- August 13, 2026
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Word reached Mark Salle-Tabor that his father, Aaron Tabor, was in hospice care. He understood their remaining time together was finite, and fleeting.
So the 27-year-old traveled to Virginia in early February to see him. He brought along a photo of a 1978 Kawasaki KZ650 motorcycle he had been working on.
Salle-Tabor showed his father the photo, and with him, brainstormed ideas for a name. His father pointed out the bike’s green paint job looked like wasabi.
It was Feb. 11, only a few days later, when Tabor died from cancer at 50.
His son is headed to the Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials in Utah from Aug. 23-27, determined to set a new world record with “Wasabi.”
“I was talking to him and I was thinking about it. It would be cool to go out there and maybe get something in the record books,” Salle-Tabor said. “Not for just myself — as an honor for my father.”
Salle-Tabor hopes to break the record of 150 miles per hour in the 750cc Assembled Partial Streamliner category, and that’s not the only motorcycle he’s bringing to Utah.
The “OMNI bike” is going, too. In 2021, the bike broke the world record for 500cc Modified Gas-Powered at 128 mph. Salle-Tabor will now ride it in the 500cc Modified Fuel-Powered category, hunting more history.
When he’s not pushing bikes to their limits, he races professionally with the American Motorcyclist Association and works as a motorcycle builder/fabricator at RPM Powersports in Sarasota.
“To be a builder, to be a fabricator, but then also to be a racer where you’ve worked on your own bike and you’ve brought it up to a world-class stage, it’s very cool that you can actually prove your point and (show) what you can do," Salle-Tabor said.
He was brought up in Columbus, Indiana. In that rural area, he was surrounded by cornfields and open roads, which often became makeshift tracks.
He would ride around on his Coleman pit bike from Walmart at 6 years old, taking it out for a spin whenever he could. He quickly got hooked on the adrenaline.
Eventually, he attended Columbus North High School and remained in-state to attend Hanover College. His father lived in Virginia during that time.
The two of them shared a passion for motorcycles, and whenever they met up, there was one certainty above all else.
“With that long-distance relationship, every time we got together, it was always hop on a bike and go,” Salle-Tabor said. “I cherish those moments.”
Salle-Tabor became interested in land speed racing during college. He moved to Sarasota five years ago and pursued it by participating in Florida Track Days’ events at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Across several trips there, he worked his way up from the intermediate amateur level to become an AMA professional, getting plenty familiar with sport bikes.
Vintage bikes from the '60s, '70s and '80s hold a special place in his heart, though. He loves nothing more than trying to restore them to their glory days.
They embody the experience of driving motorcycles — a “euphoric feeling,” he called it.
“You feel the wind resistance. You see the asphalt going past you at different speeds,” Salle-Tabor said. “You hear all these different noises compared to being in a car.”
When he moved to Sarasota, he got a job with the Marine Operations division of the Sarasota County Fire Department. That didn’t stop him from continuing the passion for motorcycle building and metal fabrication that began growing in Indiana.
He picked up part-time work for RPM Powersports, helping out owner/founder Marcos Gonzalez however he could. These days, Salle-Tabor works at the family-owned motorcycle dealership full-time since leaving the fire department in April.
Far more of his time is spent in the garage than in the showroom.
That’s how he likes it.
“I love his love for motorcycles,” Gonzalez said. “It’s hard to find somebody that loves them that much, likes to figure things out and is ambitious to do so… It really is, to the core, who he is.”
The OMNI bike is a collaboration between OMNI Energy, RPM Powersports and PRIIME Vinyl of Bradenton. Wasabi, though, is entirely personal to Salle-Tabor.
He bought it in Tampa, recognizing it had “good bones,” and has worked on it for a year and three months. Even on Monday, with the Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials about two weeks away, he was still tinkering with it.
Gonzalez took the bike for a test run down the block when it first came into the dealership. It didn’t take him long to understand why Salle-Tabor picked it up.
“Completely, really different machine. It’s quick,” Gonzalez said. “You might not think of it being quick when you see it, but oh my God, the weight-to ratio, and the power that it has compared to that weight-to ratio, is insane.”
At the Bonneville Salt Flats, a famed location for breaking land speed records, Salle-Tabor will test just how quick Wasabi can be.
He’ll think of his father when he gets on the seat of that ‘78 Kawasaki KZ650. He'll think of him when he grabs the handlebars, and when he pulls back on the throttle.
“I’ll be complete having a record with my last name on there — getting the ‘Tabor’ name documented,” Salle-Tabor said. “He would’ve loved to be out there to watch that.”
