Sometimes you have to get out of yourself to reconnect with yourself. Builder Todd Silicato did just that with his wife, Lisa, while riding a Harley through the Austrian Alps. It was something they rarely have time for these days as they’re usually immersed in the business of running Todd’s Cycle, in Huntington Beach, California. But here they were racking up about 1,000 miles on Austrian roads, passing glaciers and castles, cruising into tiny towns and one giant Euro bike festival. The trip was sponsored by Metzeler.

Between its scenic beauty and enthusiastic motorcycle culture, Austria left an indelible impression on Todd. “I’m ready to move there,” he said. “It was the most riding I’d done that year. We landed in Germany then got on bikes and rode for seven hours over to Austria. It was awesome. We were there for a week and I loved it. You’re riding with all green around you, then you’re ten-thousand feet up in the mountains doing switchbacks on a Harley. There’s so much history there, and the roads are in really good shape. I’d like to live in Austria. The bike movement there is so different. It’s transportation too, everyone rides in leathers and boots and they all carry rain gear. There are a lot of people riding bikes, a lot of enthusiasm. When we were riding down the road there were little kids on their dads’ shoulders high-fiving everybody as we were riding into town for European Bike Week. People sit there all day taking pictures. It’s awesome.”

Getting to Austria courtesy of Metzeler wasn’t an overnight process. One of three kids, Todd grew up in La Canada, California. His parents, Marty and Erleene, were both drag racers and introduced Todd to internal combustion at an early age. “I’ve been a gearhead since I was born,” he said. “I raced motocross before my feet could touch the ground. My dad was riding motocross bikes at the time, we had a track in our backyard. My first bike was a little Honda 50 when I was in first or second grade. My dad took the seat off and bungee-corded a piece of foam on it so my feet could touch the ground.”

Todd’s family was very into the racing scene. “We’d travel around to the races on weekends,” he says. “My mom was really good at go-kart racing. She used to go out and beat the guys. I raced go-karts starting when I was nine, ten-years-old.”

In high school he began to drift away from racing. “Girls,” he said, explaining it all. “We lived at the beach, and it was like, do you want to get up at five o’clock in the morning and go ride motocross, or go lie on the beach with girls and your friends?”

His first automobile, a Volkswagen Rabbit, was the delivery car he drove for his father’s pharmacy back in the days when the local drugstore was owned by a family, not a corporation. “I made my dad’s deliveries for the pharmacy, and when he was done with that car I got it,” Todd explains. His future wife Lisa worked at the pharmacy, too. They’d met in sixth grade, and when they were 15, her family moved next door to his. “We grew up together,” he said. “When we started dating, it kind of ended my motocross career.”

Now they have two teenagers, Felicia and Luke. Neither “The Girl” nor “The Boy” (as Todd calls them) is interested in motorcycles. “I put them in a shifter kart and we play out in the street here,” he said, “but it’s like work for them to come over here because they have to sweep and take out the trash, do some filing.”

Well, yeah that does sound like work. But there’s nothing wrong with that. In addition to being his dad’s delivery guy, Todd worked at a go-kart racing school. “I worked on the go-karts and assisted in the driving classes,” he says. “It was cool. It got me into engine stuff. I’d already been building motors for my own cars, but that job really got me involved in it.”

After high school, Todd moved to Palm Springs and worked at a small Italian restaurant doing everything from waiting on tables to parking cars, and in the parts department of a motorcycle dealership. From there he moved to Arizona to attend the Motorcycle Mechanics Institute in Phoenix. “At the same time I worked for an engine builder, Jerry Hall,” Todd explained. “Basically he was my mentor, my guide. He was a mechanical engineer and worked for the Kawasaki race team back in the day. He was great at the computer; he could sit there and spit out formulas for combustion or cylinder chamber heads, just whatever.”

After MMI Todd stayed on in Arizona for five or six years, then ended up in Sacramento working for a road race team. “I ended up working for this racing team for a couple years and doing products. The owner had a hard time paying us, he was a shady character. He sent us on a road trip and gave me a credit card that had someone else’s name on it, and when I said ‘What do I do with this?’ he said to use it to pay for the fuel. So the first gas pump we go to it doesn’t work, and I ended up using my own card to pay for the gas.”

Todd moved on to Answer Products doing “R&D for exhausts and dyno stuff, mountain bikes,” he said. “Then Roland Sands called me from Performance Machine and wanted me to work on his road race bike. I was going to do it as a part-time gig, but then Answer got taken over by new management and they didn’t like me taking off all the time to go to the races, so I ended up going full time at Performance Machine for about nine years. I did Roland’s race bikes and it turned into working full time.”

After leaving Performance Machine to partner in a shop of his own, Todd said he had a “bad experience in the industry” and didn’t know if he’d ever have another shop. Enter the group he calls “Team Todd Cycle,” his crew of friends turned employees that include Brandon Holstein and Dennis Sanchez, and of course, Lisa.

“We almost didn’t open the shop, the money wasn’t really there,” Todd said. “I was selling products out of my house, and then found this location we’re in now, and dove in again.” Lisa encouraged Todd to open the shop, and left her full-time job to join him at the shop.

“I think that’s a big part of everything, being able to trust somebody,” Lisa said. “When you’ve known someone so long and you’ve grown up with each others’ families, you know him better than anybody. I told him if you’re going to do it, you better do it now. I didn’t want to be 50 or 60 years old and hear him bitch for the rest of his life about things he wished he’d done. He’s so talented. Building bikes is really cool, but the way his mind works, he really loves doing parts.”

Todd often works seven days a week at Todd’s Cycle, and his products can be found in Drag Specialties’ catalog and several new products are in the works.

He and Lisa and the kids live about a mile away, and he sometimes bicycles to work on an old Schwinn he picked up at a swap meet and refurbished. Or, he takes one of his three bikes. “I’ve got a Sportster I built with a pro stock motor in it, it’s a 150hp toy,” he said. “And I’ve got a Ducati Hypermotard, which is usually my daily commute if I don’t mess with it. It’s almost all stock. I’ll probably do some parts for it now. And I’ve got another Sportster, a kind of sport bike type, the Bull.”

Todd still likes going to the beach, surfing, and taking trips with his family, but he does miss Austria. “Everything was nice and relaxed when we were there,” Todd said. “My back didn’t hurt for a change.” To see what Todd’s up to lately, visit his website at www.toddscycle.com.