mvagusta.net member biographies

Thanks for making us all feel really old Jeff. Seriously, it sounds like you're doing quite well for yourself...keep it going dude. Have fun with that SPR, it is an outstanding ride.

Steve

Ok, i'll bite

Good idea and nice to read. I'll play...

Name is Robert. Born and raised in the San Francisco bay area where I lived for the majority of my life. I'm 34 years old, the son of a Superior Court Judge here in Northern Cali, a father and a husband.

I lived two different lifestyles so far in my life. One as a recording artist, a "rapper" to be specific for well over 15 years, started before it was the "in thing" and widely accepted like it is today. Not sure how I became a rapper, it just happened. Being "white" however it was a hard struggle to be heard. Yet through determination, I've had my albums in major stores, have been on major radio, have done shows all over large and small, have done shows with platinum legends like Public Enemy, have been in magazines and other things...... started out as a "hardcore" rapper but have changed my life over the last 10 years and became a positive influence with positive lyrics, which as we all know doesn't sell. The business and politics of the music industry stresses me out and thus I am retired now.

My other course in life (conducted at the same time) was as a professional 3D animator in the game industry. Through my music in the early 90's I landed a job interview at Skywalker Sound (Lucas Films) at George Lucas' ranch as a sound mixer. I didnt get the job but was inspired to try another artistic medium with the dream of one day working there on Star Wars films. So I chose 3D animation. At the time 3D animation was a young and new art, I enrolled at the Academy of Arts in San Francisco. Trained for 2 years under top animators and directors from Pixar (while Toy Story 1 was being developed) and from ILM. Found that I had a natural talent for the complex field of animation and I excelled in school. I worked on my first 3 professional games while still a student and was hired by a former ILM art director right out of school for a new start-up. Moved around to various companies and worked on Playstation, PC and Xbox games. I've worked for some small name companies and some major studios like DreamWorks, Crystal Dynamics and finally became a lead at Microsoft Game Studios, working on a total of 9 shipped titles, with some million sellers like The Sims. Im retired now from the game industry and have been self employed for the last 5 years working on my own start-up companies and have probably lost around $200K in the process. Doh. At the moment I am "unemployed" and my job consists of getting our new house in top shape prior to move-in.

My current dream is to work on films for Pixar or ILM and maybe some day own my own company.

Im obsessed with MV Agusta bikes and the company and sometimes will insult other brands in the process. Don't take it personally, it's just my twisted humor. That's me in a nutshell.

ok, i'll play.

name: alex
age: 38
occupation: electrical engineer
residence: irvine, ca

i'm married - no kids (yet). live and work in irvine. graduate school (ucla) brought me out west. i did most of my growing up in the midwest (chicago - naperville), and europe. i was born in germany, lived there twice - long ago.

i'm a real geek - i love engineering. my day job is with a small company working on MEMS sensor (gyroscopes, accelerometers). at night, i do some consulting work for a local custom motorcycle shop.

got into the bikes aroun 1998 - first bike was a vfr. had a lot of fun with that but quickly figured out that riding fast was more fun on the track, so i moved to more sporty bikes - honda f4i, yamaha r6, and now the mv.

other hobbies include: running, reading, bicycling, snowboarding

also, i'm pretty handy - do lots of projects around the house. did my own landscaping - built-in fridge, grill, sink, hardscape, irrigation system. other suff around the house too: epoxy garage floor, cabinets, heated tile floor (master bath), so on...

Okay, I'll play too...

My name is Steve. I grew up in a small town in northeast Ohio (right next to Canton where the Pro Football Hall of Fame makes its home). I was a decent athlete but got bitten by the computer bug in the early 80's. I taught myself to program in about 7 different languages as a hobby while I was in high school. Went to college to get a computer science degree for a year or so but decided it wasn't for me. I got a job selling computers at retail (this was the OLD days...8088-based IBM XT's with 10MB hard drives). I eventually got into computer graphics and engineering.

Somehow I ended up in Dallas working for the first commercial Windows software developer...a small company called Micrografx. I found my way to Seattle where I worked as director of marketing for a few more software startups. Moved to San Jose to be vice president of marketing for a company that developed an entry-mid level 3D animation product called Caligari (777...I imagine you've heard of them and their main product TrueSpace). That didn't last very long so I got a foot in the door at Symantec. I started as U.S. marketing manager for Norton AntiVirus and woke up one day as a senior VP running the security division (consumer & enterprise...a few billion dollar business). Along the way I moved from San Jose to Los Angeles to Las Vegas. I was with Symantec until last January (2005) when I decided to take a breather (I was traveling pretty much every week for 3-4 days at a time...it got old after 9 years).

Somewhere in all of this work stuff I managed to get back into motorcycling in my 30's. When I was 12 or 13 my mom bought me one of those home-brew minibikes with a Briggs & Stratton engine. It was a lot of fun until either the centrifugal clutch flew apart and shredded your leg or the badly welded handle bars came complete off in your hands (while at full speed over some hills :errr: ). One day in my 30's I experienced a mid life crisis and decided to write down some things I had wanted to do but never got around to. Owning a motorcycle was on the list. So, I promptly went out and attended an MSF course and got my license. An hour later I was at the local BMW dealer buying a 2001 K1200RS. Things snowballed from there and I ended up with a Suzuki DRZ400S and a Honda F4i in my garage too. Somehow I squeezed in a Polini pocketbike too. Then my motorcycle habit got even worse as I met a new friend by the name of Jack Pfeiffer who is an AMA Superbike racer. One thing led to another and I ended up running an AMA Superbike team called ProMotion Racing with two superbike prepped GSXR1000's. It was a lot of fun and a tremendous waste of money (hint: there's no way to beat the factory teams and there is no money in the prizes...so you better be in it just for the LOVE of it). The saving grace was that Jack came in 4th in the 2004 Daytona 200 riding one of my cycles. All of those bikes are long gone but ProMotion Racing might be revived if I ever get my 749R on the track.

My wife, our 3 dogs, and I decided to move to the Tucson area last year and that's where we are for the time being. We're building a house, observatory, and barn in a remote, rural town in southwestern New Mexico (Rodeo) that we will move to as soon as everything is complete. My wife will continue to teach first grade...that is her passion in life. As for me, I will work on astronomy educational outreach programs, take lots of pictures, ride my quads, and, of course, go for some fun country road rides on my MV.

OK Here goes. John Eastwood, no relation to Clint. My father and older brother were alway into motorcyles so I suppose it was inevitable I would get the bug too. Did some production class racing in the 250cc class back in the 70's and was pretty successful but then my Dad died of cancer and my older brother had a serious smash, so I stopped racing because my Mum asked me to.

I trained as a Mechanical and Production Engineer and spent many years working all over the world as a consultant for a Belgian based multi-national group, specialising in the Cement, power generation, aggregate and offshore dredging businesses. Approaching 40 with my two kids growing up fast, I decided to cut out of the globe trotting and spend more time at home so I set up a business selling lifting equipment which initially was very lucrative and I had hopes of retiring before I reached 45. Long story, but it didn't work out, the business collapsed and I lost a lot of money. Bummed around for a couple of years and then picked up on the train driving thing. Didn't think they would go for an old boy like me (42 at the time) but I got taken on and have been driving trains ever since. Shit hours, but the pay is good and I get lots of free time off to indulge in my passion, MV Agusta of course.

Wow, all interesting stuff so far...

Name: David
Age: 37
Education: B.A. Psychology (Neuroscience), MBA (Information Systems)
Profession: A little of this and a little of that

Came to the States when I was 11. For the next 24 years, I lived and worked in San Jose, CA. Briefly went away to school in Southern California for a few years. Got recruited back to Silicon Valley to run manufacturing operations for Solectron. Over the following 10 years, I found myself at 3Com, MSL, Sanmina, Intel, HP and finally at Quester Technology Inc. (A Canon semi-conductor capital equipment company). Life was like clockwork with 12 hour work days during the week, golf on Saturday and riding to Alice on Sunday with the Ducati crowd. Our first house was on the foothill of Mount Hamilton over looking the South Bay.

5 years ago, an opportunity came to partner with my lifelong buddy in expanding his successful auto bodyshop business in Northern Virginia. The first time I found myself in the driveway at 2am shoving snow was shocking...And they said it only snow a few times a year in the DC Metro area. Yeah, right! After 2 years, the stress of 12-14 hour day, 6-7 days a week finally got to me. I began to take stock of my life and decided that time waits for no one.

3 years ago, we came to Vegas and ALSO found a new friend, Jack Pfeifer ( :flickoff:..that was expensive but in no way comparable to what Steve went thru). Last year, I decided to step up my game and the only way to do that is thru racing. Trackdays were nice but it always seem to be missing something. The end result was several novice #1 plates hanging on the wall as a constant reminder how expensive plastic plates can be.

At the end of last year, I found myself lapping 8 seconds of Jason DiSalvo (1:24s vs. 1:16s) at LVMS Classic Course and 6 seconds within the lap record at Spring Mountain Motorsport Ranch (1:42s vs. 136s). Most importantly, I am now 5-6 seconds off of my teammate, Vince Chu. At the beginning of the year, I was 15-20 seconds off of his times. This year, I advanced to full WERA Expert status but the prospect of coming in second to my teammate at every round is not very enticing. :loser:

I bought my Mv F4 Strada early on but 2 years ago became power-hungry and sold it off. An Ago almost got me back into the Mv realm but decided to hold off for a bit longer for the dust to settle, what with all of these SP bikes and financial status. Additionally, I have gone nut with accumulating one bike after the other and converted all of them into either race bikes or trackday bikes. Some where in the future, a detached gargage will be my saving grace but the Wife' has yet given her blessing. :toothless

I'm Next!

Here it goes.

Name: Ryan
Age: 32
College Major: Agribusiness Management
College Attended: Purdue University 1998 - West Lafayette, Indiana
Occupation: Pharmaceutical Sales
Residence: Indianapolis, Indiana

You guys are going to love this part. :laughing:
I grew up on a family farm in Greenfield, Indiana were we raised corn, soybeans, and cattle. When I say raised cattle I don't mean for the sole purpose to put them on your dinner plate. We exhibited them or showed them at various National shows thorughout the USA. The primary breed we exhibited were Polled Herefords. The family farm throughout the midwest has changed tremendously. More and more farm kids go to the business side of Agriculture instead of going back to the farm because there are very few "family farms" anymore. I did just that when I attended Purdue University Purdue has a strong Agriculture School but Engineering as well and is home to most of the Astronauts, Buzz Aldrin , Neil Armstrong , John Glenn, etc... but we also had Orville Redenbacker the popcorn KING and the great John Wooden of UCLA!

I am employed in the Pharmaceutical industry but on the animal health side. For example Merck, Pfizer, Novartis, Bayer, Wyeth, Roche, Eli Lilly, and Schering-Plough all have animal health divisions. I am employed by Merial Limited a Merck owned company. Merial makes vaccines, osteoarthritis, heartworm, flea & tick, and oral care drugs. The most famous being Heartgard(ivermectin) and Frontline(fipronil) brand products. We also have the following brands as well:

Previcox(firocoxib)
OraVet
PureVax Feline Vaccines
Recombitek Canine Vaccines
Imrab Rabies Vaccine
I have sales responsibilities for North East Indiana or approximately 170 Veterinary Clinics.


I had ridden mostly four wheelers and dirt bikes on the farm but when I went to college I took a part-time job at a local motorcycle dealership parts department and was introduced to sportbikes. I couldn't afford one then but as soon as I graduated my first purchase was a shiny brand new 1999 Honda CBR 900RR

I have since bought and sold all of the following:
2000 Ducati 996 SOLD
2001 Yamaha R1 SOLD
2001 Kawasaki ZX9R SOLD
2002 Honda RC51 SOLD
2002 MV Agusta F4S SOLD
2004 Yamaha R1 SOLD
2005 Kawasaki 636 SOLD
2002 MV Agusta F4S 1+1 Currently Own

I am engaged and will be getting married in September of 2006.