I was sitting in a casino parking lot in southern Colorado when I launched it.

Not the most glamorous origin story. But that's how it happened - laptop open, bike parked a few feet away, the lights of the Sky Ute Casino reflecting off the asphalt, and a product page going live for the first time. The Broken Wings commemorative patch was officially for sale. A few minutes later, James placed the first order. One patch. The campaign was underway.

I'd been building toward that moment for months.

What Broken Wings Is

The Broken Wings Project started with a simple observation: riders are lost every year, and the motorcycle community grieves, and then the road keeps moving. There's no universal symbol for that grief. No shared way for riders to say I remember or I ride in honor of someone who can't.

The Broken Wings commemorative patch is that symbol.

It's designed to be worn - on a vest, a jacket, a bag. It represents riders lost, and it's a reminder that the road demands respect. Every rider who wears one knows what it means. Every rider who sees one on someone else knows what it means. That's the point.

The patch isn't a product in the conventional sense. It's a statement. And like most things worth doing, it took longer than expected to get right.

Building on the Road

One of the things this trip forced me to figure out was how to run a business while moving.

I'm not talking about checking email. I mean the actual work - product decisions, copy, shipping logistics, customer communication, platform setup. All of it, done from hotel rooms and casino suites and the occasional coffee shop parking lot with a decent signal.

Some of it worked better than I expected. Some of it was a reminder that there are limits to what you can accomplish from a phone and a laptop when you're also riding 400 miles a day.

What I learned is that the constraints clarify your priorities fast. When you have two hours of real work time before the road calls again, you find out quickly which tasks actually matter and which ones are just busyness dressed up as productivity. The trip didn't slow the business down. It stripped it down to what was essential.

The Launch

I'd planned the launch for the Durango Rendezvous for one reason: if there was ever a right place to introduce a product built for the motorcycle community, it was a motorcycle rally. A few hundred riders in one place. The product directly relevant to their experience. The timing felt right.

What I didn't plan for was the particular feeling of sitting alone in a parking lot to do it.

The rally was happening inside. Music, conversation, the usual energy of people who've ridden a long way to be in the same place. I was outside, working. That's a strange thing to sit with. But it's also an honest picture of what building something looks like from the outside versus the inside. The launch wasn't a moment of celebration in a crowded room. It was a quiet commit-and-publish, alone, in the dark.

James' order came in while I was still in the parking lot. That was enough.

Running the Numbers on the Road

Here's what the business looked like from a moving motorcycle:

The Broken Wings patch has a story worth telling, and the trip gave me material to tell it with. Every stop, every mile, every conversation with another rider was potential content. Every moment I spent in a place where riders gather was a chance to talk about what the patch represents and why it matters.

What I couldn't do efficiently from the road was fulfillment. I shipped what I could, worked around what I couldn't, and took notes on everything that needed to be fixed when I got home. The shipping infrastructure - carrier accounts, packaging workflow, label printing - all of that needed to be properly set up before the next campaign push. The road taught me what the gaps were.

What the Accident Has to Do With It

I don't lead with the accident. It's not the story.

But it's context. Last year, I went down. I came back to riding on the other side of it - different in ways I'm still sorting out, more committed in ways I didn't expect. The experience of being a rider who survived something and chose to keep riding changes how you think about the people who didn't get that choice.

Broken Wings came from that. Not from the crash itself, but from what the crash made me understand about what riding means, what loss means, and what it looks like to carry the memory of someone who loved the road as much as you do.

That's what the patch is for.

What's Next

The trip generated content, connections, and a clearer picture of where the business needs to go.

The Broken Wings campaign is being relaunched with proper infrastructure behind it - shipping workflow, a stronger product presentation, and a distribution strategy that goes beyond a single parking lot launch. The conversations I had on the road - with Cupcake in San Diego, with Paul Carroll in Durango, with the riders I crossed paths with from Alaska to New Mexico - those are the threads I'm pulling on.

The product is real. The community it serves is real. The next phase is building the distribution to match.

If you ride, you already know someone this is for.

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This ride was a 26-day motorcycle journey from Delaware, Ohio to Huntington Beach, California and back. This is Part 5 of a 6-part series. Read Part 4 here.