Was there a ‘moment’ for you........?

[Jfro5687_imp]

Hi all. I have two grown up kids, one is 25, the other 26. I have never encouraged m/cycles to them, neither has shown any interest and there is a part of me that’s pleased. They are more dangerous.

Anyhow. I’m the only one in my family who rides, brother and sister again not interested. So why do I?

When I was a kid, about maybe 7 or 8 years old I CLEARLY remember being in the back of the car (with younger brother and sister) and mum & dad up front. Would have been around 1976/1977. We were coming back from visiting my uncle and a group of motorbikes came up behind our car on this country road. Think Mad Max. There was about 20 of them in a big group.

I now know they couldn’t overtake because of the roads but as a kid I was mesmerized by the sounds, the spectacle so watched them out of the back window as dad drove along. They were right behind us. After what seemed like ages they one by one roared past, I wound the window down, barged my sister out the way and stuck my head out the window. Some had three pipes, some had four. They were all colours, sounded magic to me. It looked so exciting. I now know they were probably Z900’s, big Honda’s, Suzuki’s and triples and two strokes.

That was my ‘moment’. I knew then and there I was going to have one of those one day.

I know the exact stretch of the road where this happened and once a blue moon I go on that road, it always takes me back.

Any of you have a similar thing?

[Rocky_imp]

I'm the only one in my family interested in motorcycles. Going back decades, nobody on either side of the family ever owned or rode a bike.

My "moment" evolved over time in the mid fifties as I witnessed the same group of guys riding around on shiny Triumph's and BSA's. These were not outlaws but decent guys with good jobs that rode in the evenings and on weekends.
The more I saw them the more I had to have a bike because they looked so cool in their zipper jackets, engineer boots and jaunty caps. Real men didn't wear helmets back then and there were no helmet laws.
The fact that many always seemed to have a pretty girl riding pillion may also have had something to do with it

[GoldOxide_imp]

I rode out of necessity because I could not afford a car, nor had access to the family wagon.

So a two-stroker it was. To be honest, I forced myself. It didn't take long to discover how nice riding was and some of the benefits as a teenager.

Nobody else in my family rides. A few tried, but they all failed the rider's test.

[Houtman_imp]

When I was 10 years old living in a small village in Holland our neighbor had a Panther Motor Cycle 600 single , I loved the look of that bike (still do) and also the name was SO powerful ! From seeing that bike I always knew that I wanted to ride motor cycles for the rest of my life and bought the first one when I turned 18 and had my license.
My first bike was a DKW 200 RT.

[emptysea]

I had a friend from high school (whose name escapes me) who enrolled in a EMT/Paramedic internship program with the Northfield, IL Fire & Rescue after graduation. At the time, I-94 was in the midst of a huge reconstruction project: at least 2 years long with lane closures and lots of traffic with nowhere else to go. Northfield bought two Kawasaki KZ400s to get EMTs to accident scenes on 94 as quickly as possible and he was learning to ride as part of this initiative. I really liked the way those bikes looked with the windshield and hard cases. My buddy let me sit on the bike and I felt then like this was something that would be a lot of fun. I remember asking my dad about getting a motorcycle. He said "no". [Holy crap!! Retelling this story, I just realized that this was not "the moment"! It was four or five years earlier. More on that in a second!]. I couldn't argue much with him on this since we had a boat, he had bought me a car, and I pretty much was living rent-free in a fairly affluent suburb of Chicago. I remembered those bikes, though. This link should take you to the only picture I could find of the bikes http://galleries.apps.chicagotribune.com...0924135226

When I was in 7th grade, I had a buddy that was into BMX racing, but no one called it BMX in 1974 around Chicago. His dad then bought him a Suzuki (I think) dirt bike -- Maybe 125cc, but I don't recall. I thought that trail riding would be a fun thing to do at our summer home. I asked my dad if we could get one or two dirt bikes. He said "no". I got a small sailboat as a graduation gift the next year along with a Peugeot U08 10-speed bicycle as a birthday present that year, so again, I couldn't really argue about my situation.

I didn't own a motorcycle until 2010.
My brother who has similar "moments" from his youth and received similar "nos" from our dad, just bought his first bike a few weeks ago. He's 67 years old.

[Gone in 60]

Sitting in freeway traffic, stopped, banging my head on the steering wheel, screaming.

Noticed that motorcycles were flying by in the HOV lane going as fast as they cared to.

That was my "moment"

[LongRanger_imp]

I was ten. My neighbor across the street, who was a few years older and a bit of a miscreant, had a 3 hp Bonanza mini bike. I’d hear him start it up and would run outside to watch him ride it up and down our street. That was my moment. A year later, his dad bought him a brand new, shiny red Honda CT-70 (Trail 70). That put me over the top! Within a few months, I saved enough to buy my own 3 hp mini bike in a kit.

At about the same time, two of my classmates were riding Taco mini bikes on the vacant lots behind their homes. By the time I got my mini bike, one had graduated to a new Honda SL-70 and the other to a new Yamaha JT-2 Mini Enduro. This was in 1973. Those bikes were the inspiration to me saving up to buy a Hodaka Super Rat, which I sold two years later to buy a pair of skis!

I was actually intending to buy a Honda XR-75 but we stopped at the Kawasaki / Hodaka dealer on the way to pick up the XR-75. I changed my mind on the spot and bought the Hodaka instead.

[GoldOxide_imp]

I had a friend from high school (whose name escapes me) who enrolled in a EMT/Paramedic internship program with the Northfield, IL Fire & Rescue after graduation. At the time, I-94 was in the midst of a huge reconstruction project: at least 2 years long with lane closures and lots of traffic with nowhere else to go. Northfield bought two Kawasaki KZ400s to get EMTs to accident scenes on 94 as quickly as possible and he was learning to ride as part of this initiative. I really liked the way those bikes looked with the windshield and hard cases. My buddy let me sit on the bike and I felt then like this was something that would be a lot of fun. I remember asking my dad about getting a motorcycle. He said "no". [Holy crap!! Retelling this story, I just realized that this was not "the moment"! It was four or five years earlier. More on that in a second!]. I couldn't argue much with him on this since we had a boat, he had bought me a car, and I pretty much was living rent-free in a fairly affluent suburb of Chicago. I remembered those bikes, though. This link should take you to the only picture I could find of the bikes http://galleries.apps.chicagotribune.com...0924135226

When I was in 7th grade, I had a buddy that was into BMX racing, but no one called it BMX in 1974 around Chicago. His dad then bought him a Suzuki (I think) dirt bike -- Maybe 125cc, but I don't recall. I thought that trail riding would be a fun thing to do at our summer home. I asked my dad if we could get one or two dirt bikes. He said "no". I got a small sailboat as a graduation gift the next year along with a Peugeot U08 10-speed bicycle as a birthday present that year, so again, I couldn't really argue about my situation.

I didn't own a motorcycle until 2010.
My brother who has similar "moments" from his youth and received similar "nos" from our dad, just bought his first bike a few weeks ago. He's 67 years old.

Great story MTC. Really like the old pic. The pair of riders look determined.

[Roper_imp]

I grew up in rural Idaho. My summers were filled riding dirt bikes with my brother and our neighborhood "gang" through the fields. Early one summer, when I was 13, we went to a family reunion at my uncle's house. He had a Kawasaki KZ650 with a Vetter fairing parked on the edge of his driveway. I sat in the grass with my plate of sliced ham, potato salad, and green Jello, and stared at that bike for probably 45 minutes. I daydreamed of what it must be like to ride fast down open roads.

The next day, I put on my Sunday clothes, walked a half mile down to our neighbor's dairy, and begged for a job mucking out calf stalls. I earned enough money by the end of the summer to buy my cousin's CB100, a gold one.

That "moment" was 40 years ago. I remember it like it was last week.

[the Ferret]

I had no moment. I was destined to ride. My father rode Indians until they went out of business in 52, then he switched to Harleys. My mother rode (she passed in 1986 and we still have her motorcycle in my younger brothers basement). my older brother rode, my older sister rode. When I was 15 and got a job my dad took me down to the local Harley dealer and we bought my first street bike so I could get to school and work afterwards. When my younger brother got old enough he got his first bike and still rides. My sister 's 2 sons both ride, each of them had a son and they both ride. My wife rode. My son rides. He also married into a motorcycle family. His wife rode. Her mother rode and her father rides, 2 of her cousins ride. Then my son had 2 son's who both ride Yamaha mini bikes and will someday undoubtedly street ride.

My older sister, my younger brother and I all worked in motorcycle shops. You might say motorcycles are in our blood. You should have seen all the bikes at my son's wedding lol.

In our family it's perfectly normal and sort of expected to ride.