We usually enjoy talking about our adventure tales and amaizing pics...
BUT...
how often do we spend time talking about who actually introduced us to bikes?

I want to say thanks to my uncle Fabio!
It's thanks to him that I am now a biker!
http://www.ridesoul.net/thanks-to/?lang=en

So, who's yours? share your pics!

Alessandro

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Everyone has influences and inspiration can come from every side of your world. For me it came in stages ... and has continued along for the last 50 years.

Early influences:

Dylan on his Triumph

Pirsig- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance


This guy lived in the neighborhood .. and this is how I remember seeing him riding around. I think he rode everyday if not working.


I saw these guys race in person at Ascot Park at age 14. In two years ... I was racing there too ... a very short career. Ascot was an amazing scene in the mid 60's. Many future world champs came out of there including Kenny Roberts ... who I saw ride there a few years later.


Romero and Dave Aldana were crowd favorites.


And who could forget the Eakins brothers? Early Baja heros of mine and thousands of SoCal kids. Brother Bud doubled MQueen in The Great Escape. I met Dave at his bike shop in San Fernando Valley in the 60's. A magic place. He rode for Triumph and Honda and helped me keep my Bultaco running! (badly)

Later influences included:


Ted Simon's Jupiter's Travels. I was in S. America at the same time Ted was, only later read his book ... and wished we'd met on the road. I was on a Vespa (in Peru' anyway) he on his Triumph. I spent a year there.


More recent heroes:

Author and Adventure rider ... and HUBB member, Dan Walsh. A fantastic read.


Austin Vince of Mondo Enduro and Terra Circa fame.

Sadly no impressive pics like Mollydog's in my timeline but that's probably because most of my influences were local - friends mainly. I started on two wheels because living in the country at the time I needed transport and it was all I could afford. Back in the 60's you either went scooter or motorbike and I started with one of these -



Its shortcomings soon became apparent when I started doing longer trips on it but it was better than cycling!

About a year or so later a friend started working with a guy who was doing long distance van trips in his spare time and a bunch of us put a winter trip to Austria together. That was my first time out of the country and the start of a love affair with the Alps.

Smudgy black and white pic from that trip -



Six months after that was the first of the bike trips - two of us to Morocco by 250cc Yamaha. Pic below is me in a campsite in Tangiers writing a postcard home (we got back before it arrived).




That was 1970. Tharoughout the 70's we did at least one major Eurotrip each year. This was Greece in 1973, at roughly the same time as Ted Simon was in Libya



I have read a number of travel books - Jupiters Travels, Zen etc but tbh most of my inspiration is generated internally. I just do whatever I've been interested in - subject to the checks and balances of family, finance etc.

My excuse is, I saw this movie at the drive in when it came out, got my first bike, a Honda SL 100 very soon after! I've never been without a bike since, unless it was stolen (twice ^&%$#@*'s) and that doesn't count!

If you've not seen it, do yourself a favour and watch it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl_6aeIRmGs

Hi Mollydog,

I'have never seen before the Honda logo like that one! So funny, comparing it with the current one. The sign of time!

Forgive me, i'm 28 years old!

By the way....The "Legend" Steve McQueen was your neighbor??!!....you lucky guy!!

Cheers,
Alessandro

Backofbeyond...your pics are amaizing!
I like to see pics of "old times" travellers. It helps me realizing that nowadays even the toughest adventure, it HAS to be easier and achievable!!

Then, i should have no concerns about my forthcoming 6 months adventure!

Thanks for sharing your pics,
Alessandro

Hi Drwnite,

I'm already watching it!

Alessandro

My introduction to bikes was by my uncle Willem.
When I was a little kid, he and my aunt took me on a ride to the motocross, sitting behind them on his Triumph Speed Twin. When we returned from the cross, he let me ride on the tank and hold the handlebars. I was in heaven !!!

Many years later, when I turned 18, he helped me buying my first bike, an Ural 650cc and learned me how to ride it.
After he moved to England and later to South Africa, I visited my uncle and aunt in my holidays and made some nice bike trips there, alone or together..

It was a real shock for me when he died at an accident with his Harley in South Africa some years ago. The car driver had not seen him.........

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Jan Krijtenburg

My bikes are a Honda GoldWing GL1200 and a Harley-Davidson FXD Dyna Super Glide

My personal homepage with trip reports: https://www.krijtenburg.nl/
YouTube channel (that I do together with one of my sons): motormobilist.nl

Hi jkrijt,

I'm sorry to hear of your uncle, I know how you must have felt! I have sadly been through the same sort of things...but I know he was surely happy to have introduced you to bikes! And let me say that I do like your way to pay him your respects with your trips to South Africe for visiting them!

R.i.p.
Alessandro

I was big into Mountain Biking so already into two wheels from an early age.. I ended up getting a bar job in a Biker/Rock club when I was 18... It didn't take long before I was introduced to motorcycling and was taking my test 6 weeks later.

I think once you own your first bike, you're a biker for life. Even if you don't own a bike any more I think you still crave one.

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

Interesting question. I'd seen bikes about since my earliest memories, but was much more into cars and push bikes when I was a teenager. My brother first introduced me to the idea that I, too, could own and ride a motorbike, but it still remained theoretical until I read Pirsig. That book truly opened my eyes to the beauty and magic and sheer poetry of biking.

Within moments of finishing it I had booked lessons and, shortly afterwards, passed my test. And I've never looked back. I love bikes so much that even if I were unable to ride (God forbid) I would still own bikes, as many as I could, as they are objects of beauty in themselves, separate from their function.

Hooked forever!

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That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing...

Spot on. I'm suffering right now as, being poorer than a church mouse's poor cousin, I am bikeless (or rather my bikes are stuck in the garage unrepaired, untaxed, un-MOTed and unusable) even as the days lengthen and the weather improves and the roads beckon.

It hurts, man, it hurts!

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That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing...

Yes, I grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles. Mr. McQueen lived UP the hill in the fancy area. (N. Kenter ave., Brentwood neighborhood) We'd sometimes spot him riding with Lee Marvin or other actor friends. Many lived around there. Also saw them all at the BIG desert races. (Mojave Desert area as shown in On Any Sunday.

BTW, I skipped A LOT in my first post! I started off riding and bodging various homemade scooters, at age 14 bought my first "real" bike ... 1960 Vespa 150! After that, a '59 200cc Triumph Tiger Cub, then into modern times: Honda 50 (sport model). After that went racing on my Bultaco Pursang 250. 50 bikes later it's all history ... and water under the bridge. I'm very lucky to have survived!

I'm a biker - I ride a bicycle - have done so since I was 2 years old! Why? - because I lived in the Netherlands then - and everyone rides a bicycle there.

I'm also a motorcyclist - continously since 18 years old. Why? Because most of my mates at school rode motorcycles (well started off with sports mopeds AP50's, Garelli's, ect.) - but I wasn't allowed one.

But I saved my money, persuaded my parents and bought a mate's Suzuki GT185, when he traded up to a GT500 - which I later bought when he traded up to a GS1000. The GS1000 got knicked so never bought that of him!

But I did have a Triton whilst at university - don't think that would happen today. Should never have sold it! But needed a bike to go despatch riding on -so the Triton went and got replaced by a 'plastic maggot'. (One amongst many dumb things I have done in life!).

When I was 28 I decided I better learn to drive a car - now I'm 52 but have always prefered to ride a motorcycle - there's 3 in the garage at the moment -Honda C90, MZ Skorpion Sport, and Suzuki XF650 - hopefully one day before I get too old, I'll get the money together to ride one of them around the world.

Certain people are attracted to certain things. Some guys rave about them, but for me cars never did it -they're a box on 4 wheels- a means of transport. I'm also a pilot. I fly sailplanes, have done since I was 14 - powered aircraft again are a 'means of transport'. Maybe its a skill thing - it takes more skill and judgement to fly a sailplane than a powered aircraft, more skill and judgement to ride a motorcycle than drive a car?

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I don't have to travel fast but I do need to travel cheap