When Thor Drake was sixteen, his mother—a level-headed nurse—told him he could absolutely not buy a motorcycle. So, what did he do? He became (in his words) “the world’s worst paperboy” and saved up enough money to buy one. Thor has always lived for a challenge.

That first motorcycle started an obsession. These days, Thor builds custom motorcycles, amid his busy schedule running the free-wheeling One Motorcycle Show and Portland’s One Moto Cafe.

“I own more motorcycles than anybody should. I think probably one for every mood. Or maybe two.”

Thor started life at high speed. He grew up snowboarding in the mountains of Northern Arizona. At age fifteen, he entered a snowboarding competition where the grand prize was a free week at the legendary Windells Ski Camp on Oregon’s Mt. Hood. During the intense competition, he landed on his neck. “I knocked myself out for a long time. I had to be helicoptered off the mountain,” he says. But he was somehow not only able to return to the event the next day, but also win the whole thing. The owner of Windells offered to let him stay for the entire summer rather than just a week. From then on, every summer he would get in his truck on the last day of school and drive 1,200 miles to Mt. Hood.

As he got a bit older, Thor grew from buying motorcycles to wanting to build them. Riding a motorcycle at top speed is, ironically, the time when Thor feels like he slows down the most.

“Without sounding too sappy, it’s this experience of being completely in the moment,” he says. “Whenever I get on a motorcycle, everything slows down. It becomes very clear inside my head. It sounds weird, but it’s calming. My body craves it. But it’s also just pure fun.”

In his late twenties, Thor’s day job was building booths for trade shows. He built the booths in an old grain silo building on Portland’s East side that he remembers being an after-hours party spot when he was a teen. In 2009, he decided it would be rad to use the space to host “a big motorcycle party show thing,” an event to celebrate all kinds of zippy custom bikes rather than the West Coast Choppers style that was dominating the scene at the time. A bunch of friends pitched in; everyone brought in their wildest bikes and coolest helmets, plus drinks and a DJ, and the One Motorcycle Show was born.

“Honestly, I just wanted to build motorcycles, and back then there wasn’t really a show for the style of motorcycles that I was into.” Sixteen years later, the show now has events in Portland and Las Vegas and still showcases unique bikes, each of which has its own story. Whether they’re cafe racers, choppers, or vintage dirt bikes, every motorcycle in the show is one-of-a-kind. Their custom work often shows a sense of humor, embracing wacky color schemes and setups that have attendees grinning, shaking their heads and snapping photos with both jealousy and wonder.

The bartender at that first show was one-of-a-kind, too: Tori George, a mellow woman with a keen eye for design. She and Thor started dating, got married, and she started working as the lead curator for the show.

Two years after the first show, Thor and his motorcycle-loving friends opened a coffee shop—now called One Moto Cafe—that acts as an inviting hangout spot and clubhouse. Thor wanted the space to have the same joyful community vibe as the skate and snowboard shops he hung out in as a kid. “Whenever you went to a snowboard or skateboard shop, if you kept showing up, you kind of got pulled into that culture.” The cafe has gone through several iterations and suffered through COVID, but it still serves as a hotspot for Portland’s motorcycle enthusiasts. Just like Thor himself, the cafe “is kind of an evolving thing,” he says. “It’s never stayed still.”

At age forty-four, Thor is now facing his most hardcore project yet: raising two kids with Tori. “The coolest thing about having kids is it’s completely different than motorcycling in every single way. But it’s challenging, and I like the challenge.” After decades spent going bigger, faster, harder, he’s now learning how to very sweetly and gently ask his daughter to brush her teeth at night. Turns out the gnarliest challenge in life is learning how to slow down. “I’m learning how to be more patient. I’m learning how to be more methodical, more focused, more loving. It makes me grow inside.”

Thor still has that first-ever motorcycle he bought and is active in the motorcycling world. But now he’s balancing that with family time, teaching his kids to ride and spending time on the sidelines as he cheers his six-year-old son on the hockey rink and his four-year-old daughter as she tears around the backyard on a purple bike with rainbow streamers flying from the handlebars.

“As much as you can determine who you are, Mother Nature has bigger ideas for you. If you let them happen.”