Topic: What Happened to the Riding Buddies..??

[754]

I started riding in the 70,s.

Soon I ran into a couple brothers that rode.. a lot. Had a buddy that liked to ride , only knew him a year or two. Then another joined us.
 So soon it was 5, then within a year another.

 So for a few years we rode the Hell out of our bikes.. often 3 or more of that group,  hardly ever all of us.

 But time marched on after a while and life stepped in an we  went in different directions, and perhaps got a bit more serious about life.. I got to say though them carefree days of riding as often as we liked were truly enjoyable..

 So now 3 decades later, I often think back on those days..

 So what happened to them?

The 2 brothers still live here in BC, we dont see each other much and dont get along like we used to..

I still live here, same town, got a family now, resposibities.. etc..

My main buddy that I knew longest, passed on spring of last year. That  did not occur without an impact on me..

One of the others did not stick with bikes all that long, first to get out.. big family now, not interested in bikes. Got religious, stayed that way too..

The last of the group, was the Hog rider..only one of the group.that didnt ride other bikes....  ended up in Oz..
down under..

The bike tally, I am glad to report that four of us six, still have our bikes from back then!

3 cb 750s, all big bore.. and the Hog a 76 SuperGlide happily lives in Australia.

The one guy got out of bikes early, the buddy that passed on had his 78 XS11 basket (got it new, used it up) and a Bully when he passed on.

The 2 brothers each have several bikes, one a very nice collection, some of his bikes are in a big bike museum..


So WHAT  happened to the guys you started riding with way back?

[DarkRider]

Heres a pic from a recent bbq that i attended. Thats just a portion of the group i ride with..alot of us got together a couple riding seasons ago and a lot of the group joined up this year.

[tramp]

i ride alone
no one here old enough or dumb enough to ride with me
had a big group in hawaii in the 70's
two 350's one 400 and one 450
we were bad to the bone

[putnaja1]

Man..  In the late 80's, I was a teenager.  My buddies and I had dirtbikes instead of streetbikes.  BUT, in Maryland where we lived, there was still some undeveloped land left to ride on.  Now almost all our riding areas is someone's house/yard.

Anyways, I had a z50 at first, then graduated to a Yamaha IT175.  Boy was that a jump!
My buddy Keith had a Honda XL100, then moved "up" to a CR80.
My buddy Larry started with a Yamaha DT80, then got a YZ80.
The oldest buddy, Jeff, who also drove us all to the motorcycle shop when we broke something, had a series of XR80s.  His brother Chris occasionally rode with us on his new KX80.  Jeff sometimes borrowed that bike too.
Occasional buddy Bill had a Suzuki DS80, then a KX125.

There were occasional others and visitors who we kinda knew, but that was the main group.  I can tell you that, around 1989 or so, I rode every single day- including Xmas day, and it didn't matter if it was raining, snowing, or 105 degrees out, we were out there pounding dirt!  Those were the days!

Fortunately, all these guys are still around the area, although we don't see each other too much.  I turned to streetbikes, and so did Larry.  Keith actually got mega-serious, and for a while was riding Pro Motorcross on 250s.  Bill and Jeff both had streetbikes too but I don't know if they stuck with it or not.

[Gordon]

I was always a solo rider until My wife and I moved to Denver a few years ago.  I wanted to meet some people with similar interests so I hooked up with J-bone who had been trying to start a group called the Rusted Nuts.  We put the word out, got a bunch of folks together and started having gatherings and rides, and it's worked out really well.

Lots of very different kinds of people, but we all love old bikes and love to ride them, and we have a great time!

I'm sure in twenty years I'll be wondering "whatever happened to the old gang?"...  

[gerhed]

Never had any riding buddies.
I think I would have enjoyed that.
I used to have people that would ride on the back of my bike.
They are long gone.
Never had any drinking buddies either
but I am here to tell about it.

[333]

Politics.  Women.  Typical stuff in life that turns ones direction.

I had 2 buddies.  The first one I actually got my 750K4 from when he started having doubts(maybe wrong word?) about riding. Many years later he was given a CB900C in real rough shape.  I did a lot of work on it, as well as used my employee discount.  I may have chronicled the rebuild in the old list serve group.  Told him if he ever got rid of it, to give me first chance.  He didn't.  And while our politics differed, I always thought that it didn't make that big of a deal.  But as the current administration started making mistakes, I guess he got embarrassed.  He stopped calling.  I was the one that called.

The second had wife issues.  3rd wife for him.  The 1st I didn't know, the 2nd was cool about it.  Rode on the back with him.  He ended up moving way far away(commute wise) and they got into RVs.  He stopped calling.  Again, I was the one that was doing the calling.

A couple of years ago, I decided that with real friends, phone calls went both ways, so I stopped calling.  Haven't heard from them since.

[mattcb350f]

Man..   My buddies and I had dirtbikes instead of streetbikes.  BUT, in Maryland where we lived, there was still some undeveloped land left to ride on. 

Anyways, I had a z50 at first, then graduated to a Yamaha IT175.  Boy was that a jump!
My buddy Keith had a Honda XL100, then moved "up" to a CR80.
My buddy Larry started with a Yamaha DT80, then got a YZ80.
The oldest buddy, Jeff, who also drove us all to the motorcycle shop when we broke something, had a series of XR80s.  His brother Chris occasionally rode with us on his new KX80.  Jeff sometimes borrowed that bike too.
Occasional buddy Bill had a Suzuki DS80, then a KX125.

There were occasional others and visitors who we kinda knew, but that was the main group.  I can tell you that, around 1989 or so, I rode every single day- including Xmas day, and it didn't matter if it was raining, snowing, or 105 degrees out, we were out there pounding dirt!  Those were the days!

Fortunately, all these guys are still around the area, although we don't see each other too much.  I turned to streetbikes, and so did Larry.  Keith actually got mega-serious, and for a while was riding Pro Motorcross on 250s.  Bill and Jeff both had streetbikes too but I don't know if they stuck with it or not.

Wow. That's pretty similar to my story 

I started riding early in high school with a coulple of guys that had bikes.
One had a XR250 and a XL185 loaner for us to use, the other a Husky 400 (which I later bought) and another with a Honda 300 four wheeler. There were a few others who would join now and again, and every weekend we would be out riding and nearly every day in the summer. I had the smallest bike; an 81' XL80 and although I was rarely out front, I could always keep up.

Today, we all still have dirt bikes but rarely get together to ride; maybe once a year.

None of them got into motorcycles though... between buying houses and relationships they don't have the time or the cash to get into it. Although, now that my bike is on the road, I can see they have the look in their eyes that they want in on the action  I'm hoping they get some bikes so I don't look so weird drinking coffee alone in the parking lots.

Anyway, for now I ride alone.

 Matt.

[75modrat]

Wow, I am only 25 but I already know what you are talking about. When I was in college a buddy and me would ride almost every day religiously. Gas was only $1.50 or so. We would fill the tanks and ride till empty just heading nowhere. It was amazing. Another buddy bought a bike and he rode with us. Though I would never trust the late comer to ever ride next to me. He did not have enough concentration (absent minded actually) for me to feel comfortable next to. My first riding buddy got married and started working 70+ hours a week (12 hours a day and usually sat or sunday but sometimes both). Then he started working nights (7pm-7am). I started dating my now wife, graduated college, started law school, got a job and there was not time on my end either. At the beginning we both lived with our parents about 3 miles apart. Then it quickly became 40 miles. I still see him once a week or two. He just recently bought a bike (he used to ride his dads), but he usually has to watch the daughter (while my wife and his go shopping!). But hopefully this summer we will recapture some of the old times.

What a great thread. Though it makes me feel old while not really being old. 

[mattcb350f]

Wow, I am only 25 but I already know what you are talking about.

I'll be 26 in June  where did they go eh' 

[75modrat]

I know how it sounds, but yeah, where did they go. It seems like just yesterday I was acting out in highschool and sledding behind cars and such. Now I am working a 9-5 studying for the bar, married, trying to have a kid, and no free time.

[Jerry Rxman Griffin aka MuthaF'er]

754,

Does this sound familair for the 70's?:

Got bikes early and young which meant independence.
Smoked dope, drank and partied ALOT which meant women.
Got women which meant we "partied" alot with the women.
Got married which meant we had to quit hanging with the buddies and chasing women.
Got pregnant and had kids which meant (oh, perhaps this could have been listed ahead of the  married part) we were hosed in a bad way.
Got fed up with the women or they ran us off which meant we went looking for our buddies again.
Got divorced and went looking for women again.
The women were old, fat, &/or ugly and we were bald headed instead of pony tailed with a beer gut 
NOW we're hooking up on the net about our bikes we bought new in the 70's and rebuilding them so maybe we can find buddies and buds to go riding with again before we die.

Moral of the story: Perhaps buds with buds are better than pu$$y

(Yes, I am bad but that was my 70's. My sincerest apologies go out to the ladies on our forum-It's a 70's guy thing and you probably wouldn't understand but perhaps it might present an insight into some of us old geezers)

[nickjtc]

I can thank my old chum John for sparking my interest in motorcycles. That, and a need to have cheap transportation. If i could have afforded a car on apprentice opticians wages who knows where I'd be now.

Anyhoo, here's my CB175 and his CB250 on one of our camping trips to Wales. Two bikes close together and a bit of rope and voila you have a clothes line to dry off wet gear! Man, those were the days. Beer, bikes and birds...what a life. Well, the first two as far as I was concerned.

Now I'm here in Canada and he's still in the UK. He hasn't ridden for years. I think riding in England lost its appeal.

[754]

I was not kidding when i said we rode a lot back then..
in fact part of the reason that I did not ride for a lot of the later years was , it just is not that much fun to ride around town, and if you dont get to go anywhere it became a drag.

Racing around town is not what it was, you can loose your bike today, for what we did everyday.. and traffic is 6x what it was..

Anyway in our group a few of us often worked together, were roommates, recycled girlfriends, etc, etc,...

32 year ago this month one of the guys got me a job at the sawmill he worked at.. We usually rode out of town about 3 weekends out of 4 when the weather was nice.. Thats the month I got the 73 750 I still have..

We never went anywhere w/o a sleeping bag on our bikes on any weekend. We had a private beach back in those days on Okanagan Lake by the ferry docks , and we woke up there a lot..among other places..We had a New Years party there 1 year , I rode, it was about 0 F..a bit cool...

2 week rides in the summer were short ones, I remember a few of a month at a time, and some of us were doing 6 weeks at a time..

We never had to be anywhere except work when we did, but in those days you could quit a job and get another.

One time the 2 bros took 2 girls on their bikes to the San Jose Mile in May it was.. hit some real crap weather.. a bit early in the year to ride from Canada... BUT i BET THEY DIDNT REGRET IT..($^caps key >:(0)

Ice racing in the winter.. one guy had a short tracker we used to go to some of those events.. and the Castle rock TT

We sure did see some country..

[seaweb11]

754....it sounds like the break up of an old rock band

Life happens
        Priorities change

I ride to my own tune..........alone

[754]

I bet one of our group was at Tsawassen,
 Did you see

a nicleframed black 750 with custom tank,
or a minty early Kawi 500, red or white ones
or a white modded XR-1000............./

[techy5025]

I used to have a riding buddy in the 60's. He had a Triumph 750 and I had a Honda Dream....odd combo! 
We had totally different ridings styles and were only good for short rides...or we would have killed each other. 

Recently, I have been on several group rides in Orlando and really enjoyed it....20-30 people. If I had to ride any serious distance though, I would be careful to match riding styles...and living styles... as that could ruin a long ride.

If you read the sites for the adventure guys, they all prefer to go it alone.

Jim