I grew up with a dad chopping CBs in our garage (and living room in the winter). When he would show up on his motorcycle outside the school when all of us kids were getting on the bus and I got to roar out of the parking lot on a chopper with a cool metal flake helmet with all my friends screaming out the bus windows... now, that was cool.
But the coolest part was that when I rode on the bike with my dad, he was really great about always explaining what he was doing. Why he rode in the left half of the lane 95% of the time. How a motorcycle steers (counter steers) differently from a bicycle. When any other vehicle was making any sort of left turn, he would point it out as something he was tracking closely. Basically, how to stay alive on a bike around cars.
Then when I was in 7th grade I finally had some income from mowing lawns and I was determined to buy a '76 Suzuki RM80 off a kid near me. My dad was a trucker and would be gone 1-2 weeks at a time and when he came home and saw me with $300 of the $400 I needed to buy this janky old bike, he walked me over to look at this bike, said not a single word, and we walked back home. An hour later he said, "Give me your $300." I was like, no way, why? "We're going down to the shop to have a look at a bike."
So we head down to the shop and look at this brand new '85 RM80 on the showroom floor, he pockets my money and writes a check for $950 and we took her home. It was one of the five best things that have happened in my life.
A couple days later he tells me to go disassemble my bike as fully as I could and to pay attention to how everything went together. I got the seat, tank, carb, plastic, shock, swingarm and wheels off and he goes, "I'll be back in 10 days or so. If you want to ride while I'm gone, you'll need to figure out how to put your bike back together." That, too, was such a gift in terms of confidence.
Some friends and I built a track in the back corner of a cornfield that wasn't used, did a little racing at the local track (Knobby Hill in Sheridan, Indiana). Years later I got really into mountain biking (still my major obsession) and spent 12-20 hours a week training on the road and I think the hyper-awareness of defensive riding that my dad instilled is what kept me alive around all the psycho motorists. (Then texting became a thing and my bicycle tires only ride on dirt and rock.)
First road bike was an '83 V45 Magna. Then I rode an '87 Softail Custom for a long time. Then I became a dad and the Softail has sat in storage for 15 years and I buzzed around on a '96 XR400 for a while. Then nothing for the past 8 years.
These vintage bikes are what rekindled the fire for me.
