In our latest Quad Lock Feature, we hear how Tom went from simply filming his daily commutes and weekend rides to 263K YouTube subscribers.
From uploading videos of his daily commute to work, Tom is now a well-known personality across the world, thanks to his YouTube channel, @ridingwithtom.
During the week, Tom works as a Computer Programmer. But it's his weekends where he's made a name for himself. We catch up with the moto-vlogger at his local playground, Wombat State Forest.
[ Transcript ]
Tom: "This is Wombat State Forest, it's only 40 minutes out of Melbourne. This where we come out to do 4-Wheel Driving, riding dirt bikes, it's a great spot. Through the week I'm a programmer for a bank so basically just work on a computer all day and then on the weekend I'm out here. In Wombat State Forest where we are here, very very difficult, very easy to get lost as well and that's why I always need good maps on the dirt bike at all times because if you can't see through the bush here, as soon as you turn a corner you got no idea where you are really.
I was living in the city and I was riding basically from one side of the city to the other on a commute and I kept having all these close calls and this taxi almost cut me off and then I thought... it's no fun to just tell the story of this car almost cutting you off. I'm going to put a camera on my helmet and show the mates at work and I started getting the footage of the close calls and I thought where to put it up. I put it up on Youtube and that's where I kind of found that there were a lot of other people making videos on their GoPros and their helmet, talking to their camera, which is called moto-vlogging basically.
I've been riding bikes kind of my whole life, I rode dirt bikes when I was young, my Dad's always ridden motorbikes so riding motorbikes has always been a passion but also filming and editing has also been another passion for me. So I love how making these Youtube videos on the GoPro and then it lets me do a bit of editing and you know sometimes even mixing music and stuff into the video, it kind of hits all the things I really enjoy so thats where it kind of took off from.
I've been uploading weekly pretty much, never really miss an upload other than when I'm on big trips but basically weekly is what I've done for the last 6 years.
I guess there's a big community around it, it's massive overseas as well in the UK. It's absolutely huge in America... it's absolutely huge. I went to America and I just sent a thing out saying "Hi I'm going to ride this road, do you want to come out?" This is in California and then we had like a hundred people come out to go for a ride with me. We did another one a couple of years later in San Diego and we shut down a street basically. The police came and were like who's organising something here, and I'm like me, I'm sorry I'm from Australia.
It's huge to know you can go overseas and all these people will want to come out and ride. They're all moto-vloggers as well. They've all got their cameras so that was pretty cool, yeah.
I'd been moto-vlogging for about a year or something and my wife was really into motorbikes as well and she spotted me in the city riding my motorbike and she messaged my @ridingwithtom Facebook page saying "I saw your motorbike and stuff I love it." It was a green ninja 636 that I was riding, it was really loud and she said it was really cool and stuff and we basically started talking from there. A month later we met up. It just went from there and then 5 years later now we're married so that's probably the number 1 friendship I've made is the friendship of a life, yeah."
Learn more about Riding with Tom HERE
Want more Quad Lock Features? We also did a piece on our good friends at Kustom Kommune: WATCH THE VIDEO HERE
