Baking and bikes! The Ace of Cakes Duff Goldman spoke to Us Weekly on Wednesday, Oct. 22, about his adoration for motorcycles — even after enduring a serious accident that resulted in the loss of several toes.
"I love motorcycles," Goldman, 39, told Us at the Hollywood premiere of On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter. "They're part of my soul. Even though I got in a wreck a little while ago and lost some toes — I had to promise my parents and everybody that I’d stop riding — but I can't."
Reflecting back on the harrowing 2012 crash, Goldman said the accident itself hasn't deterred him in from pursuing his love for bikes. "It didn't scare me," he mused. "It just made me make the choice — more consciously to say, 'I'm doing something that is very dangerous, but it’s something I love.'"
Goldman added that while his commute to and from work is risky, he feels at ease about his mode of transportation. "I have to make peace with myself — that on my way to work, I’m really close to death," he confessed. "Whereas most people, on their way to work, are just worried about work. It made me choose. I was like, 'Okay, am I going to ride bikes, or am I not going to ride bikes?'"
For the Food Network star, riding bikes has been so deeply "ingrained in my heart and soul" that the alternative would work against his well-being. "There was about an eight-month period where I didn’t ride bikes," he admitted. "I was driving a truck, and every time I would see a bike go by… and I was like, 'I can’t do it anymore.'"
The Baltimore native said his return to the open road was "like freedom." He joked, "I felt like a little baby bird that learned how to fly. I just took off, I was so excited."
Something else that gives him wings? "I grant tons of wishes, I love wishes," he gushed to Us about working with the Make-A-Wish foundation. "It’s amazing when you’re working with these kids. They come into the bakery and they’ve got tubes sticking out of them. They’re dragging around oxygen. The left side of their body doesn’t work, and they don’t care. They just want to make cakes. They could have picked anything in the world to do, and they chose to come and decorate a cake with me. Every time, still, it’s surprising. I’m like, 'Wow. I can’t believe that these kids want to do this.' So it’s really fun."
He joked, "Then we hire them, we put them on the payroll and make them do dishes. Then, I make them work up to actually decorating and they love it." The reality star then reflected, "They love it, because they’re being treated normal."
