my mom married this guy we called Jimmy (it's what he wanted)...he had a brand new 1958 "74" Harley ("don't touch it")...rode my first motorcycle at 14 (50cc Hondaka) and was instantly hooked...I think it's the power to weight ratio..the acceleration that comes with it..and carving turns that keeps me around... :ninja:

1978 I turned 16 and had the best job in the city, pumping gas at 76 and selling Pop Shoppe pop. The 76 station was cool because all the muscle cars of that time used the premium gas...so I was able fill up a lot of neat cars.

Then I needed transpo. Although my career was really taking off, I really could not afford a car and insurance.

So, my uncle said, "I found a nice little motorcycle if you want to buy it?" It was a 1972 Yamaha RD200...Think I paid but a few hundred for the bike.

Ran great and the rest is history. Always rode after that and have owned probably 30 bikes. Still at it and will go a few more years.

Not the actual bike but it looked like this...

It's the sense of freedom and of being in the place that you're traveling through. Absolutely magnetic to me. Cars never excited my teenage imagination like motorcycles did. On a motorcycle you experience every mile of the journey with every part of your body. A car is more like a traveling room. You're not really there, you're in this room looking at it out the window.

If I were to stick pins in a map to show where I've been, any place I've put my boots down rates a pin. Any place I've tooled around in on my bike to get a better look at, even if I didn't stop, rates a pin. If I've only passed through in a car, stopping at a stop sign doesn't mean I've been there, because I haven't: the paint and glass on the car has been there, but I was in this room just looking out the window at it...

Just got back from a jaunt around the neighborhood.

I LOVE this bike because it feels like i stole a dirt bike and am hauling ass around the back streets at night being a punk but in reality i am perfectly legal (...being.a.....punk)

WINNAR!

First time i took my wife for a ride she was wowed by how much you FEEL on a bike, the temperature changes (she never knew about the constant fluctuations we don't even notice any more) and the SMELLS, and that there's ...stuff...in the air that hits you, and "OMG is EVERYONE always so BLIND?"

My dad hooked me, like many others. Some of my very first memories are of him hoisting me one handed onto the back of the 2-stroke Bridgestone 90 and we would tear down the dirt roads of rural central WA, pausing only to peel out on rattlesnakes. Even better....we often would be riding to one of the remote hangers and I would then go flying with him. Later he introduced me to aerobatics and I was a G-Force Junkie.

So only airplanes and fast bikes can reproduce the endorphins and feed the fix for control freaks. I think it is really about being in control, it is the out of control scenarios that release Adrenalin which can have adverse effects.

fixed it for ya:ninja:

Maybe 'your' control is illusory, but mine is real...until I crash. Now just ignore the man behind the curtain or the master of puppets and pretend like the rest of us! :)

WTF, Ralph rides a Monster? What kinda newfangled shit is that? He’s probably ATGATT too, rather than half a ping pong ball helmet. :rolleyes:

And how could you be alive and not have a love for a motorcycle?

A better question is why so few people indulge in one of life’s seminal sensations?

It is a little weird that the illustrator chose to copy a particular model, presumably working from an advertising photo.

This is the one I remember:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Motorcycle.jpg

A google image search shows that over the years they've mostly been either variations of that, or Harley Sportsters.

What made me fall in love with motorcycles?

This
Attachment 3628

and this.
Attachment 3629

That is funny, because I was already a dirt bike rider when Evil became popular and we riders thought he was a buffoon. “Hey, dipshit. Get a real motorcycle and you won’t crash on every landing.”

That tells me you're reeeeeaally old!

Bultaco