It’s not always easy to pick one path and stick to it. Sometimes you start out in one direction in life and someone or something can change gears on you. Take Adam Garley for example. He was born in California, raised in New Mexico, then moved to Fort Worth, Texas in ’02. Adam had always had a love for all things Harley and growing up his dad owned a shop called Traditions Cycle. By the time the chopper craze was at its peak Traditions Cycle had moved to Fort Worth and was well known and very busy. So Adam went to work for his dad at the shop for a few years getting to learn all about servicing and building custom Harleys. The shop was a great opportunity to work on his customizing skills and a good place to learn all about the real side of the motorcycle business and not what he had seen on TV.
It turned out to be a lot less fun than Adam thought it would be and all the long hours and low pay started to take a toll on him. Not wanting to jeopardize the family relationship he left his father’s shop to work at a small fab shop. There he learned how to weld and fabricate custom pieces for Harleys, but he soon saw it was not going to last. At the time the fab shop was working on parts for American Iron Horse and Adam was getting to know all the guys over there real well, and so when he heard about a job opening he jumped on it. Adam started in the body shop and worked there for about 2 months learning about custom paint jobs and repairs until he was approached by the R&D department to help work on a custom project. He split after a bad experience working for the people at AIH. They tried to keep him from expanding his knowledge, then in the end just took all of his ideas and gave him no credit.
Adam decided it was time to take a break from working on motorcycles for a living. He took a job at a mortgage company to pay his own mortgage and worked on a few Harleys in his garage while helping out at his Dad’s shop for a little extra cash.
Adam was still in love with the motorcycling and watched every cable show out there and when it came to his idols like Billy Lane, Jesse James, and Paul Yaffe he could not get enough. So when he saw a casting call on the Speed Channel for a show called Build or Bust he sent in all his info not expecting anything. Adam was surprised to get a call from the producers to head to Los Angeles for a shot at building a bike on TV; he was hooked all over again. If you are familiar with the show the builder has a short timeframe to build a bike from the ground up and if you can do everything on time and get the bike to fire and run the builder gets to keep it. Adam was one of only three to build a bike in the allotted timeframe for the show and win the bike.
So with a re-found love for the bike industry once again he found his way back to his Dad’s shop and rode his rigid chopper everyday for the next 4 years while honing his fabrication and building skills. Traditions Cycle is a well known service, maintenance and performance shop, but they didn’t do a whole lot of fabricating there. At night Adam would find himself at the shop doing all the customizing and fabrication work. In ’08 Adam bought his father Lorenzo’s shop and took over the business.
That same year he made up his mind to find or build a bike with a little more comfort than his rigid. After seeing all the new things people were doing to baggers, Adam thought to himself, “I could ride one of those,” and his wife Renee deserved it.