How did you learn to ride?

[Silver Penguin]

When I was about eight, my Dad built a mini bike and taught me to ride that. He was a mechanic for the local speedway team so we often had riders over at our house, getting their bikes worked on. He built mini bikes for a couple of the riders too.

A few years later, Dad built a scrambler with a real clutch and gears. My brother and I learned to ride that. One Sunday morning Mom had gone to Church and was expecting us kids to come to Sunday school later on. Instead, we went out with Dad and the bike. I hit a bump and went over the handlebars into a thorny bush. No real damage, but there were a lot of bleeding grazes. I believe that Ma and Pa had words about that outing!

After that, Dad bought the title to a wrecked Yamaha FS1E sport moped. (As per this month's AMA mag, it was a 49cc cafe racer.) He would put that onto his trailer and we'd go to Sunday classes. (Mom had given up on the Sunday school thing by now). Dad taught students in the British equivalent of the MSF. I'd join in with the students, on my own bike.

On the dawn of my 16th birthday, I geared up and took my bike out at 5am, for my first time ever on the road. Dad followed me on his Honda 90. A year later, I got a Honda CB200 which was kitted out with a full touring fairing, crash bars, top box and side bags. I met a guy who also had a CB200, and had his bike done up similarly. We did a lot of miles on those bikes.

Short interruption in our respective riding careers, to get married, buy a house, raise a couple of kids, move to America. Then as soon as we were able to, we each got another bike and the rest is history.

Jill

 

[Checkswrecks]

Well, a coupla days before learning to ride, my Dad taught me to weld brackets into a bicycle frame, mount a Briggs engine, and install a centrifugal clutch. We kids ran that thing up and down the road without stop for a coupla more days. For those in Ohio, this was in the 60's and we lived next to the Atwood Lake dam off Route 212.

Thar I wuz, cheatin' death while ripping along around a curve (well, as much as the Briggs & Stratton could push a kid on a hopped up bicycle with a banana seat) and the front wheel hit a frost heave. The steering stem seized and when the tire came back down it wasn't straight. We all know what happens when you land a wheelie with the bars turned, right?

Don't remember that Dad ever said, but I think Mom had something to do with that being the end of the bike.

About the time I was healing up from that one (or was it healing up from playing tarzan, using rotten ropes that we found in a strip mine?), my 'cuz somehow lucked into a trashed Trail 90 that wouldn't start. I'd helped my dad rebuild a number of 2-stroke outboard boat motors, so this had to be the same, right? I think it was the next Spring when Dad had some mercy and helped us put the engine back together. He started us off in the grass and I'm not sure about the 'cuz, but I'm still riding.

btw - My avatar photo was my Dad at about 17-18, just before going into the Marines, and the bike was his 37-horse Model E knucklehead.

Bob

 

[v65]

I got one of these

at a time when the bike was almost up to my armpits. I crashed lot.

 

[FJR919]

September 1972 my dad bought me a new CT70H as my 14th birthday present for maintaining high grades in school. He set me loose on a dirt parking lot connected to some trails and I got the clutch/throttle thing down in no time. I put 3600 miles on that bike from Sept '72 to July '73 when I traded it in for a SL100. Fond memories, and that's why I'm restoring a 1972 CT70H to be an exact replica of my first machine.

 

[exskibum]

btw - My avatar photo was my Dad at about 17-18, just before going into the Marines, and the bike was his 37-horse Model E knucklehead.

HA!!! I just pulled an old photo book to take a look at a similar picture of my Dad. Probably shortly after the war (WWII) ended, in what I think was his Army Air Corps uniform and cap. aviator sunglasses (not unlike a modern pair I often wear now) and on what I can tell is a Knucklehead (I can see the right side of the rear cylinder and head in the photo). If I had a scanner, I'd post it.

 

[big ears]

Bought a Honda 450 twin in 1972. That was one great bike then. A friend and I each bought one the same rainy day in November and went out the dealership for the first time on something bigger than an Alstate scooter. We learned to travel on a bike that day up in the country away from town, actually on the road I live on now. I did say we learned to travel. I'm not sure if I have fully learned to ride yet. I put about 21000 on that bike and never had a glitch. I mean none. It would do about 100 if you layed down on the tank. No windshield was ever considered.

 

[big ears]

Well, I started my 2wheel life on a bicycle. My first ride without training wheels was straight down the hill I lived on and into a tree at the bottom. I limped back up the hill wheeling my bike beside me, and I was hooked. No more walking for me, the bike really expanded my range. I would ride to the end of a local street, and then ride the opposite way to see where the road ended up. That's when I realized that I needed a motorcycle, so I could see where the other, longer roads would lead.
When I was 12 a friend showed up with his cousin's minibike. We rode that all summer, back and forth on a low traffic dead end street in town. By then I was making a few bucks delivering newspapers, and I saved up and bought my own minibike.

A few years later one of my friends bought a new Honda 360. This was the early '70s and the 360 replaced the very popular 350 that year. I took it around the block one time and immediately started saving money for my own bike.

Spring of '75, Mom and Dad told me that I would have to move out if I came home with a bike. My girlfriend and I went out looking for a cheap convertible car so I could have something fun to drive for the summer. Convertibles were scarce and expensive in suburban NJ, but right next to one of the car lots was a Kawasaki dealer. Hmmm.... They had a starter size bike, I think it was a 4-stroke twin 400 similar to the 360 Honda, and next to it, for only a few hundred bucks more, was an H1 500 triple 2 stroke. I left a deposit on that H1 and headed home to break the news and see what happens.

Well, instead of kicking me out, Dad loaned me the rest of the price of the bike. I learned to ride on the street by myself on that crazy H1. By today's standards it was a POS, but back then, for me, it was the best bike in the world. :yahoo:

I think you might be as old as me. I remember the triple two stroke very well. A good friend had the 750. They were the fastest strait runner there was.

 

[monk69]

Somewhere at the end of the 50's,or the beginning of the 60's,I'd go visit my aunt and uncle and their kids,up in Cherry Hill,NJ.(there were only 15/30 houses),there was plenty of of land to dirt ride on,and they had a couple of dirt bikes,so needless to say the two weeks a year I spent there was learning to ride.Bought my first street bike in 65 ,250 ducati.

Been riding ever since.

 

[SacramentoMike]

Allstate scooters! Trail 90's! Briggs and Stratton or Tecumseh engines! What a great thread, Ric, very fun reading.

The first time I rode was in '67 and I was a new recruit in the Air Force, stationed at Lowry AFB in Denver. Just outside the gate was a bike rental place. One weekend evening about five of us went down and rented their little 125's or 150's--no gear, no licenses, no training, just sign the form and pay the money. I THINK we might have made a stop at a nearby parking lot for a very quick orientation, but I'm not even sure of that. Then we headed for downtown Denver!

Heading down the main road into town, here we were all lined up at a traffic light. Probably gunning the dinky little engines and staring each other down. The light went green and we took off. I looked over and there was my friend Bob, running along behind his bike as it ran down the road on the back wheel only. He couldn't let go of the grip without dropping the bike and falling down himself, and he couldn't twist his wrist to decelerate, since he barely could grab the grip as it was, let alone twist it forward. Somehow, he had achieved a balance with the speed and power of that little mill, the speed of his running feet, the gyroscopic effect of the turning wheels. It was the funniest thing I ever saw, before or since.

He must have run 30 or 40 feet that way, and then, most amazingly of all, somehow HE JUMPED BACK ON THE BIKE! It wobbled, he held on, he righted it, and finally pulled off to the right. We all joined him in another parking lot while he caught his breath and tried to regain his dignity, and the rest of us tried our best to stop laughing. Beautiful memory.

 

[airboss]

A month before the Illinois law than allowed people 14 and over to operate a two wheel cycle under 5 hp without a license I turned 14. After much begging Dad allowed me to purchase an Allstate Mo-Ped from Sears with the money from my paper route. Judging from the complaints about tire tracks in their yards, guess you could say I learned to handle the street and the dirt at the same time, and newspaper bags full of rolled newspaper make great sliders. As luck would have it Illinois repealed the law after two years (probably at the urging of parents all over the state), but that was Ok because the Mo-Ped expired at the same time as the law, and I was old enough to get a drivers license, plus an uncle that was moving away give me his Bridgestone 90, WOW! my first without pedals.

 

[artistic rider]

A 78 honda hawk CB400 hondamatic. Summer of 1984 a Marine Corps buddy told me to hop on and and give it a try and I promptly ran right into the back of a car. Tough bike, no damage and he sold it to me later. I kept it about a year and then sold it. No bike of my own until I bought my FJR 23 years later......damn I feel old. :mellow:

 

[EODSarge]

My parents hate motorcycles. Well, at least my Mom does- Dad would worry, but wouldn't stop me. Which meant that growing up, I wasn't allowed to even look at two wheels with a motor. One of my friends in the neighborhood had a Suzuki trail bike (can't remember what it was... TS90, maybe?) and I would ogle it in his garage whenever I was at his house.

Fast forward to 1989, the summer between my freshman and sophomore year at college. Several of my friends had street bikes; one of them, Paul, the guy that ended up teaching me how to ride, rode nothing else as he didn't have a car. Peer pressure is a horrible thing and I ended up buying a 1982 Nighthawk 650 from one of them for $600. Being a poor college student I had to pay him $100 a month for 6 months, but I finally had a bike! It leaked oil like a sieve, leaving drops on my boots when I rode it, but it was mine.

Heh heh, I had hair then. The first time I got on it in the parking lot of my apartment complex was an exercise in fear control, after all the indoctrination about how dangerous these things were that I'd gotten from my Mom; but after that first near-collision with a curb after I finally got the clutch engaged without stalling it and gave it too much gas, I was off. Paul took me to a nearby campus parking lot and we practiced figure 8's and panic braking and the like. Paul is now a co-owner of a Ducati shop.

 

[MojaveFJR]

Started out on a little Z 50 of some kids back in the day. Forget all the details but we used to go up there a lot and when he was out he would let us ride. Then one birthday my dad just takes off, doesn't say squat to anyone, gone all day. Comes home and there is this pristine '72 XR-75 in the back of his truck. Man, those were the days. We take off and head to the canal where there are large areas to crash in soft dirt. Took a couple of times to get used to a clutch but once that was under control then it was all over but the crying. Then about 3 other of my friends got motorcycles, dirtbikes and, there was no stopping us. "THE WORLD WAS OURS".

Good times, great times, best of times...

 

[clocklaw]

On my 10th Christmas, my dad bought me a Honda XR75 and my brother (4 years older) got a MT250 Elsinore. I wore out two clutches in that XR. I have had bikes through the years (always dirt bikes) until '06 when I bought a scooter (a Suzuki Burgman 650) on a whim for my first street bike.....now I have the FJR, two dirt bikes, two 4 Wheelers (including my Yamaha Grizzly 700) and a Honda Elite 80 scooter for the kids to play with.

But I have the most amazing memories from that XR75. I have pictures of me at 11 years old riding that bike with a 3/4 helmet....shorts and flip-flops...my parents didn't know better. Most of my off-road riding atire was the helmet, a t-shirt, shorts and cowboy boots (kept my legs from getting burned on the engine).

 

[JRO]

You have to understand that we spent half our lives around Non, Oklahoma, in Hughes County. It used to be a town, when you could make a living off of forty acres and a mule. Then it became a place-name for a cemetary, a church, an abandoned schoolhouse, and about five houses. The only law, was one Sheriff and one Deputy, 20-something miles away in Holdenville, and nobody had ever seen him outside of town. Today, things are still the same. Paradise, indeed.

We were 7 or 8 when my cousin, Ricky, and I decided to 'ride' these old potato bikes that two of our adult cousins had acquired a variety of. A potato bike is a very special kind of bike. They're surplus Harley's, which were dragged in from the munition plant at McAlester, Okla. (where they worked). The primary purpose of these contraptions was running errands around the potato field. There were five or six bikes, leaning against the barn. One or two were kept running, mainly by salvaging off the others.

For a couple of years, we were satisfied with playing on the things. When we got older (see above), it was time. We actually managed to start one of the beasts. It took both of us to kick them, and the damn things would kick back - which could cause much pain to a foot, or your testicles, if you were unlucky. The results were mixed: Appalled parents and broken siding on the barn. We were determined, however.

Then, Ricky got a Honda Trail 50 mini bike. Now, this was real motorcycling. The thing would start, everytime. A single person could ride it, by hisself. It would go anywhere, and it always ran. Obviously, Honda built a superior motorcycle to Harley.

Eventually, the Honda 50 gave way to a Suzuki 75.

Our Uncle Wayne always had some dirt bike/racer or street bike, and he didn't think there was anything wrong with letting kids ride, or drive, whatever was around (with the exception of his under-10 second Chevelle, that spent most of its time being repaired). Since he was usually gone, and rarely took an interest in the bikes he bought or traded for, this amounted to nothing more than 'we got a new bike'. He was unmarried, and I honestly think 3/4 of the reason he had bikes, was to keep us entertained. The culmination of this, was Kawasaki's first 900cc superbike (finally out-muscling Honda's 750), on 'loan' to a couple of young nephews. The brand-new bike was left at my house (in town; population 1,100). No accidents, but we didn't like it, much (too big, and it handled funny). Still, at 12 or 13, it was functional for everyday use... Until my crummy uncle finally turned up, and took the thing and sold it (parents finally objected, I think).

I rode a lot of bikes, before I was old enough to have a motorcycle license (14, but I never bothered to get one). Favorites included a hardtail chopper (which I hated to ride, but really liked), and a Yamaha Trials 250 (more fun than anything I've ever ridden - or I thought so, at the time). It was heady stuff, for a kid. Suffice to say, I learned early. I was always cautious, however; whereas Ricky was a madman, who seemingly could do anything with any bike.

Ricky would have made a professional motorcycle racer, but he never got the chance. He came down with Hodgkin's Disease, and was an early suvivor. He left some impressive marks at a some dragstrips, but passed away a few years ago, at 43. My uncle Wayne lost a leg to circulatory problems, currently has lukemia, and hasn't had a bike in years. Other relatives who motorcycled, mostly quit, years ago. All my old bike buddies, or hot-rod buddies, are dead, crippled, or don't ride anymore.

I'm still around. Uninjured, uncrashed, and still riding. I hope things stay that way.

 

[BeeLine]

When I was 12 (1961) my dad brought me to a small field by our house and put me on his 53 Matchless.

He showed me how to work the throttle, clutch, and foot brake an pointed me in a reasonably safe direction and off I went. Only problem was I couldn't touch the ground and everytime I stopped or went to turn around I fell over and he had to run over and pick up the bike, retart it, and off I'd go back the other way. We would do this a few times a week after he got home from work until I could turn it around reasonably well. At that point he took me to an oil field service road where I could start learning more of the basics of operating a bike.

He finally got me a minibike which was much easier to get the finer points of riding then it was back on the Matchless again. I eventually got a Yamaha Ascot Scrambler which my dad and I modified for short track racing and spent a couple of years flattracking.

In the late 60's I started road racing with an old Norton Manx which had a 750 Atlas engine.

Great memories of learning to ride and race with the help of my father.

 

[LDR1]

My first ride was with my uncle ,a big Harley fan, on a 1967 Harley Electra Glide I was 5 years old. That one ride sunk me for life, when I turned 6 my dad bought me a mini bike, proabley just to shut me up about motorcyclesor so he thought. It had a 3hp briggs on it. Then in a year I moved to a Suzuki 50 Then to a Honda XR 75 and started raceing CR 125 CR 250. My dad spent a lot of time with me in the back yard on that XR 75 learning how not to pop the clutch,which I was so good at lol. The rest is history I have had a bike of some kind ever since I have been ridding 40 years now and wont stop until I can't hold a bike up any longer!!!!!!! I have two sons, both have been ridding since they were 5 we have had some times I'll never forgett teaching them to ride and race the way my dad taught me.

LDR1

 

[rogdeb]

It was about 1995 (so I was 50 years of age) and I'd been looking at our yougest son's dirt bike ( he was 22 and a keen dirt-biker) in the back yard, a 250cc Yamaha 2 stroke I believe. Sooooo tempting

WTF -- never been on a bike before (except as pillion in my teens) but I know the motions and what a clutch and twist grip do -- don't I ?

Got it fired up and made a slow lap of the back yard in 1st gear -- !!!!!!!!! I'M HOOKED. OK -- 2nd gear then, let the clutch out and twist --- FUUUUUUUU !! ----------- Staight across the back yard with the front in the air, and seconds later find myself wedged at 45 degrees between the power pole and the fence -- engine revving wide open because my right hand was trapped by the power pole cable (clutch in by sheer luck), eyeglasses at 45 degrees across my face (pole cable again), blood oozing from forehead and knuckles h34r: h34r: -- no-one told me about torque :lol:

Hooked I was though -- actually hooked since I was 16 and Dad said I could buy my own bike, knowing I had no cash --

Two years later (1997) I did it correctly and enrolled in the MSF course, the rest is history

1997 -- 500cc Yammie Virago --- got me and Deb going.

1998 -- 750cc Honda Nighthawk -- definite step-up.

1999 -- 1200cc Suzuki Bandit -- loved it.

2002 -- FJR -- our baby !!

 

[Fred W]

It was about 1995 (so I was 50 years of age) ...

I would think that would make you the most senior starter.

So what is that saying about old dogs and new tricks?

 

[vabrzn]

I learned to ride way back in 1967. To make long story short I mowed lawns in my neighborhood and one client, Mr. Harrison had a 1964 Honda C200 in his garage he bought to ride to work; the Honda and him didn’t get along and he was open to getting rid of it. We made a deal, I would maintain his yard for the season in exchange for the Honda. It was a good deal and I eagerly waited for the grass to stop growing so I could get the slightly bent Honda; he had wrecked the thing. The grass stopped growing and I fueled the Honda up with good ole regular leaded from the Sinclair station down the road. I opened the petcock, choked it and kicked it over a few times and it fired right up. I hoped on and down Glebe Road I went heading toward my house on Harrison Street. My Grandfather had a bike and my father was a motorcycle cop so I had the concept of gears down pretty good. I hadn’t told my father or mother about the deal I made with Mr. Harrison. My Mom was kind ‘a ticked about the whole thing , but my Dad didn’t mind a bit. I spent the next two years riding it around public streets in Arlington County Virginia, nobody seemed to mind , and when we moved to a more rural area, the Honda got stripped for dirt use. It wasn’t long after that I managed to save up enough for a Suzuki TS 250. I went through a few more dirt bikes and seven-years later with a drivers license in hand, bought a kawasaki H2 750