Photo By Senior Airman Cody Mott | U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Wade Carpenter, 100th Maintenance Squadron KC-135 aircraft...... read more read more
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100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs The wind that skimmed across his face was cold, fast, and unfiltered. From the seat of his motorcycle the world opened into a 360-degree view of mountains, forests, and snowcapped peaks he thought he already knew. Wade Carpenter had driven this route before but something about today felt different. The familiar landscape looked new again and for the first time in a long while the ride felt unmistakably beautiful. Without the windshield or walls of a car, Staff Sgt. Wade Carpenter, 100th Air Refueling Wing KC-135 aircraft maintenance repair crew chief, said, “there’s a sense of freedom when driving a motorcycle.” Carpenter grew up in Duvall, Washington and developed a passion for tinkering with tools and taking apart machines. These days he spends most of his free time building or fixing something that’s automotive or woodworking related. His love for adrenaline started young. His dad would set him on the gas tank of a Yamaha 1100 Midnight Special and take laps around the neighborhood. “Some of my earliest memories I remember thinking this is the coolest way to get around. It was exhilarating,” he said. As a teenager he chased that feeling any way he could. Carpenter turned his interest into a small side job, spending after-school hours cleaning and polishing his dad’s bike. He helped with repairs, learned how to change the oil, and figured out how the parts fit together piece by piece. Off the clock he rode dirt bikes with friends and worked on beat-up cars with his buddies. About a decade later Carpenter ended up working with his dad at a sales company. His ability to fix anything with moving parts stood out immediately and he was soon put in charge of maintaining the company’s equipment for trade shows. “So my dad managed to pull some strings and instead of the company paying us airfare, they would pay us that amount for gas money,” he said. Before they could take those trips Carpenter needed a motorcycle of his own. He scraped together his savings to buy his uncle’s old bike across the state in Wenatchee. After he earned his motorcycle endorsement his dad drove him over the mountain pass to pick it up. Carpenter’s first real motorcycle trip would be the 200 mile route back home full of swirling roads, steep grades, and long mountain tunnels. Buying the bike was just the beginning. The real learning started when he got up to the mountain pass. The path went through tunnels and he could see the snowcapped peaks with mountains of evergreen trees. “You don’t really experience what you are driving through like you do on a motorcycle. You feel it. You smell it. It is all around you. You are in the environment watching it go by. It feels and smells dangerous. You can smell the pine trees and feel the rain,” he said. But the weather didn’t stay calm. As Carpenter followed his dad down the mountain the wind picked up and cold rain set in. “I was not wearing proper riding gear,” he said. “I wore a hand-me-down helmet, hiking boots, gardening gloves, jeans and a jacket. When I drove through the near-freezing rain it felt almost hypothermic. I started to wonder if buying the bike had even been a good idea.” “When we made it home my dad told me, ‘If you can make it through that, you can make it through anything.’ That was the moment I felt like a real motorcyclist,” Carpenter said. The challenge on the mountain changed the way he saw riding. It became less about adrenaline and more about skill, awareness, and mentorship, values he now hopes to pass on to others. While taking an advanced motorcycle course during an overseas assignment Carpenter saw firsthand how different riders develop their skills. That experience is what drives him to want to become an instructor and guide Airmen through earning their motorcycle endorsement. With over 15 years of experience practicing different maneuvers and working through challenging scenarios, he said, are tools he wants to pass on to help keep other Airmen safe.
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| Date Taken: | 01.04.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 01.06.2026 03:11 |
| Story ID: | 555700 |
| Location: | MILDENHALL, SUFFOLK, GB |
| Web Views: | 30 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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