encouraging aspiring grandmothers to help send their adult children on vacation, with the result being a grandchild in nine months.  It's an easy to understand premise, and the TV commercials were hilarious.  Put  the couples in breeding ground, and then wait.  But what does it have to do with motorcycles?  Well, it turns out we have here a take on the idea that involves a custom build, and bests of all, there are no diapers to change. 

     Jason Kidder grew up in a household obsessed with motorcycles.  His dad had Panheads and his mom rode anything from an Aerial to Harleys, her last bike being a 55 Panhead.  "My mom was a very big influence on me getting into motorcycles.  She sometimes couldn't kick start her own bikes so I did it as a kid for her," Jason recalls.  At the age of 14 he bought a 175 Enduro from one of his neighbors.  The kickstart was broken so Jason had to pop-start it each time he wanted to ride.  "I took it out to the trails with one of the neighbor girls and she broke her ankle the first time I took it out to the trails," Jason tells us.   

     Jason has never worked on custom builds before.  He was inspired to undertake such a project years back when his friend Ryan put 26" rims on a Sportster.  It was the talk of the town and he wound up buying it from Ryan.  "I fell in love with the style and wanted one of my own," he says, "So when my mom said she was interested in getting another bike, I thought that here was my chance to get my mom a motorcycle."  Jason then spent the summer working on the build, his mother never suspecting what her son had in store for her.  Come Christmas, Jason gave her an almost-complete motorcycle as a gift, which understandably produced a mixture anger and happiness in her. 

     Just before beginning the process of building the bike, Jason knew where to take it:  Carlson Customs in Atkins, Iowa.  It was here

He let Jason come in to his shop and custom make the color out of paint that he had left over from other projects.  When Jason was satisfied with the color, they prepped the tank and fender and sprayed the color.  Jason comments, "I told him I was not done yet; I wanted stripes.  So, I laid out the black stripes and we painted them.  When we un-masked it and looked at it, I fell in love with the colors and strips."

     Jason put the bike together 24 hours before Sturgis, he entered it in a bike show, not thinking he was actually going to win anything with the stiff competition.  "When I came back near the end of the day, I had photographers and the show promoter came up to me.  They were all enthusiastic about my mom's bike," he says.  Many tell Jason that the motorcycle was the coolest build they had seen all Sturgis.  Jason responded the only way he knew how: "It's my mom's motorcycle!"  AIM 

This was an article written by Edward Arriaza and photographed by Don Kates/Shooters Images for American Iron Magazine.  The article was published in April of 2020.  It is so cool to see one our motorcycles that we built in a nationwide motorcycle magazine.  Thanks for writing this great article.