Phil Grove started riding motorcycles in the late 60s as a desert racer in AMA District 37. He raced some of the toughest desert races including the SCORE Baja 1000, and the Mint 400 in Las Vegas. As it happens though, Phil didn’t stay in motorcycle racing, but riding and the love of the challenge of riding across the desert stayed in him.
Decades after hanging up his racing gear and selling the dirt bikes, Phil bought his first Harley Davidson. Now, this wasn’t the first bike he’d bought or ridden since getting back into riding (40ish years later), but it was the first one he really … REALLY rode. His first Harley was a 2015 Street Bob that took him 72k miles in two years before he sold it and bought his next Harley, a 2018 Heritage that he put 30k miles on in about 10 months before trading it in for a 2018 Road Glide. Just recently, Phil spotted a gorgeous 2020 Heritage and decided that with more than 80,000 miles on the Road Glide, it was time for another trade-in. In all, Phil has accumulated more than 225,000 miles in just over 5 years.
Phil is riding in the Hoka Hey Motorcycle Challenge this year because he loves a good riding challenge, and at 79 years young, finishing the Hoka Hey is the ultimate challenge and will be his crowning achievement. He already has three Iron Butt certifications that include a Saddle Sore 1000, and a Bun Burner Gold (1500 miles in 24 hours). As if that wasn’t enough, he just completed a coast-to-coast challenge in which he rode from Coronado Beach, CA to Jacksonville Beach, FL, a total of 2,356 miles in 46 hours and 28 minutes.
As a Vietnam Era Veteran himself, Phil has chosen to ride and raise money for the Veteran’s Guest House, which was founded in the early 1990s when two Reno veterans, along with their community, discovered that out-of-town veterans and their family members were sleeping in their cars while visiting the local VA. Today, the Veteran’s Guest House provides U.S. Military veterans and their family members temporary overnight accommodations when they are in the Reno, NV area for medical treatment.
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