The title of Bill Brokaw’s new book, My First Ninety Years, smacks of limitless optimism and spirit. It makes sense, too, because so does the entire book. His story is sweeping yet totally relatable because it is true.
It is compelling for those of us who ride motorcycles right from the cover. There, Brokaw introduces himself not only as someone whose life has spanned nearly a century. His byline:
By Bill Brokaw
a Motorcyclist
In fact, the story Brokaw tells spans even more than a century, as it starts with some interesting years in his parents’ lives in Waterloo, Iowa. During those formative years with his parents, the seeds of Bill Brokaw’s remarkable life story were sown.
Brokaw parents, Paul and Neda, started out in the 1920s when Paul was racing cars. The couple soon became franchised Indian motorcycle dealers, as well as movers and shakers in motorcycle sport. Not long after that, Paul made the switch from Indian to Harley-Davidson. His parents’ long involvement with motorcycles made a permanent imprint on Bill, and he followed in their footsteps in many ways.
The story goes beyond motorcycles. It is deeply personal in the depth of Brokaw’s willingness to take the reader to his tough times, as well as his highlights. He shares his life, from the days of courtship with his first wife, Annie, through their adventurous life that spanned more than half a century to her death from cancer. He ultimately remarried, only to face the loss of his second wife, Suzi, to a stroke in 2022. Today, he shares his life with Ginny, a lady he has known for quite a while.
Brokaw was not only a successful motorcycle dealer and businessman, but one of the top competitors and a promoter of observed trials in North America. He also helped organize and run the motorcycle competition portion of the Pike’s Peak International Hill Climb.
It turns out Brokaw not only won numerous cross-country motorcycle trial titles in his career, but he is also an accomplished writer—even before My First Ninety Years—as well as a great artist. Indeed, shortly before I began reading Brokaw’s book, I ran across a superb article about trials Brokaw had written for the Fourth Annual Motorcycle Sport Book, published in 1969.
No book about motorcycle sports would be complete without accounts of the mishaps and misadventures that go with it. Brokaw’s extraordinarily long history with the sport is a massive wellspring for such stories, from competitive riding and event organizing to family off-roading and international adventure touring.
In My First Ninety Years, Brokaw includes some choice stories that cover the range. That makes his book’s content diverse, engaging, and enlightening. Some of the content will make you cringe, some will make you laugh, and all are told in a conversational, relatable style. Some will make you say, “Yep. Been there, done that.”
For example, in the chapter “Broken Toe Gulch,” Brokaw shows that even an expert class rider like him can have a bad day:
“I remember being on the right-hand track and seeing this big bush that the wheel tracks went right up against. I missed seeing the, at least, barrel-sized rock tucked behind it. Suddenly I was going through the air like a pinwheel like the paperboy bag swinging around even faster, with the momentum of the brass hammer. My foot hurt terribly. I landed in a pile, knowing immediately that my bike’s strong and rigid footpeg had connected with a rock, kicking the back of the motorcycle suddenly to the left and sending me spinning.”
That crash gave Brokaw three broken toes, but he managed to get back on and keep riding.
In the time when he and his wife, Annie, ran the Pike’s Peak event, he encountered a very unusual potential entrant:
“A gentleman showed up with a motorcycle for tech inspection that quite well dazzled us all in so much as it was a front wheel drive and rear wheel steer machine. Effectively he had turned a motorcycle around and fabricated the handlebars to mount over the rear wheel with a linkage running to the forks.”
While Brokaw found the workmanship on the bike commendable, the rider was not given tech approval to ride among other riders in competition. In those days, motorcycles raced head-to-head rather than the later time trial format. However, the tech inspectors did clear the contraption for a solo exhibition run. Sadly, when the time came for the run, the rider and his bass-ackwards creation didn’t show up.
In My First Ninety Years, Bill Brokaw tells a great story—no, correction—he tells many great stories in a fun, readable form. There is seldom-told historical detail, motorcycle industry insight, competition, and adventure, all related in a very personal way. His first 90 years have given us a trove of great stories, and he’s still riding—Brokaw just bought a new Kawasaki Z650RS. Undoubtedly, the coming years will bring some more stories worth reading.
My First Ninety Years Fast Facts
- Author: Bill Brokaw
- Published: 2023 by Bill Brokaw
- Formats: Paperback. 272 pages. 6-by-8 inches. 30 color and black-and-white images. Also available on Kindle.
- ISBN: 9798398601176
- Price: $22. Available on Amazon. Kindle price: $6.48.
