Little brother.....

Brothers......we grew up fighting like all siblings do. I blackmailed mine and gave my little brother a hard time. I got him in trouble more times than I can count. I even knocked him out once in a boxing match in the basement of our childhood home we grew up in. I remember smoking weed and doing other drugs together, in addition to whatever liquor we could get a hold of. We spent little time together and rarely had anything good to say to each other. We were as different as night and day.

I grew up with a love for the outdoors going hunting, fishing, and playing golf with Dad. My brother, he grew up with the mechanical aptitude and a love for racing which is what Dad also did. We all went together to the stock car races when Dad and his lifelong friend Lenny were racing their stock car in Coshocton and Somerset, Ohio. The smell of gas, the overwhelming roar of engines pushed to the edge on a short track, and fresh smell of dirt flying from the wheels are as vivid today as they were then.

My brother has grown into motocross racing. He has no inhibitions to tearing down a motor and rebuilding, whereas I would hire someone to do the same job because I neither had the time nor the desire to spend endless hours busting my knuckles into bloody stumps, cussing up a tirade, and pushing my blood pressure thru the roof with my then short, sometimes impatient temper.

Now I'm much older and more mature and I see the likes and similarities that weren't apparent in the younger years. Today we both ride motorcycles. My brother rides motocross mostly and a little street when it's convenient. I on the other hand, am the vice-president for a local chapter of the Christian Motorcyclists Association called the Rolling Prophets and I  ride a bagger all the time regardless of the weather, and mostly just pick a direction and go for hours on end until the bottom side says enough is enough.

We both enjoy photography, especially 35mm film photography. I've shot traditional film for years and especially have a love for black & white photography. Today, like most folks, I've transitioned to Digital photography, which is convenient & inexpensive mostly, while little brother on the other hand has stayed traditional. Over the last few years he has become proficient in Photoshop and extracting out a masterpiece from a film shot that has been digitized that to this day amazes me. The level of insight into the shot, the emotion of his subject is unmatched, and the knack for capturing the flicker of a moment in time is beyond compare. I've come to appreciate my brother and his love for photography and taking a slice of time and transitioning it into masterpiece which intrigues me.

We're both grandfathers and cherish our time with our grandchildren. We both show signs of chrome in our hairlines, but we don't let it slow us down. We both work long hours and are successful in our individual careers. Through it all, I think we've both turned out OK and I couldn't be more proud to have Mike as my brother. Thanks bro for always being there.