Well, as time passed, my grandfather slowed down some, and was nearing the end of his life. He knew it and let slip to one his Indian pals that he might consider selling the beautiful old bikes. This was about 1975. One fine day, a gray-haired, bushy-bearded man in aviator sunglasses appeared at my grandfather's house and asked to look at the bikes. My grandfather showed them to the man, and he offered to buy them all right there on the spot. My grandfather was not prepared to make a decision in that moment and said so. The man doubled his offer, and then, after talking a bit more, tripled his offer. In the end, Papa told the visitor that perhaps he might just hold onto the bikes, in case his four grandsons might take an interest in them down the road. The man said he understood, shook my grandfather's hand and left.

Not too many years from then, both my grandfather and the stranger wouldpass away. And in the end, my grandfather's instincts were right. Down the road, my brothers and I discovered that we did have an interest in the beautiful old bikes, if for no other reason than because our Papa built them and wanted us to have them. Late on night, in 1997, I'm driving down the 405 on the way home with my wife and infant son. We had no money, my commission-only job was going nowehere, I was dreading going to work the next morning, when the story of "The Indian" suddenly came to me. I wrote the "screenplay" with no training, and it was good and bad. Good idea, bad execution. So, after screenwriting classes and thousands of rewrites later, as well as my wife challenging me to either make my own movie or stop talking about it, I set about making my very first movie starring, amongst a very fine cast, my grandfather's old 1917 Indian. It's been a long road.

By the way, when my grandfather was asked who the stranger was who offered to by the Indians? He thought for a moment, then said "It was some fellow named Steve McQueen."