Rider Updates
Jul 12 2012
My name is Steve Howe. I was born with a birth defect that left me missing my right hand. When my mother was pregnant with me
the OBGYN MD gave her some medicine to subside her prolonged nausea called Benedictine. Little did she know that this medicine
was classified as a part of the thalidomide family which left hundreds of thousands of children with birth defects. I grew up in
Las Vegas, Nevada with my father, mother, brother and sister. My brother raced motocross every weekend and that is where
my love for motorcycles began.
When I was three years old, I remember my father bringing home a blue ItaliJet, a yellow pair of Suzuki riding pants, an
open faced DG helmet and a red chest protector. As I anxiously waited to ride my motorcycle we had to overcome a few
obstacles first. One of the obstacles was switching my throttle to the left side and making it twist the correct way. That didn’t
pose too much of a challenge as my father and one of the local rider’s father (Tom Hart, Carey Hart’s dad) fabricated a throttle
for me. The biggest obstacle was more of a challenge. How was I to hold on? This was more difficult to solve as we tried several
different devices. One of the contraptions was a holster that allowed me to buckle my hand into it. The problem was, when I crashed,
it would drag me along with the bike. As we tried several different concepts none of them seemed to be effective. I eventually just put
a wrist band on and shoved my right wrist through the handle bar and front break assembly. This seemed to be the most sturdy and
safest way to hold on.
As I raced motorcycles from age 3-16 years of age, I accomplished many goals that seemed to initially be unachievable for a kid missing his
right hand. I was a nominee for the top youngest riders in Las Vegas, I was sponsore