My son's 1st cross country ride.

C

ChipBeck_imp

Road warrior
Thread starter
Gentlemen,

When my son Charley was 12 months old and barely walking I bought him an electric quad to ride. At age two he received a Honda Z50 Mini-trail with training wheels and a governor on the throttle. It took a couple years before he mastered that little bike without training wheels. As he grew up riding with me in the dirt a succession of Honda's rode with him. XR70, XR100, XR125, and now a CRF250X. He has always wanted to ride on the street and that made me nervous as I only have one child and he's as much of an adrenalin junkie as I am. Still, I told him that if he graduated from Texas A&M in 4 years or less I would buy him a new Ducati (his dream ride) which isn't exactly the best starter street bike. I decided to buy that Ducati a year early with the stipulation that he could only ride it when he was with me until I had his diploma in hand. This gave me a few months (when he was home from Texas) to teach him street survival and road riding technique.

Two weeks ago he completed his final classes earning a Bachelor of Business Administration Degree in Finance from the Mays School of Business at Texas A&M and I signed the title over to him. He loaded one of my Cortech bags up, strapped it to his passenger seat, and took off from our home in Scottsdale, AZ headed for California on his first solo motorcycle trip. First LA where he stayed overnight with friends, then up the coast all the way to Crater Lake in Oregon.

I made a similar trip right after I graduated from college on a Harley Davidson Sportster. Charley says he's enjoying the best riding of his life and having a blast. Start them young, give them the best training you can, and pray for their safety every night. Cheers.

Chip



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Congratulations to both of you. I hope to do something similar with my own son in a couple of years. Great pictures, too. :)
 
awesome. Chip.... hard to watch them ride off, and relieved when they return. You hope what you have taught them sinks in, and they heed the warnings.

Our son's share similar histories and my son always wanted a Ducati as well, and ended up with a Monster, to share the garage with his FZ-1. Now his son ( my grandson) is getting to the point of being ready to ride a training wheel equipped mini. Maybe next year.

Great pics
 
Those pictures are making me miss my old air cooled Monster! Congratulations to both of you. I can't imagine the stress involved with seeing my son ride off on a street bike on day.
 
Eddie.. Watching them right off not so bad, waiting for them to come back is the tough part
 
Excellent. The ideal age...where incipient maturity blends with energetic youth.

And a fine ride.

AND...the ideal training program. Twenty years to get ready for it...now he can roll.

Rather than how some of us did it; starting older and more jaded; or going back to it, after years off because of some bad stuff.
 
Great post, Chip. Good luck to Charley.

A word of advice from a boring old fart? Young people think their hearing is indestructible. It is definitely not. Listening to music through smart phone headphones is wonderful but, while riding a bike, it is more than likely to result in long-term hearing damage. Wind noise at highway speeds is in excess of 110 db and will result in damage. To hear music requires the source to be at full volume and, even then, you can hear little more than the pounding of the bass.

Get the lad some noise canceling headphones. If he turns them on and never listens to music, he will still preserve his hearing. If he listens to music, he'll get quality sound without the sort of volume that will add to the damage.
 
What a great story- thanks for sharing. Put a smile on my face. Congrats to both of you-I hope I get to do this some day with my son...
cheers,
 
Thread starter
Fantastic pictures and a great story. I'd love to see more pictures....of a father and son ride ....when it cools down a bit.
 
Thread starter
Gentlemen,

So my son makes it to Crater Lake, spends the night, and gets up this morning to climb down to the shore. There is no trail and it's really steep, rocky, and loose. After an hour climb down he is met by two sheriff's officers who arrest him, put him in their boat, and haul him back to the Forest Ranger's office where he is given a $250 ticket because it is apparently illegal to climb down there. After getting his ticket he needed to hitchhike back to his bike and then the rangers would not allow him to climb down the 20 yards to where he stowed his gear. Rangers donned climbing gear, roped up to a big tree and belayed a man down there to get his bag. Must have been pretty steep. Shades of my early riding years!! All the best.

Chip

 
Chip,

Pity about the fine; it looks like he's enjoying himself. I reckon they wouldn't let him get his gear because they wanted the opportunity to do some climbing themselves.

Tell young Charles he's doing well.

Cheers
 
Man, was there signs saying you couldn't climb down there? A $250 fine seems rather STEEP ( see what I did there LOL)
 
The ferret_imp said:
Man, was there signs saying you couldn't climb down there? A $250 fine seems rather STEEP ( see what I did there LOL)
Click to expand...
You're either climbing new heights or plumbing new depths. I'm not sure which! :D
 
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