The universe can be so deeply unfair at times. Evans Brasfield has died. A member of the Motorcycle.com team for roughly 10 years, he was killed in a riding accident earlier this week.
I had the privilege of hanging out with Evans a number of times over the years at press events, always making sure I was sitting near him at dinners so as to be able to engage in conversation. At least a few times he and I went on morning runs together – he taking joy in recording, via his Strava app, all the different cities and countries in which he had run.
I’m pretty sure that everyone who ever met him will remember him first not as a rider or writer but as a family man. Indeed, when I think of the kind of father I’d like to be, he is one of my models. At dinners, with everyone else telling lightly embellished tales of their riding adventures, Evans would instead often tell you of his daughters’ accomplishments.
I remember one evening he excitedly stood up, phone to his ear, to tell the whole table that his daughter had just won some sort of a medal or competition. I don’t remember the particular achievement, I just remember the excited, beaming face of fatherly pride. Man, how could you not want a dad like that? He loved his family so much. My heart breaks for them.
He will be equally missed by everyone else who ever met him. The world is desperately lacking in people as kind, genuine and humble as Evans. He never lost his joy of motorcycling, never stopped being delighted at the fact he got to ride bikes in beautiful places for a living.
Almost a decade ago, Evans was at the first major press ride I ever attended: Harley-Davidson’s launch of the Milwaukee Eight platform. It being my first event, the feelings of imposter syndrome were at times crippling; sometimes I couldn’t speak, other times I couldn’t stop myself from spewing endless inane babble. I was starstruck at meeting all these guys whose work I had read so obsessively. I felt stupid. I felt out of place. I felt that at any minute someone was going to call me out – drumming me out of the mo-jo fraternity and getting me fired from RideApart.
All the moto-journalists were, in fact, friendly. But Evans stood out as particularly welcoming and somehow, in an unspoken way, understanding of all the feelings of imposter syndrome that I was dealing with.
At one point in the multi-day event, Harley-Davidson had us ride to Olympic National Park. We rode to the top of a mountain called Hurricane Ridge for a photo run (where each rider takes turns riding past a photographer so we can return to our publications with nifty photos to accompany our reviews). On another day, I’ll bet the pictures at this location would have been amazing – on this day, not so much. Hurricane Ridge was living up to its name: it was pissing rain and bitingly cold.
There was a cafe at the top of the mountain and all the mo-jos had run in to grab coffees and get out of the weather. Eventually, members of Harley’s PR team came to harass us back outside and onto the bikes. Evans happily lined up to be first and I, being used to this sort of weather from life in Britain, lined up next to him. As we fired the engines, the rain started falling even harder, clacking against our helmets.
Over the rain and the engines and the wind I could hear Evans laughing – a joyful, life-affirming bellow.
“The glamorous life of a moto-journalist!” he shouted to me. “You wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, would you?”
Evans loved riding. He loved life. He loved his family. I am damned lucky to have known him.
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