What First Got You Into Motorcycling?

I got hooked one bank holiday (late 80s) when a friend with a GS850 (I think) offered to take me to Skegness one bank holiday. On the way there I remember us filtering between lanes of heavy traffic taking out the odd wing mirror. On the way back, there wasn't much traffic, and I remember just sitting there relaxed on the back, with wind whooshing by, with nothing between me and the country side around. Just the sense of freedom and movement and peacefulness got me hooked, Booked myself on a training course and 6 month's later was on two wheels (CZ125).

 

When i first saw a z900 that was it,all i could think of after that,then a lad in the next street who was 3 yrs older had a yam xs400 and a dt400 i learnt on that and for the next 18m you couldn't get me off it,then i tricked my dad into being a guarantor for a Kh250 but i was only 16,he was telling a lad at his work about it and as he was 19 and only had a 100 he split on me and dad had the shop take it back and i had to have a poxy secondhand AP50 i was gutted after spending nearly 2 yrs on my mates 400.

 

I'm late to this thread--as I was to riding--and just finished reading all the varied posts about how everyone got into motorcycling. It was great fun to read the thread through from start to finish!

I quoted the post that @brown mouse wrote because the way that I got into motorcycling is somewhat similar to his experience. When Mr. Sandi and I became friends even before we started dating he'd take me for a ride on his motorcycle. At the time I was nearing the end of a nasty divorce and riding on the back of the bike was really therapeutic. No worries, relaxed, being in the moment with that sense of freedom and and peacefulness that brown mouse talked about. I loved how I felt when I was on the bike. Friends, particularly cycling friends, would ask me if I wanted to ride my own bike and at the time I really didn't have any interest in that. But one day I was driving to work and it just hit me that I did want to ride my own bike. Within two weeks I had a motorcycle sitting in the garage waiting for me to pass the MSF beginning rider class and two weeks after the class I had my motorcycle endorsement.

When I started riding my own bike I used to tell Mr. Sandi that I'd still want to ride pillion with him sometimes. He said flatly, "No you won't". Turns out he was right. He knows me so well and did even back then! I think in the ten years or so I've been riding that I've ridden on the back of his bike two times--both times to get home after dropping my bike off at the dealership for service.

 

...gasoline...no, seriously.......

 

Friend of mine showed up on a fairly new '80 Suzuki while I was helping another friend wrench on his '72 Chevy Monte Carlo. He was trying to peddle it and convinced me to take a ride. I drove that little streetie around the block maybe 20 times. Bought it three days later for pennies. Rode to work and university a lot. Read about Triumph and big English twins in "Rider" magazine and was forever changed. Looked at the new "83 TSS and such, but due to lack of cash, settled on a '73 Tiger that was a bit chopped up, from an ex-"club" member. Kept that ride for 10 years. Lots of memories.

 

2 buses to work as a 15 year old apprentice, got a 250 CB72 Honda basket case. .Rebuilt it and rode it to work on my 16th birthday. Hooked on bikes ever since.

 

My high school mate inspired me! He bought himself an enduro Honda and then upgraded to a 600cc version of the same bike. With the 250cc sitting in a box of parts, I gave him $250 and began getting it running again. Years later after a hiatus from bike ownership and riding, I bought a 1988 KLR-650 with a blown head gasket. I got that one running and restored to riding shape and then some dolt stole it! My original mate that sold me the 250 in college had a bike he had stopped riding, so I had it shipped to my state and so the process begins again. I think I just have to have a damned bike at all times.

 

Well its a bit embarrassing but here goes... When i was sixteen i wanted to get a bike and said to my parents. My Dad absolutely flipped, it was a major surprise as he was pretty much a relaxed and destressed chap. I found out much later that he hated them because his cousin (and he had very few relatives) was killed when he was hit by a lorry at a crossroads near Badminton (yes home to the horse trials and location of the invention of the racket sport) in WWII on a motorcycle. I never told him and riding myself has reinforced the opinion, you have to have been pretty reckless / stupid to have been killed in a collision in 1940 something with another vehicle in rural Gloucestershire with the number of vehicles about and petrol rationing in place.
Anyway 5 years ago (yes only then), i hadn't been on holiday and invariably "wasted" annual leave for the previous 9 years so i thought as something to do maybe i would do a DAS with no real view to buying a motorcycle just as a way of making a holiday useful. I had holiday left that was booked for October. I made the mistake of saying i was thinking of passing my bike test to a couple of people including my brother in law. My brother in law who had been commuting by bike in London for a few years on a 125 scooter then a chinese bike then a 500 decided that when i passed my test we should take a trip to France for the European football championships 2016.
I did my CBT in October 2015 but my transition from being a 30 year car driver to a biker wasnt quite as seamless as i had imagined it would be. I was well aware that 90% of people on the roads shouldnt have been given a licence in the first place, 5% were totally incompetant, 4% didnt give a wahoo about everyone else. I thought this well equipped me for a life on a bike. I was wrong because i forgot the basic principal, on a bike you feel much, much more.
Anyhoo i bought a 125 after my CBT to get experience on a bike and used it for 6 months before looking to book training. This was a big mistake. In my opinion a 125 is as far removed from a 600 as a car. The only preparation it gives you is road sense but after 30+ years of car driving I had plenty of that. It merely makes the greater power and acceleration of a bigger bike much more intimidating.
As it happened for a reason i cannot remember i passed my test just after the start of the tournament June 2016 but we didn't go.
It wasn't in vain because i found myself leading my brother in law on his CBF600 and my friend on his Ducati Monster 696 on my, bought before i had passed Honda CB500f (i wish i kept it, easy to ride, great economy), 2 months later on a trip to the Belgium F1 Grands Prix and back despite them both having quite a few years more experience on a bike than me.
]I found out how slippery diesel is on a wet road before i passed my test.
This has led to me being the kind of biker that will
1 - ride if cold but dry, below zero is irrelevant
2 - will commute if dry forecast, after all, on a bike its more than "going to work"
3 - loves long trips, i will try and do a 1000+ mile trip once a year if i can (yes i get wet on these!)
4 - would love to get rid of my cars but it isn't really practical

 

I was born a petrol head and was always into cars. My first was a Capri 3000 GT Mk2 but it was my second car, a Jaguar XJ12 that got me into bikes. 5.3 litre V12 and 9 mpg on the commute and I needed a cheap alternative so a Yamaha DT250MX ended up in the garage and I never looked back!
Easily passed the old bike test, which was a joke quite frankly, and bought a Kawasaki Z1300, yes, you could do that back then and even the insurance was reasonable!
Many years, miles and bikes have come and gone since then and a few, erm, spills.
Sometimes I look back on my riding history of Fireblades, R1's, GSXR's etc, etc and the fact that I rode like a complete knobhead with a death wish and marvel at the fact I'm still breathing. Thankfully, age and experience have tempered that somewhat. Whenever I see anyone riding like that today I find it hard to criticise 'cos that was me 25 yrs ago.

 

I had one of those, exaclty the same. It felt so fast after the 50cc four stroke I'd had before. 70mph - crazy speed!

 

For me it was the freedom offered from having my own transport that drew me in. Being able to go where I wanted, when I wanted. Also, a mate at school had a Fizzy that he bored out and tweaked until the damn thing would do nearly 70mph. I couldn't afford a Yamaha so I ended up with a cheap and cheerful Honda SS50. Technically it was a moped so I wasn't restricted to 30mph but it barely did more than that anyway. Pleasingly, it would go about 1mph faster than another mate's new bike (can't remember what it was now), which pissed him off no end.

Home wasn't much fun when I was 16 and my friends were about 7 miles away, so my bike was an essential part to my post-school social life. I had no proper gear and would regularly be frozen or drenched by the time I got home. Often both.

The friend with the FS1E graduated to a 250 Superdream (yeah, I know) and I, caught by the new laws, moved on to a GP100. The power was intoxicating for about a week. Exciting times.

I hopped in to car ownership for a year or two (£50 for an old Morris Marina - form an orderly queue, ladies), then ended up with a GS125 when cars became affordable. That bike bit the dust when I hit a patch of diesel and knocked a hole in the crankcase. By the time I went back to retrieve it from the side of the road some thieving git had run off with it.

That could have been the end of my biking days but several years later I was visiting my Mum who'd bought herself a C90 to pop to the shops. The old girl had a phobia about compressed air (my mum, not the Honda) so one day when I was visiting she asked me to take it to the garage and check the tyres. Cornish country roads and the wind in my teeth reminded me of what I was missing. When we got home to Southampton, I convinced the Mrs I should get another 125, this time with the intention of passing my test. And I did, one cold January afternoon in '94. Pretty soon I was the proud owner of a Suzuki VX800, which was never particularly popular with the fraternity but I loved it

In the last 25 years my mileage has varied, foreign excursions have waned, and my old biking friends have long since faded from my address book, but I've rarely been without a bike. I'll be riding for at least another 25 years, I hope.

 

Left home at 17 and only way to get to college.

 

I was at a show called the Imber Fair at Imber Court. It is the place where they train and stable the Met Police mounted police horses, my dad was a mounted policeman. They had a little oval track marked out at the fair with straw bales and little motorbikes. I was 11 years old and had just started a Saturday job helping the milkman, earning £3.50 for helping him from 7am till about midday. I blew the lot for about 5 minutes on one of them bikes, loved every minute and felt like a king! That is when it started for me.

 

Lovely story.
I had a very similar experience as a 12 years old. Longleat Safari Park had just opened and we had a family day out there. They also had the same set up you describe and much to my amazement my dad paid for me to have a go. Loved every moment.
Thanks for the memory.

 

I had nearly forgotten....that is how I got my first bike ride as well. Thanks for the memory jog. I was about 12 years old I guess. The problem was I couldn’t work out which way the throttle worked and kept opening it when I should have been shutting it.....I must have hit every straw bale around the track but i survived and that was that. The next time I rode a bike and the first time I ever let a clutch out was in my back garden on my brothers SS50 Honda when I was about 14. Hooked ,

 

Dad already had a motorcycle (Rudge Ulster) when he was conscripted. He was based not too far from home and was able to use the bike to get home at times (1932 ish).
He did have a car when in his 20s but went back to a motorbike with a large box in place of a sidecar when he started a Steeplejack business.
He used that combination (Bike and box) for several years but changed his bikes quite often.
Pretty sure his last bike was a BSA 600 (M21?) around 1954.
After that he went from brand new motorbikes to very old vans for a while until he could afford a new van.
He said he had a total of 17 motorbikes, but most were for business use.
He often would travel to Barrow in Furness to work and would have a lot of ladders on top of the box (box about 18 inches deep) and all his ropes and other equipment inside the box, plus an assistant on the pillion.
When working that far from home (100+ miles) he would get lodgings and only come home at weekends.
So, if we needed to go somewhere as a family, Parents and 2 kids, it was on the bike, Mum & Dad on bike, Brother and me in box. Sometimes he would put one of us on the petrol tank in front of him.
Happy days.
Ken.

 

Lovely engine old school, feels like some proper mechanical mass rotating in there

 

Born Into it. Peterborough panthers speedway on fri nights, then watching dad grass track racing at the weekend. Loved every minute of it

 

In '64 we moved to Michigan and my 2 older brothers each got new Hondas - I was 9 at the time. My next oldest got a step through 50, and oldest got a Dream 150. My next oldest wouldn't let me ride the 50, but oldest said no problem with the 150. I couldn't really get my feet on the ground and the tanks on the Dream had a welded seam that ran down the middle. I remember that because I had to move up some from the seat to get to the controls and that bit into, um, my little nuts some.

We lived on 240 acres out in the country, very rural area of southern Michigan. My brother tells the story that I got on the bike (the Dream 150) and took off. I didn't know how to turn it around so went out on the road and basically did a multi mile loop that included the bigger state highway. Our mother came out and asked where I was and they hemmed and hawed not wanting to say, but I came back in a few and all was OK.

My older brothers didn't really "take" to motorcycling, but I was hooked from that day on to today. I'm now 65, have a garage full of bikes and still ride locally and long distance as much as i can. My first Triumph was a hand me down from my next older brother and was a '67 Mountain Cub 200. A hell of a beast to me at that time and way more power than the little Hondas.

My garage includes HDs, Yamaha FJR, Triumph Tiger 800, and soon a Honda Super Cub 125. I love 'em all. I'll probably add a T120 or similar Bonneville in the future. I had a '78 Bonneville back in the day. My worst fear with old age is getting to the point where I can't ride. I don't know when that will be but it sure as heck isn't now!