My memory is vague, it comes in short visuals, like flashbacks from a movie, with feelings from a time when that’s all I had. My diaper was soggy, the rumble was loud, and the black gas tank hot! When I was older my aunt told me it was a Matchless, but what I remember was the way I felt. lt, the words were not in my vocabulary in fact at the time I didn’t have much of a vocabulary. I don’t know how old I was, I just remember feeling happy, feeling free and even though I didn’t know the word or the meaning , empowered. My Uncle Tom sat me on the gas tank of that two wheeled machine and let me ride. He said things like “hold on baby girl”, which was needless, my heart was racing and I couldn’t have ripped my fat baby fingers from those bars if I tried. I never wanted to let go! I held onto those handlebars and tried to move them in exactly the direction I wanted to go. My uncle Tom loved me so much he indulged me this pleasure whenever I begged, which is a sure sign of his love because at the time, like I said, my words were mostly gibberish; baby talk that later turned into the voice of a woman who still and forever cannot get enough of that excitement of the thrill of the wind. Thanks to my Uncle Tom.
That first ride was before helmet laws before child safety seats, before seatbelt laws even before the Women’s rights movement. Thank god for the BEFORE days. If it had been for those laws, I may have missed the best days of my life. Not just the day of riding on the gas tank with my Unck but the days and years to follow.      Now I ride my own

Funny how our memories as kids influence our lives later.

Ride on Kat

An d here it is just a FEW years later and you still don't want to let go of the bars.

So how long after that until you held up your first "Pop A Wheelie" sign to passing bikers :-)

Can't wait to see you at the Redwood Run in June !

Great post,thank you for sharing
Brings back a lot of good memories of a time when the world was a whole lot more fun)!!!

My first ride was on my friends mini bike,rode around the front yard a few times n dumped her off one of the mini jumps we had set up.I was all of 10 yrs old.Started my addiction to riding.Never looked back and have been enjoying the ride & the blessing of being able to every time I ride.!!!

I love this! I was trying to post as a blog but I am just figuring out things!! I rode my brother's friends dirtbikes when I was about 13 They Hated it! My brothers that is. Finally got my own street bike in 1999 that's a whole other story! $200 Honda and Lucky I rode that to the Redwood run the first time I went!!!!!

Good memories last forever!

MY first ride was a yzinger 50cc back in 79 I was five on Christmas Day as I took off my Dad kicked the left side of the bars which sent me over the bars into a mudhole as I got up He side Ok boy you've had your first wreck now get on an ride

15 and "borrowed" my Canuck cousin's BSA Gold Star while my folks were showing him around the city. Got it there and back with no damage but to this day if I have been away from riding for awhile I start fishing around for the shift on the wrong side

My first was a 50cc Honda. We were at the lake with family friends and they had this little trail bike. I remember running up and over the moguls on the trails while my dad kept high centering as he followed me on his Honda 305. I would have been 11 at the time. Rode his 305 the first time when I was 12.

I was fortunate. Our family garage was for toys. I grew up with motorbikes & snowmobiles just waiting t be ridden. My first was a lil mini bike & i keep thinking it was from Sears...then a 50cc Garelli, we had a cpl of step thru 90s, then i got my Hodaka-(loved that bike), went on to bultaco, montessa, suzuki, yamaha, honda, etc.

You reminded me that my first ride was also with my Uncle Tom. His kids, my cousins, were older than me by a few years and he and Aunt Dorothy were a bit more permissive. So they had bikes, and he took me out on one. It was some early 70's small-cc dirt bike (couldn't tell you what kind if my life depended on it). Old school exhaust along the top-right side of the bike that would burn your leg sitting pillion in a heartbeat if you weren't careful. Not sure if I was more thrilled by the ride through the fields of the family farm, or scared that I was gonna get burned - since he'd warned me about 20 times. I was outta diapers, but not by much (maybe 5-6)...

I begged and begged and begged for a bike of my own from that day on, but Mom & Dad were adamantly no. So I never had one until I was old enough to buy my own in my late teens...

Thanks for the memories.

Wow, I am very happy with the stories you posted. It reminded me of my time.





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