Posted on December 1, 2022.

Once a whistleblower at AIG in Houston, Gordon Massie used his settlement to grow a personal bike collection that's now on display in Texas Hill Country.

Gordon Massie got his first motorcycle at 11 years old: a tiny minibike with a lawnmower engine that could only reach a top speed of about 20 mph, purchased with his own money. After that, it was over—Massie was hooked. With the begrudging blessing of his parents, he bought his first street-legal bike at 15: a 1966 Honda CL160, not unlike one of the 91 vintage motorcycles displayed in his Texas Vintage Motorcycle Museum in Johnson City.

After years of restoring and collecting motorcycles, Massie opened the museum in the spring of 2022, exhibiting 83 bikes from his personal collection and eight loaners, mainly from the 1950s through the 1970s. There are Moto Guzzis and Hondas and Kawasakis and Ducatis and Harleys, a tiny 1960 Tote-Gote Scamp with an additional sidecar built from a World War II bomb casing, a loaner from West Coast Chopper's Jesse James, and a Norton Manx factory road racer that competed in the 1955 and 1956 Isle of Man races. A barebones green Cushman with a fringed seat has a handwritten sign underneath it: "Perhaps my ugliest motorcycle??" A virtually unridden, on-loan Ducati signed by English racer Paul Smart was previously displayed in someone's living room. Bikes hang from the ceiling, and a plastic plate catches oil dripping from one below. It's a motorcyclist's dream.

"These were generally the motorcycles that I lusted after as a kid, but could ill afford," Massie said. "It's just been a lifelong passion, and I'm thrilled to be able to share it with the rest of the world."

Massie didn't start collecting to furnish a whole museum on Highway 290 in Texas Hill Country. Rather, it started after he found himself unexpectedly retired at 54 in 2005. A whistleblower at AIG in Houston, Massie was fired and received a sizable settlement. So, he did what any motorcycle enthusiast would.

"I was bored out of my mind. I was used to working 40, 50, 60-hour weeks. So I started just traveling around Texas, buying up old motorcycles, and then I started restoring bikes again—20 of the bikes in here are my restorations," Massie said.

It kept him busy when his peers were not yet retired, and the collection continued to grow to about 63 bikes. But when his youngest son died just three years after his wife, Massie found himself alone in his house in The Woodlands, "seeing too many ghosts," with two three-car garages stuffed with motorcycles. His daughter, who lives in Dripping Springs with her family, had been encouraging him to move closer to her. On his first trip to Johnson City—a growing travel destination in Hill Country—he was browsing an antique store when he overheard the owner mention she was ready to sell the building and retire. Even better: The building was once a Ford dealership selling Model As from the 1930s until 1977.

"I thought, 'Oh my God, this is perfect for what I want to do with all my motorcycles,'" Massie said. "So we worked out a deal and I bought the property. Then I moved out here with all my worldly possessions, 63 motorcycles, two dogs."

It takes lots of friends with pick-up trucks and U-Haul trailers to move 63 bikes, Massie said. In fall 2021, they made it in four caravans, 15 bikes at a time, from The Woodlands to Johnson City, often drawing onlookers when they'd stop at the Buc-ee's in Bastrop. Massie loaded all his bikes in the building, gave it a fresh coat of paint, put in lights and vintage gas pumps, and the museum was ready for visitors. It's been going well, Massie said. The museum is right on 290, where the highway becomes Johnson City's Main Street, surrounded by beautiful Hill Country motorcycle routes, and travelers can't help but park their bikes to take a look.

"Doing something like this is especially valuable to me because it gives me a connection with a community," Massie said. "Having this gives me my passion. It gives me a chance to meet so many people, to build a business and to really establish a presence in a community."

Now that he has the space and audience, Massie's collection has only grown. But the Texas Vintage Motorcycle Museum has already proved more than a showroom or roadside attraction: It's a path forward.

"After my son passed away, I was spending a lot of time just lying on the couch grieving," Massie said. "And I started watching some YouTube videos about grief and loss, and they all said the same thing: You gotta get back in the game of life and follow your passion and do something you really love. And you're not gonna forget your grief, but you can move on. And that's what I'm doing."

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