My new neighbor looked at me a little befuddled as I finished my answer to his standard line of introductory questions. He had just bought the house directly behind mine after it sat vacant for over a year. It was one of many foreclosures that have littered neighborhoods across the lower 48 as of late. He scored a great deal on the home, while I was just happy the lawn would now be measured in inches versus feet.

We covered the basics, asking each about our own superficial aspects of our daily lives; kids, relationships, marriage, hometown and employment. The first few were relatively easy and met with an agreeable north/south head nod. Then I dove into what had become for the lack of a better term, “my life” for the past 20 years.

I told him of chance meetings and the twists that we all encounter in our lives. How I had worked as an editor for both regional and national snowmobile and ATV publications for nearly 10 years, then moved on to corporate life; first in Milwaukee working for “mother” Harley-Davidson in a media relations role, and then moving back to Minneapolis and being employed by Polaris Industries as a marketing manager for their snowmobile division. All told, the corporate side of things occupied another 10 years of my employed years.

By this time we had worked our way from the backyard to the garage, where my current arsenal of “work related resources” was neatly shoehorned into place. There was the line-up of motorcycles, one for nearly every application from dirt to street, two collectible automobiles, my daily driver, a refurbished Honda scooter, two vintage snowmobiles forced out of storage due to lack of space, and two current year, all terrain vehicles still glistening with showroom hang-tags.

Like a haunting echo from girlfriends past, he surveyed the garage and made the matter-of-fact statement, “You’ve got a lot of toys for one guy.”

Having heard this all too often from friends, neighbors, and yes, past girlfriends (note key word, past), I was well prepared to defend my position. I explained to him what he saw as toys, I saw as not just a lifestyle, but also a living. After 20 plus years of living, breathing and writing about all things that “make noise with gas”, my collection had become more than toys, but rather an extension of my office, similar to my computer, camera or trusty pad and pen.

“And you get paid to ride them?” he asked with puzzled disbelief.

His raw, blanketing statement, which I had heard before on more than one occasion, still caught me a little off-guard.  I suppose in the simplest of terms he was right. Every year I have the opportunity to ride the latest and not so latest snowmobiles, quads, motorcycles and side-x-side vehicles, and in the process, photograph and write about them in hopes of producing an informative, objective and entertaining collective work.

Truth is, I’m not by any stretch of the imagination an excellent writer, photographer, or rider. I see no Pulitzer in my future and you won’t find me whipping a snowmobile or ATV across a 100-foot gap for the lens of the latest extreme video. Instead, I’d say I’m downright average on all three counts. And I’ll venture out on a limb to say that many of my colleagues in the publishing business fall into the same category.

Yet, despite my self-proclaimed lack of talent, what the editors of ATV World and I bring to the pages of this publication every issue is what I like to call a “smart donkey.” Or, in other words, a well tuned gluteus maximus, among other things, and the ability to decipher what and why an ATV, snowmobile, or motorcycle is doing what it does and then relate that feedback to you in a concise and entertaining way.

Impossible? Not at all. Difficult? Certainly. I believe at times there is nothing harder than starting the day by staring at a blank computer monitor, waiting for words to flow from my fingers. Still, I’ve been doing just that for nearly 20 years, and now as I join the ranks of ATV World and sister publication, On Snow Magazine, I hope to convey to you the inner thoughts of my donkey for seasons to come.

The words had barely finished rolling off my neighbors tongue as I raised my focus to find him staring with a whimsical smile, awaiting my reply to his somewhat loaded question. I shrugged my shoulders with a sheepish grin and joined him with a scan around my garage of toys. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess you could say I do.”