Born between the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, I have always yearned for adventure, learning, and the great outdoors.

I was born and raised in a small town called Salisbury, Maryland, a place where I know I’m from, but has never been home. Let me explain.

Many small town folks have roots that run deep. Multi-generational families right down the street, the same friends since birth, the same sports teams, Friday nights, and holiday traditions. These are all wonderful attributes of a small town and their people, but it has never been the case for me.

I am the product of two wonderful parents, David and Diana. My dad is a Pennsylvanian for the most part, by way of a four year stint in Hawai'i with the US Army. My mom on the other hand is essentially from the entire midwest (lol, pastor’s daughter)… Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, western PA, the list goes on for her. My parents met while pursuing master’s degrees in education at Penn State. Together they relocated to Maryland just three months before I was born for my dad to pursue his new career as principal of the local trade and technical high school.

From an early age, every day, week, and summer vacation seemed to be spent on some adventure, whether that was to our local beach (Assateague Island National Seashore, the one with the wild ponies!), or to a destination somewhere across the USA.

We spent time touring the historic battlefields of Gettysburg, chasing the changing leaves in Happy Valley, seeing the sailboats tie to the moorings in Bar Harbor, or watching the waves roll onto the shores of Fort Myers Beach, Florida.

All this is to say that we weren’t sitting at home very much, nor doing the same things with the same people at the same places. Education, learning, and passionate exploration was not only always encouraged, but expected. In this environment I grew up with a sense that life was best lived in the chase of new information, new vistas, and new stories.

My earliest pursuits were athletics and music. My dad is a multi-decade basketball player, waking up at 5am for most of my youth to play in the competitive men’s basketball league at our local YMCA, and even coaching for a time at a small college in PA. From my mother, because of her music studies and education background, I was in piano lessons at an early age, which led to high school concert and jazz saxophone, all forms of percussion (marching, symphonic, drum set in dozens of genres), as well as a recreational enjoyment of guitar.

Music led me to my first entrepreneurial endeavor. At the end of middle school, my parents got me my first laptop, a (now considered vintage) Apple Powerbook G4. With this new incredible tool, I began exploring audio recording by plugging our family’s old 3.5mm headphone-jack-equipped microphone into my laptop via a crude Radio Shack adapter. By high school, every allowance dollar and Christmas gift was centered on expanding and improving my recording equipment, which culminated in running Free Flight Studios, a recording studio out of my parents finished attic space. With barely working AC, we would sometimes have 10-12 high schoolers in the space, with me at the helm of my Mackie mixer, recording everything from hardcore/emo rock, post-modern, psych rock, rap, and acoustic albums.

The early sports pursuits eventually distilled to an exclusive focus on lacrosse, a sport that is as synonymous with Maryland as the blue crab. This all culminated in a USA All American nomination my senior year, and a recruitment to play lacrosse with the now thirteen-time national championship winning Salisbury University seagulls.

By reaching college, I was feeling the need for a new adventure, beyond athletics and music. During a summer working in the Ocean City, Maryland area at a cellular retailer with my friend Navid, we started to see motor scooters everywhere (think Vespa). By the time we went back to our respective schools that fall (Salisbury for me and and University of Maryland for him), Navid and I saw the absolute need for affordable, fast transportation centered around the college student's life (this was after all peak recession time and budgets were tight). Thus, College Scooters was born, with the goal of selling and servicing motor scooters around the DC metro area and Eastern Shore of Maryland. After 10 successful years of operation and growth (both in the company and ourselves), we sold to an outside investor, who continues to operate the brand today in College Park, Maryland.

During the course of building College Scooters, my passion turned to motorcycles as I got my first true motorcycle at age 22. Just as my interest in motorcycles grew, so did the need for our Salisbury store to attend to the growing need for a quality independent motorcycle shop in the area. Five years after starting in the powersports business, Shore Cycles was founded as a new brand to service all brands of motorcycles, and sell quality pre-owned bikes. What started in a small 1200 square foot store grew to a 5000+ square foot operation just four short years later.

In 2024, after almost 15 years growing two brands in two markets, employing hundreds of amazing people from so many places and backgrounds, it was time for a change. In January of ‘24 I approached a long-time employee/mechanic about buying Shore Cycles, and he was ecstatic about the possibility. In July of the same year, we finalized the transaction, sealing the deal on the legacy of Shore Cycles continuing in new, capable hands.

And thus the exploration continues, albeit in new, at times still unknown directions. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

There are two other significant events in my life that I can’t go without mentioning. The first is marrying my wonderful wife Paige in October of ‘23. The other is buying a Sprinter van at the end of ‘19. Together, we now travel across the country in the van I self-converted into a 4x4 camper, exploring, riding dirt bikes, pedaling mountain bikes, and hiking with our two dogs, Maisie and Luna, and our little cat Maggie. My wife Paige is a immensely talented photographer (you can find her HERE), and is expanding her client list across the country, specifically in Colorado.

Paige and I feel that we have found the home we’ve always been looking for, here in the mountains of Colorado, and are excited to build new stories and connections with the people and places that inspire us so much here.

Cheers and thanks for reading,

John Churchman