For People Like Me

Steve Hayes couldn't sit still in school, lost his homework more times than he could count, and was pretty sure the two angels on his shoulders were both arguing just to mess with him. Teachers wrote him off. But put a ball in his hands or point him toward a finish line, and that restless kid from Oildale, California, turned into something nobody expected.

From a family tree tangled with Irish river rogues, Cherokee bloodlines, and a great-grandmother who hid her children in an orphanage to protect a second chance at love, Steve inherited a knack for survival and a taste for the unpredictable. He cut his teeth in the California oil patch, where he discovered that the guys who couldn't sit still in class were running the show. He rode Harleys to Sturgis with his son, froze half to death on a midnight ride through Minnesota, racked up a $350 bar tab in North Carolina, and somehow kept finding his way home.

3 marriages taught him love wasn't what he thought it was. A life overseas in Thailand taught him how to finally slow down. And a lifetime of rolling with the punches, sometimes ducking, sometimes just hoping the punch would miss, taught him that luck isn't something that lands in your lap. You build the door yourself and stand ready when opportunity shows up.

This is a memoir for anyone who ever felt like the mold was made for somebody else. Steve doesn't pretend he got it all right. He just refuses to believe the mess, the laughter, the heartbreak, and the open road weren't worth every mile.

If he can survive all the plot twists and still have enough gas in the tank to tell the story, imagine what's possible for you.