Clint Bowyer: Motorcycle Man By Jay Pfeifer fter spending his childhood crisscrossing the Midwest to race motocross, it’s fair Photography by Jim Fluharty to say that motorcycles are now just a part of Clint Bowyer’s DNA. They aren’t A an exotic hobby. They aren’t an affectation. They’re who he is. “I still love to ride,” he says. “I ride my bike pretty much any time I can. Whenever the weather’s all right, I ride my bike from my house to the shop. It’s still the best thing to do on a nice day. There’s nothing like it.” The 30-year-old is part of a small fraternity of Cup drivers who learned to race on two wheels. And even though he had to forsake his dreams of motocross stardom and now pays the bills (and more) driving stock cars, Bowyer maintains a fleet of motorcycles. A couple Harley-Davidsons, one custom Jack Daniel’s-themed bobber and a few “pit bikes” — small dirt bikes commonly used in other racing series to get on and off pit road — fill his garage. But on a sunny April day, Bowyer took possession of what’s destined to be his favorite — the “Merc Glide,” a one-of-a-kind Harley-Davidson that Bowyer commissioned from Klock Werks, a custom bike shop in Mitchell, S.D. If the Glide looks familiar to Bowyer fans or longtime readers of this magazine, that’s intentional. It was designed to be the two-wheeled companion to Bowyer’s pride and joy, his heavily customized 1949 Mercury “lead sled.” (The same car appeared in our September 2007 issue.) Brian Klock, the head of Klock Werks, had driven through the night from South Dakota to deliver the Merc Glide and its arrival marked the last step in a long development that began, strangely enough, with a golf cart. In 2007, Bowyer found himself at the Specialty Equipment Market Association convention (SEMA) — the Mecca for all things motorized and customized. As he wandered the floor, a custom 1965 Cadillac caught his eye. The blacked-out cruiser with bright red Cherry Bomb side pipes blew Bowyer away. He grabbed his cellphone, snapped a picture of the car and sent it to the guy who was responsible for painting the golf cart Bowyer would use on race weekends. Bowyer’s orders: make my cart look like this. 52 NASCAR Illustrated June 2009 51.