How did you learn to ride?

[Tenchi]

I'm 29, am I the youngest person on this forum? I see you other guys with your first bikes being from 1946, 1959. God willing I'll be riding as loooong as you old farts are. - just messin with ya - I still ride with my old man, he is 66 years young and also owns an FJR.

Sorry Grandpa... I'm not sure if I'm the youngest, but I got you beat by 5 years (24 yo) I too hope to be riding when I get to the age of some of these guys...

Now get off my lawn.

 

[nofreeride]

I was in college and a co-worker had a brand new big cruiser. He insisted that I ride it. I went around a parking lot scared to death of dropping it. A couple years later my brother went through a barbed wire fence on a dirt bike and almost died. I injured myself on that same bike (blood and pain but nothing permanent). These experiences scared me off. Ten years later I bought a used Virago, took the class and learned proper. I bought a new Connie in '02 and no looking back.

 

[-Lee-]

My Dad taught me how. He took me out on the lake in the boat, put me in a burlap sack with 2 cinder blocks, tied it up and threw me in the water. Once I got out I could ride a motorcy..... wait a minute! I think that's how he taught me to ski too!!!

My Dad did actually teach me to ride at age 8. He did not want me to even breathe on his Triumph Bonneyville, so he bought me a used Honda Trail 90. Centrifugal clutch and an additional brake lever where the clutch would have been. It was great and it got about 5000 MPG because I never could ride it any faster than 20 MPH through the woods on the farm.

I have had a bike of one sort or another ever since that Trail 90. 34 years and going.

Lee

 

[wheatonFJR]

One day on a friend's '74 Honda CL 360 in a parking lot. The next day on my own brand new CB 550F. The following day getting a ticket from a Wheaton officer for unlicensed riding in front of the GFs house...while her dad was out mowing the yard.

Bummed for awhile after that. :angry: Not too long after... got the license.

2 years later...1979 XS Eleven Special B)

 

[zorkler]

Every summer vacation from school my mom would send me to my aunts house in upstate N.Y The town was Highland . I was about 13 teen all the kids had dirt bikes my freind neil had a 125 yamaha endoro thats had it started next year i purchased a suzuki 90 . Plenty of trails and a small oval with a jump those were the days ride all day long . All kind of bikes pentons , ktm, hondas 125 were hot at the time .

 

[Spook]

We were 12 and my friend bought a brand-new Allstate scooter from Sears......

I started on an Allstate scooter too, my older brother got a used one that got left in the garage. Well I couldn't resist and so just started riding it. My instruction consisted of running into the house to ask my bro what the level near the right hand did. In Wisconsin, at that time, a learners permit allowed you to ride a motorcycle during daylight hours. The scooter was a bit fancier than flying junior's, it was an Itallian Vespa Clone. That thing tried to kill me on a regular basis. One day I saw something fly out of the front suspension, about the time I realzed it was a spring the entire weight of the bike came down on the front tire locking it in place. I went flying up over the handlebars and hit the road head first with the bike saving itself by using me as a sort of cushion. Lucky enough I was wearing sturdy cutoffs and a t-shirt with no helmet, so I bounced right back up, stuck the spring back in place and crawled home ignoring the blood while wondering if bailing wire could be fabricated into a suitable retainer.

That was 42 years ago and I'm still kuckleheaded enough to be riding a bike. It is possible had I been wearing a helmet during that first mishap I would have retained enough brain cells to have hung up my spurs right there and then.

don't forget how squirmy they got when crossing RR tracks at speed

 

[Spook]

Got a yamaha trailmaster 100 back in 65 at 13 with the money I got from the wool sails from my 4H sheep. Had many thousands of acres of land between my fathers land and the government pasture land to trail ride on and practice at jumps etc. There were also 100's of miles of dirt roads where there were no cops. Gas was no problem all the neighbor kids and my dad had bulk tanks for the tractors. I got an old 900 HD when I went to collage but it seemed to only like to start if there was a hill to bump start it on so I then got a Yamaha 350 big bear

 

[Bulldog9]

I diddnt actually learn, I just rode............. :yahoo: The year was 1972, and my cousins brought a little honda trail 50 (the kind with the folding handlebars and no clutch shift) to a family reunion. My parents forbade me to ride, except as a passenger. SO when everybody was eating, I snuck away, pushed teh bike into the field behind the house, figured out how to start it and off I went! It was instant addiction........... I've owend and ridden a motorcycle since the summer of 1974, and never looked back. From there I bought bigger and better bikes and the riding and ability just came naturally.......... like I was born to ride.....

 

[MsLilly]

What great stories! I loved reading them all. My brother had a scooter when I was 9 years old and he was 17. I thought he was the greatest person in the world so if he rode a scooter, I wanted to ride one too. Only my father forbid me from even getting on any motorized 2 wheeled bike! His son was okay, not his youngest daughter! So, all my life I rode behind my boyfriends....and I only dated the guys with the bikes! When I was 29 I started dating the greatest guy of all (ended up marrying him too!) and he had a Honda 6!! I took one look at that bike and fell instantly in love with the bike and the man! We dated for several months and he realized I was hooked on bikes..so he offered to help me buy my first bike and would teach me how to ride. I was so excited I practically ran to the dealership. 1981 GPZ 550! I thought that was the fastest bike ever! My husband rode it home for me since I didn't know how, put it on the centerstand with the front wheel against the garage door, put me on it, and taught me how to shift the bike and use the clutch and throttle! then we rode two blocks from the house to a huge dead end street. There he made me ride around in circles, shifting, stopping and then finally had me lock up the rear brake so I would know how it felt and how to deal with it. He was so patient and the greatest teacher in the world. I had that bike 1 month and we took off on a 2000 mile bike trip thru the southwestern states. That was the best vacation I've ever had!

9 months later I sold the 550 and bought a Honda 750 Sabre. The guys I rode with all had bikes that were over 1100cc and my little 550 just couldn't keep up! SO, I thought the 750 would solve that problem. Rode it for less than a year and took my husband's GPZ1100 away from him. He didn't mind that I took his bike, it gave him an opportunity to buy a new bike. Any time he wanted to buy a new bike, I would tell him "Sure". I loved having another bike to ride!

When our daughter was old enough (and tall enough) to sit on the bike of his bike, he would take her on short rides with us. She would scream behind him "Faster Daddy!" When she turned 21 he bought her a 500 Ninja! He showed her how to shift and brake, then signed her up for the motorcycle safety course. She passed the course but had difficulty with the Ninja. She is short and had to tippy toe the bike. We tried to put her on a cruiser style but No WAY!! It took a year for her to get the hang of it, but once she figured out what she was doing, she was off and running. Rode the tires off that bike. Then sold it and bought a Ducati. It is a thrill to ride with her and my husband. He rides a Wing now and tends to stay behind and watch his women run amuck!

 

[PhilMills]

I'm on the younger end of the forum population as well, so my life story lacks any of the "classic" bikes, plus I grew up a city kid, so that didn't help, but...

My first motorcycle experience: my dad (who used to race enduros on a Bultaco Alpina back in the 70s) had got a bunch of his friend's dirtbikes back into shape and in return got to borrow the cabin up in the mountains where these dirtbikes lived. I was maybe 11 or 12. Dad picked the smallest bike, a Yamaha something or other, and showed me how to do the clutch and gas and let me ride it around the property for a bit. After a while, he told me about up-shifting and fired up one of the other bikes to head out on the roads around the area.

We're doing pretty good, and I probably got it up into 3rd before we come to the first real turn in the road. I slow down, and slow down some more, and start into the turn...

...and then the bike died and fell over on me because Dad forgot to tell me about down-shifting.

Years later, I'm well out of college and working at a place with a pretty healthy number of riders, my brother's gotten a motorcycle a few months earlier and I finally catch the bug and sign up for an MSF course because everybody just looks like they're having so much FUN.

I passed the course only 2 points off of a perfect score and having decided that absolutely everything in life should include an offset cone weave segment and find a '99 BMW F650 on Criagslist the next week.

 

[Philip V]

First ride was some little thing my older brother had at his house with a pull string start. He said if you can figure out how to make it go you can ride it, so I did, in the woods behind his house in New Jersey. I was 12 or 13 at the time and Ive been riding ever since.

 

[BwanaDik]

Mom was dead against motorcycles so I didn't get to ride (except a friends minibike sometimes) until I went to college. There I met a guy with a full bagger Yamaha 650 twin who let me ride it. Nothing like starting out small! Made it to the end of the parking lot without stalling it and promptly dumped it as I came down the driveway and into the street with the front brake on! He was out of sight by that time. I was so embarrassed that I managed to pick the thing up while stradling it! Nothing like being young and full of adrenalin to make for some strength. Have been riding ever since, mostly street bikes and a couple of years of road racing 125 and 250 GP bikes in CA.

The memories of the ol' H2's! Damn, there was a handful! I was a mechanic at Ride On motorcycles in Santa Barbara for a while while in school and one day in came a Kawi 250 triple. Don't even know the designation on that one. Tuned it up and took it for a test ride. Power band was not unlike that of a chain saw. Idle to about 6000 RPM was nothing and the INSTANT FULL POWER. BANG! Front end up, wiggling like hell.

Yes, it's a wonder that we've actually made it this far.