Manny Ruiz, 53, runs a one-man vintage motorcycle restoration shop out of a cinder block garage in east Austin. He’s held the same grudge for 35 years, ever since his high school girlfriend’s 14-year-old little sister caught them sneaking out to a ZZ Top show and ratted them out to her dad, who showed up at the venue with a shotgun and banned Manny from the property for life. He’d missed his senior spring break trip, lost the girlfriend, and spent a month sanding rust off his dad’s old pickup as punishment, and he never forgot who was to blame. Widowed six years prior, he fills most of his free time hauling his latest restoration project to small-town Hill Country bike shows, where the brisket is cheap, the beer is cold, and no one asks him why he still sleeps on the same side of the bed he shared with his wife.
Mid-October at a show outside Fredericksburg, the air smells like two-stroke exhaust and hickory smoke, and he’s just walked away with first place in the vintage Japanese category for his 1972 CB750, 18 months of late nights and skinned knuckles finally paying off. He heads for the food tent to reward himself with a slice of pecan pie, and turns right into someone carrying a paper plate of loaded nachos, a glob of cheese landing square on the toe of his scuffed work boot.