shield. And I was dinghy enough that I couldn't focus two or three inches from my eye, but the sunlight was coming through it and there's humanity. And I realized, Hey, you're not dead.

This is good. And it turned out, I just felt like I'd gone 10 rounds and Mike Tyson, I was thoroughly beaten up and I had a little cut. A little was cut, I mean, a piece missing. Um, but if I'd gone where the bike went, I would not be sitting here. Now the bike went, but there 

Annick: wasn't any safety. There's. In anyway, runoff areas in 

Bill Dutcher: that particular area.

I don't know if they meant it as the wrong. Certainly it was in the right place. There was nothing, it was just a dirt embankment down through a gully or two and, and stopped. But the bike hit something off to the right and it got really pounded. And, uh, John Jacobson, who owned Boston Yamaha, was good enough to be willing to give it me, to me to race something that at the time was called the Novice National out in Nelson's ledges, Ohio.

He gave me a second bite at the apple and. So me and my little trailer, we bounced out to Nelson's Ledges, Ohio, and I won it easily. I mean, I clearly, I did have a gift for it. Yeah. However, I made $110 and I'd spent, I kept track of my expenses. It was gonna be about $75. This is back then. 

Yeah. 

Bill Dutcher: And $75 out and back.

And I, wait a minute, I can't, this is, you had to obviously spend a year as a, as a novice, even before you got to be in what they call. All the amateur class and the real money, such as it was, was in the expert class. And, you know, I can add and subtract, all right. And I knew this deal wasn't gonna be a working deal.

So, um, a few weeks later, I break up my Bultaco in half at the, uh, I can almost think of the name of the track in Southern New York. It had a jump, and when it landed, it sort of went whomp And it felt like a chopper all of a sudden, you know? And the engine stopped. That was the good thing. The reason the engine stopped is.

They had the low tension lead running up the down tube up to the coil. And so, and it had a quick disconnect so I could, uh, detect when the, this backhoe used points, you could tell where the points were open or closed. Yeah. And fortunately when the steering head let the down tube break, the engine stopped.

So it was na, natural safety mechanism So I di I didn't think much about that. I went to this guy in Boston who built frames, a guy named Dave Yetman. He built really nice space frames. Um, so he, he braised my thing back together, and sure enough, at about the same time, I got a phone call from Schnectedy to New York where the Bultaco importer was located.

Huh. And the guy said, uh, understand you want broke one of our boat bikes. Yeah, yeah. But I got it handled. Well, we'd like to give you a new frame. I said, frankly, I'm kind of busy looking for work. 'cause I, I had my name out to a bunch of places getting no callbacks. and he said, well, do you ever think of working in the motorcycle industry?

And I honestly never had. And he said, well, why don't you come up here? He said, we need somebody to be a road man to set up Bultaco dealers around the Eastern United States. Long. So long story short, go up there. He hires me to be. His sales rep and gives me a truck and a credit card and, and you mean you're gonna pay me too?

And, uh, and a couple of bikes, one of which was my race bike. And off I went and everywhere east of the Mississippi River to set up Bultaco dealers. Wow. And I learned that if you got to the town, the town of your target dealer a few days early, and you could find out where there was a race, you could probably win the race and then knock on his door on Monday or Tuesday and he might be more receptive.

And that worked. Like crazy. 

Annick: That is an excellent sales tactic oh, 

Bill Dutcher: as, as I did it, I, I got snakier here too. I, I got here. Here's the way the deal finally worked. I would call ahead, hi, is this Honda of Indianapolis? Or whoever it was. 'cause we would try to find a Honda Triumph dealer. If there were a Honda dealer.

It meant they were in business and they had some cash flow and they weren't a, you know, shady job out in the backyard. And if they had triumph, it showed they had a little soul. So I was, they were, they were in. So I'd call ahead to whoever it was and, hi, uh, you got any of this? Am Bultacos. What's a Bultaco?

Oh, it's a Spanish motorcycle that's been winning all the races. No, we don't know anything about it. Okay. And maybe later the next day. Hi, I am Brad Taylor out on the west, west Indianapolis. You got any Bultacos? No. No, we don't. So go win the race. Go knock on the door on Tuesday. Oh, come right in. 

Annick: Oh my gosh.

That worked 

Bill Dutcher: so great. It worked. Worked real well. And I did that for, uh, a year and a half, two years, I'm not sure. And then my boss and, and it was getting really old. On the road, being on the road, man, single, single young man on the road racing, motorcycles. Bad, bad combination, not a good long range plan.

And he said, how would you like to be sales manager? You could hire four guys to do what you did so you get off the road, hell of a deal. So hired four guys and, and now I was a regular citizen and um, and I raced a little while after that, but, um, yeah, I, I raced maybe another four or five years 'cause it was good for street cred with a Bultaco dealers, they Okay.

Realized that I was the director of marketing at that point, and they realized the guy really does know how to walk the walk and talk the talk. So that gave me the opportunity to ride everything and what all. And finally, after 10 years, Bultaco went through a crunch and they laid off the three top people in the company other than the president when they didn't, uh, the three directors that was, I was one of them.

So then I thrashed around and, uh, ended up calling a guy who I'd helped get a job with osa, which was a Spanish racing motorcycle. And he was now working up in Velco, Quebec for Canam. And Canam was trying to bring in, well actually it was Bombardier is the company. 

Mm-hmm. And they 

Bill Dutcher: were trying to create the Canam motorcycle and they wanted somebody to start Canam U Canam University to try to teach their 70 sales reps who were mo, who were snowmobile sales reps, teach 'em how to speak motorcycle.

Oh, 

Bill Dutcher: well that's quite a cultural shift. You don't realize how you have your own little culture and there's this other little culture and trying. To teach that this, and it'd be like, try to teach golfers or something. Well, no better than golfers. At least these were motorheads of some sort. But, so I created this course and that was good.

And um, that was about a two or three month gig, but it was money coming in the door. And then the guy said, Hey, look at this. It was a headhunter letter from a company in New York who was trying to find somebody to work for an American motorcycle company to be director of public relations. Well, there was only one, um, motorcycle company in America at that point.

Mm-hmm. Indian had not resurfaced at that point, so obviously it was Harley and, you know, I'd ridden a Sportster here and there, but I was not, you know, a Harley guy per se. But I went in there and had the interview and that was the one time my Harvard degree paid off. I, I slapped that baby on the table.

I know I probably didn't slap it on the table. I definitely let him know I was a Harvard graduate then. This is AMF very corporate and, uh. The guy, the guy put off by the fact on, he's really a Harvard graduate and I was a greasy motorcyclist masquerading as a, as a Harvard graduate. And he said, well, he said, we have limitations on the budget.

You know, at the time I was making 20,000 a year for Bultaco and I was okay. I was good with that. That was okay. And he said, we, we can't do much more than 50,000 a year. And I, I am quick on the trigger. I looked him in the eye. I said, well, there is room for movement in that, isn't there? Oh, yeah, yeah. We, we, we have bonus plans and everything.

I was pooping my pants, man. I, it was, it was good. So I worked for them. it was an awkward arrangement 'cause AMF was paying me. And my responsibility was Harley Davidson. So Harleys were getting terrible road tests 'cause they were falling apart on road tests. Cycle Magazine caught one of them that had been fiddled with a sports cheater.

They had a two page story, Harley Cheater Exposed. Oh no. Um, and that was what AMF off their butt to realize we gotta do something. And at that point, John Davidson, the president of Harley, was tr trying to have dealers. Set up the bikes for road test. And all I can say is they weren't working. It wasn't working, the program wasn't working.

So they gave me a budget and I set up a road test, repair, rebuild facility in the back of Harley of Santa Ana and hired an ex aircraft mechanic whose son was a motocrosser, uh, to super prep the bikes. And, uh, I could tell you some funny stories about the, the, the Harleys that went to. The road tests were definitely the best that they could have possibly been, and we did not get caught.

They were really good. And so, yeah, we had a lot of experiences there. I mean. Yeah, I can remember. Uh, I mean, do you, do you want me to carry on? I can go on. Yes, please do. Because I, I, I'm starting to bore myself. No, 

Annick: no. What was great was I was gonna ask you some questions, which you actually answered them in, in telling the story, so, okay.

I'd love to tell, tell us one good story about Harley. 

Bill Dutcher: I'll tell you an anecdote. 

Annick: Okay. 

Bill Dutcher: Uh, cycle World Magazine was, uh, the editor was Randy Riggs, and he was, his proper name was D Randy Riggs. And he was a Princeton graduate and he had nice razor cut hair and he always looked neat. Not a thing out of place.

And I was, I've always been, you know, a little more of a ragamuffin, you know, I, I'm not cut from that neatness cloth. Um, I'm into, I'm into function much more than form. But anyway, so I had to deliver this Sportster to them and they took it down to the drag strip. And back then, quarter mile times were a huge deal.

Um, cycle Magazine had headed by Cook Nelson had really. Help the industry focus on performance. And that was not good news for Harley. 'cause you know, long stroke push ride engines don't make a ton of horsepower anyway. Um, yeah, this was the XLCR. It was a cafe racer. Black had semi drop bars and uh, it had a different exhaust system, Siamese exhaust systems, which actually made decent power with not a lot of back pressure.

'cause one of the problems, any big. Single or big twin has is having mufflers just constipates the whole process, which helps to explain, only helps to explain why a lot of Harleys are loud. It's only only part of the equation. But anyway, so Randy goes off and does his drag thing and, and I'm watching him take off and I'm not impressed and he turns, I dunno, 13.25 and you know, he does it three or four times, you know, 13.18, yada, yada, yada.

And I'm there with a business jacket on. On trying to look businesslike, and I said, I think I can do better than that. Would you mind if I took it down the strip and, uh, well, I guess we could do that. And I, so I borrowed somebody's leather jacket and somebody's helmet and off I go. And I, I did a 12 90, 12 97, and the, there was some consternation in, in Randy Riggs body English, I could tell.

And to this day. You can find that road test out there somewhere. It's out there in a, you look for Harley Davison and XLCR. Um, it would have to be late seventies, 77, 78. and it has a little asterisk in the road test results. It showed whatever it was, 13 point 12 or whatever the best he could do, and the little asterisk and down at the bottom it said a Harley-Davidson professional rider was able to get a 1297.

But in the interest of editorial fairness. We're not showing it up in the results that's out there to this day. 

Annick: Really? Yeah. Wow. So, wow. 

Bill Dutcher: Um, yeah. I take some pride in that. You should. You should. It was funny. I mean, I got, I got so many treats at one point, um, I was taking Jay Springsteen around to the various publications, whatever I could do to generate positive publicity for Harley Davidson.

And Jay was kicking it on the, on all the flat track stuff. He was in a class of his own, and the editors had gotten the, okay. It was. The end of the season to ride his, his XR 750 around this half mile track and same sort of deal. I started, hey, suppose I could maybe, huh? And yeah, yeah, sure. So I got some gear on.

I got to run around chase somebody else around the track. Obviously I was not slinging it sideways like, like Jay did, but I did learn one thing for sure, which was a national championship winning dirt tracker has to have very controllable power, not. Tons of it. Everybody thinks we'll make an engine that has more horsepower.

That doesn't win you on a, on a flat track. You gotta come off the turns smoothly. And controllably and his thing, I'm, I'm exaggerating when I say it. Yeah, but it felt like a trials bike coming off the corner, just low RPM. And then it had good push all the way down, but he was getting off the corners much better 'cause the Bill Warner tuned XR 750 was terribly smooth and very, very, uh, manipulatble.

Very, very handleable. So I, you know, I just had a lot of, a lot of good fun. I, uh, I never road raced again. Um, Harley was getting out of road racing. 

Mm-hmm. 

Bill Dutcher: If they'd stayed in road racing, who knows how that might've gone. 'cause that was really, that was my, that was my gift. Dirt tracking. I had to learn how to do.

Yeah. 

Bill Dutcher: But road racing, just 'cause of all my misspent years, trying to skid that triumph and other things I owned, um, taught me some stuff. 

Annick: Do you still race? 

Bill Dutcher: No, I'd be in, oh. I, you know, they do have seniors classes. Nah, I still have a KLR 650 that I get out in the dirt with, and I have a couple of other bikes that aren't currently running.

Um, but yeah, the nice thing about the K LR six 50 is it is such a statement of, I'm not here to go fast. Yeah. Mine goes faster than most KLR 650. It's had, it's had some help, but it's not particularly noisy. Uh, however, it's hard to make good performance out of a single if you have it totally plugged up.

But, um, the nice thing about it, as I say, if somebody pulls up beside me and some hot crotch rocket, I don't feel the need to prove my stuff right. Um, I can still get around the corners fairly decently, but it's a KLR 650 folks, and it's all it is. It doesn't make much. If on a good day it probably makes 40 horsepower.

Annick: One of the questions I always ask everyone is, how many motorcycles do you own? So you say three at 

Bill Dutcher: the moment. Three. Okay. Yeah. I, you know, hey, I'm 83 years old. You know, I'm, my bones are, I, I, okay. I got back into skiing. I'd skied a few times when I was a kid and it, then I quit. I couldn't afford to do it.

Yeah. 

Bill Dutcher: And especially with my motorcycle obsession. And finally at age. 67, an acquaintance of mine said, Hey, I've got these skis in the back. They're, they're, you know, slightly used, you know, perfect for you, blah, blah, blah. He really put the arm on me and he was a regular skier and said, come on, come on up with me.

I'll teach you how to ski. Alright. So I got back into it and the motorcycle experience, I'm sure has been very helpful. Mm-hmm. Because I have picked up skiing, admirably. I, I ski bumps, I ski woods. I don't ski woods very well. But I ski bumps decently enough to be skiing as deep into the season as you can at Killington and it's good exercise.

Um, not likely to break. Could twist a, a knee or something, but yeah. Um, I got a new right knee. Uh, but that, that was coming anyway 'cause I'd twisted them. Motorcycle racing i'd, dirt tracking and moto crossing. I'd caught my toe on a tree root once, which took the lower leg and decided to make it go in the other direction and didn't break it, just ripped the hell out of everything.

In fact, that's the one sometimes that could be worse. That's the, that's the next one for some surgery. Yeah. But I sail, I teach sailing in the winter. I teach skiing to disabled kids in the, the summer I teach. Yeah. I want to, 

Annick: I want to bring that up. Yeah. I teach, 

Bill Dutcher: uh, sailing to disabled adults.

Oh, that's very, very satisfying. 'cause look, I know I've, for all my foolishness I have had, I have not had bad luck. When people talk about luck, I say, you don't necessarily have to have good luck, but you have to not have bad luck. It's when those, you know, when the perfect storm happens, when three things all sort of converge at one time.

That's one that gets you. Yeah. You know, you can handle one, you might be able to handle two, but that third one, so, um, yeah. So I recognize how damn lucky I am in life and it makes me feel, feel really good when I can pass along some of my passion to somebody else. 

Annick: Yeah. You're giving back to the community.

Absolutely. Which was, was, yeah. Yeah. Stated earlier, which is beautiful. Yeah. 

Bill Dutcher: It makes me feel great. And the fact that Americade has been very good for the economy of my current hometown is very satisfying. I mean, Americade is like Christmas to all lots of people. They wait all year for it and look forward to it and meeting their friends who they haven't seen all year.

And I recognize that I, I don't think about it too much because I try not to, I try not to pat myself on the back much because if I pat myself on the back, I'm likely to get LA lazy and, and I have a, I'm happy to be lazy too. I do lazy real well, 

Annick: so I don't think so. No. 

Bill Dutcher: I swear very little. I know you.

That's swear. I do. I do. No, I got two speeds, you know, wide open and dead slow. Okay, that makes sense. It's the middle I have trouble with. 

Annick: Yeah. Well, what, where's the next. Adventure gonna take you? 

Bill Dutcher: Hmm? You say adventure, that's a good thing to to mention because probably the best and biggest motorcycle adventure I ever took was riding with my two sons down to Tera Del Fuego, the tip of South America on KLR six fifties, about, I don't know, 10 years ago.

Um, that was cool. I, uh, I took six, well, five, five and a half weeks, and each one of them took. Two weeks. Two and a two long weeks. And, um, my older boy, Mickey, who teaches Spanish, he and I flew down and got these KLRs in, uh, Santiago. And we, we rode down to Usia, which is the southern most city in or city, town.

Um, and then Christian flew down and used the same saddle to come back in. So Mickey flew back and Christian went down and I did the whole thing. And, yeah, with Christian. Um, we decided to go south from there was a, and still is no doubt, a dirt, well, it might not even be dirt anymore. Um, it was a dirt road that ran sort of nowhere and we thought, let's go there.

So we, we went, followed it as far as we could. Finally, there were some serious looking fences with chains on them, and we probably could have lifted them. We thought, eh, let's call it a day. But we were way down. I mean, and we had a real adventure there though, because, It was in early February, which is summer in South America.

So the days were long down there and it we're really at a high latitude, which means two means two things. It means the days are really long and it's very windy, by the way. Um, well, the roaring forties, that's a whole story under itself. I wrote a story for Rider magazine that captures that pretty well.

But anyway, we, we finally turn around and come back. We, we were having such a good time down there. Now it's like. 10 15, 10 30. It's getting to be deep dusk and we ride these KLRs back up to the road, which, which was a new piece of asphalt way up at the top that would lead, that led to uaa. But what we hadn't noticed when we had ridden down there to go down this long, long, long dirt road was there were no markings on this Nice, smooth black asphalt.

None at all. No center, no sides, no nothing. And it's on kind of a crown, quite a crowned road and full knobbies. Oh, and now it's snowing. It's snow is in the air. Big heavy flakes. They're not necessarily sticking, but the, you know, they're going to stick. The road is still warm enough from the day that they're not quite slicking sticking.

But knobbies the KLR had like a candlelight for headlight. It. I, I would've, I would've guessed it was six volt, although it probably was 12 volt. But, uh, these were rental bikes and they weren't. They weren't maintained all that well. finding our way down this blind road in the dark.

That was, that was one of these deals where don't make a mistake 'cause it's way down on both sides. But we had, we had a lovely time and that was that time with my two sons. I mean, that was really a dream to be able to take a, an interesting adventure. Yeah. But adventures are. Disappearing everywhere now as they, as they start to pave over dirt roads.

Yeah, I mean, I wrote a story about my ride across Northern Labrador on the Trans Labrador Highway. They call it the Trans Labrador Highway. It's a trans Labrador dream. Uh, but they were paving it, starting to pave it, but it was miles and miles and miles, I mean, hundreds.

Some miles of dirt. and in that story that I wrote for, might have been Road Rider Roadrunner Magazine, I talked about how you gotta grab adventure while you can because they're starting to pave over mo most of the interesting dirt roads. Yeah. And I, I think I read something recently that they've paved most of the trans Labrador highway.

Oh, really? Which they had graded it with, you know, intent to, to pave, but it, that was famous for having a 285 mile section of nothing. No, no crossroads. No telephone poles, no humans, no nothing. And at that point, the um, Labrador Chamber of Commerce insisted that you take a SAT phone with, this is before Yeah, cell phones.

Before cell phones worked up there, that's for sure. Whatever, because it was only, I lose track of years, I dunno, 10 years ago, whatever. Um, so we, we had to get a SAT phone. I was with two other guys. You had to put down a deposit and they, you had a sat phone with you in case something. Happened in the middle.

I mean, you could be 120 miles from anything. Yeah, quite easily. And uh, these other guys were riding twin cylinder bikes and I was on my same KLR I have now. I just put a huge counter shaft sprocket on it. I put a 17 on it and I realized I could get probably 300 miles on the tank. I'd never actually tested it, but I was pretty sure, and there was this 2 85 section and they finally bullied me into getting a one gallon plastic gas can to tie on the back of the bike.

It turns out I won out a reserve at like 225. I had it, I had it nailed. These guys both had to use their cans 'cause they had thirsty twins. But anyway, KLR. Yeah, so I still love it. There's something lovable about a big single and that also is part of the attraction of Harley Davidson. There's something lovable about low RPM engines.

You can sort of feel 'em working. 

Yeah. 

Bill Dutcher: Where you know, it is a may of way of making a lot of power, but it doesn't have the personality. Of something that goes hum hum, hum hum, hum hum. And that, that applies to Harley's and uh, and KLRs. That's like, that have 

Annick: soul. 

Bill Dutcher: Yeah. I love my thumper. And my thumper clearly makes the statement the operator of this vehicle is not intending to road race.

Don't ask him to. And. So it controls my otherwise uncontrollable urges. It helps control it. I haven't, I haven't thrown it down the road ever. I've tipped it over a couple of times in the backwoods of the Adirondacks. That's, that's interesting. When you've got six gallons of gas on a, you know, tall motorcycle and you're not a large human, and you tip it over in the mud puddle out in the middle of.

East bum, whatever, and you realize you gotta get this thing up all by yourself and you use all the tricks, you know? And the answer was, I was obviously just barely able to do it, but, uh, you 

Annick: made it happen. 

Bill Dutcher: Yeah. After I had my knee replaced, I, uh, took the knobbies off the bike and I've got 50 fifties on it, which is my way of saying mud puddles and sand and Rocky Creek beds.

Or something I'm not gonna do, just, I'm trying to stay ahead of the game, you know? And I know my weaknesses. Yeah. No, it's good that you, you're setting up these for nature. Yeah. Prayer yourself. Nature. My nature, I'm very competitive. Yeah. You know, whatever it is. I like contests. They wake me up. Mm-hmm. The rest of the time I'm dead slow.

Gimme a contest. Hmm. I'm there. So I have to learn how to not put myself in those positions. I ski with old people, they're my age. It's good. 

Annick: Well, I'm sure you keep pushing 'em. Bill, I just wanna say thank you so much for taking the time today to do this interview. Well, it's a pleasure to finally meet you 'cause it's my pleasure.

'cause everybody has spoken so highly of you. Well it's, and what, and everything you've done for Americade and, and your other interests as well with the sailing and also with the skiing. 

Bill Dutcher: Life's a wonderful trip. 

Annick: Yeah. 

Bill Dutcher: And, uh, and 83, you realize, man, you're in your sunset ears. Gotta get hard to get your head around that.

So it's, the message from that is Carpe diem. Okay. If there's something. You love, do it. And that's my an advice to young people in their job search. What do you like doing? The whole thing. If you like it, it'll never be work. It'll always be fun. I hate the poor buggers who their lives of the poor buggers who have to go to the office and hate doing the nine to five and hate the commute.

Yeah. No wonder they have road rage. I would too. 

Annick: Exactly. Anyway, 

Bill Dutcher: cheers. I'm so glad you're here. 

Annick: Same. Thank you. All right, cool. You did great. You do. Everybody kept saying, I've got, I've got 

Bill Dutcher: too many stories that that only, that only scratches the surface. 

Annick: Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure you could have kept going.

These people wanna go ride, so you gotta make sure that you have some time to go ride. Yeah, yeah,

* OUTRO *