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[RGlideKid]

Saved mowing yard & hauling hay money for this 1973 Kawasaki 175.  Think it was $379, bought in 1972.  Pic is me doing donuts in my front yard in Texas.  Car was mine, too.

Now there's a young fellow who couldn't get enough of his bike!  Nice SS by the way!
You look like me at that age...all height and no weight! 
Wish I had more pictures of my youth from those days... but that was way, way before digital cameras, and film was expensive for poor folks. 

[iski]

Now there's a young fellow who couldn't get enough of his bike!  Nice SS by the way!
You look like me at that age...all height and no weight! 
Wish I had more pictures of my youth from those days... but that was way, way before digital cameras, and film was expensive for poor folks.

Thanks.  Car was a head turner. 150#s, 6' 3".  My younger sis took the pic on a Polaroid.  Only a few pics of the bike, this was scanned.  Absolutely, we were so poor then we didn't know how poor we were..  Had bummed rides since 13 on everything small engined with 2 wheels.  Mostly mini bikes.  I wanted a bike bad. Friend had a Kawa 90, I saved to buy the 175.  Used to eat Honda Scrambler 305s for lunch.  Loved to ride dirt, wheelies , jumps, & donuts & foot plant corner slides.  Now I would be in a wheelchair in short order - maybe. Then had no fear.  My to be wife over the valid objections of her parents began riding on the back that same spring.  Good times.

[moscooter]

 
My first bike was a used '63 Triumph TR6.  (40" with a single carb)...........first year for (unit construction).  I got it in 1965.  Rode it to work and school and some of us got into enduros.  Stock rear sprocket was 46t.  I put a 60T (overlay) sprocket on it for hill climbing and enduros.  Very heavy bike for enduros if you get stuck in the mud or similar.   Then sold it around 1968 for less than $100 from what I had paid originially.  ($725).  Got into Bultaco enduro bikes (Spanish).  Had a '67 Matador (250cc),  and later a '75 Frontera (360cc).  Later on had a Yamaha Virago (750) and finally into Harleys in the mid '90s with my first being '93 Dyna Wide Glide..........several H.D.s since.

[Chains]

Hey Chains, and the Egyptian is still in business doing custom paint work to this day !!!!  He is so well known, amazing  !!!

I uses to spend a lot of time with Don at the shop after I got off work.  Wanted to learn to custom paint so I would stay in the booth with him and watch the magic.  Had it not been for one of his guys going behind his back and stealing a customer from him I think he would have taught me.  But when the guy painted a 65 fastback corvette for the cost of the paint and a Muncie 4 speed it was all Don could do to not strangle the guy.  I remember one night I took my girlfriend down to the shop and introduced her and told Don I was going to marry her.  After about 5 minutes talking to her Don says Jim you can't marry her she is a bitch stay clear.  Needless to say I didn't listen but found out soon he was right, laugh about it today , but boy was he right.

You know he worked in California as a young man and I used to love sitting in his office looking at the photos of cars and especially the ones with him and George Barris together.  He is a great guy 

[Dr.D]

.  Loved to ride dirt, wheelies , jumps, & donuts & foot plant corner slides.  Now I would be in a wheelchair in short order - maybe. Then had no fear.

x2  Loved my two enduro bikes. Those peppy two strokes would out run larger displacement four strokes every time. Easy to work on too. I remember taking the heads off to clean the tops of the pistons and if they had carbon build up it would improve performance quite a bit. Hell to the fire if I tried that on my new HD.

[iski]

x2  Loved my two enduro bikes. Those peppy two strokes would out run larger displacement four strokes every time. Easy to work on too. I remember taking the heads off to clean the tops of the pistons and if they had carbon build up it would improve performance quite a bit. Hell to the fire if I tried that on my new HD.

Yeah those 2 strokes were very easy to work on.  Always carried spare spark plugs. The bike came with surface gap plugs that were easy to clean.  Tried conventionals in multiple heat ranges, ended up back with the originals. Champion made them, otherwise we would gap Bosch plugs. 



Used to run forest trails banging into trees jumping over stuff & having a helluva good time.  The young wimmens who accompanied us thought correctly that we were crazy & was common to hear "you"re gonna kill yourself."
The little 2 strokes left bigger 4 strokes behind.  Kawas, Suzukis, Yamahas.  Was a lot of fun.  Always used stingers with just enough back pressure to be.....well they were all loud as hell.  Did not need to be a genius to work on them, pretty straightforward.  Compared to modern bikes is like 70s cars to modern cars.  Engineered to the nth, scanalize & now the computer says where/what.  But when it comes to starting on cold mornings or in elevations, the modern stuff is easier. 

[Chains]

x2  Loved my two enduro bikes. Those peppy two strokes would out run larger displacement four strokes every time. Easy to work on too. I remember taking the heads off to clean the tops of the pistons and if they had carbon build up it would improve performance quite a bit. Hell to the fire if I tried that on my new HD.

Had 3 or 4 enduros over the years and 3 full blown yz's of various cc's. Ran moto cross for a while but really loved the enduros in the woods. Even had a Hodaka for a while. Used to take my two stroke bikes apart and polish the intakes and exhaust ports like a mirror. Seemed like it helped. Even rode one of my enduros to work on nice days. Loved riding on the rear wheel and watching cagers about crap.  Bought a brand new 500 Yamaha moto cross bike with aluminum tank loaded it up in my van and went to the national forest to ride power lines in southern Ohio.  90 plus degrees that morning.  Two hours in to the ride while I was all alone in the middle of nowhere the rod came out the bottom.  About an hour later a buddy of mine found me and helped me by taking turns pushing it through creeks and up and down hills till we found a road. I stayed with bike while he tried to find our campsite. About two hours later he returned. If it had been up to me the thing would still be there.  Dealer agreed to pay parts if I paid labor, race bikes had no warranty back then. I can still here that thing letting loose and thinking oh you're so screwed its comical now.

[willyB]

When I was 15 years old I bought this 1972 Yamaha 250 MX from a friend of a friend for something $200.

All my friends were riding all the new cool stuff but this 250 would out run all of them in a straight line. It had horrible suspension but it was fun as heck to ride.

That's my nephew on it. He's 38 years old now.

[DaBigNuttedMan]

The first bike I had was a 1969 Honda 50cc. I rode the wheels off that thing, tearing up my parents yard in the process. Thought I was the coolest kid in my neighborhood -- of course I still think that all these years later  .

This a pic of one I found on the web....

 that's a Honda QA 50 if I remember right was the smallest bike Honda made, my friend Jim Satterfield had a yellow one we wooped up on it pretty good, thing was tough.

[North Georgia Hawg]

The first bike I actually owned was a Honda CB350. Not certain on dates but I think it was circa 1972. I don’t recall the year of the bike either. I paid $250 for it if memory serves. It sure did start me off on a motorcycle trend that so far hasn’t ended. The image is from the web, but this is what it looked like. This bike was sold and quickly followed up with acquisition of a 1969 BSA Thunderbolt, then an early ‘70’s Norton Commando 750 in yellow. I don’t have photographs of any of these bikes that I’m aware of through years of changes and moving around…

Wow! That's the bike I started out on! Paid $400 I think. Put TT pipes with Snuff 'r Nots in 'em - so I could be loud or quiet. That takes me back. Mine was a '72 red model, but I rattle-canned it gloss black. Rode that little bike to high school and all over north Texas for two years.

From there I went to a '73 Kawi Z1 900 four in 1977, with a black Vetter Windjammer III frame-mounted fairing. I think I paid $800, or maybe $900, but I really don't remember. Quite a jump! Rattle-canned that one gloss black too, as the funky dark purple factory paint had oxidized to a sickly greenish-brown.

I rode it to college for a couple of years, and had it until 1985, when I traded it for a brand-spankin'-new 1985 Kawi ZL900 Eliminator in fire engine red - for which I dropped an astounding $3500! That bike was so fast it was scary... 0-60 in 2.7 seconds, and a sub-11 QM. Looked kinda like a Dyna. Nobody ever beat me to 60... on any number of wheels! I never did a thing to it except change the oil and add a small windshield.

Then many off-bike years raising kids with a wife who hated motorcycles and hounded me into selling the Eliminator in 1991. That probably kept me out of trouble during those years, though.

I returned to two wheels on Bertha, my beloved 1995 FLTHP that my current (and LAST) wife bought me for my 50th birthday in 2005, and for which we paid a whopping $9999. Bertha was a big, bad, black Certified Police Special Electra-Glide - but with a windshield, not a fairing. She was the very last year of the old FLHS "toaster dash" windshield-equipped E-Glides, and in that year they came only as Police bikes. The windshield-equipped police bikes from 1996 onward have been the Road King Police.

I put a LOT of dough into Bertha, then sold her in 2011 and bought HoneyBadger on Aug 26, 2011, from Macon H-D for which I plunked down straight-but-obscene MSRP ($32,600) - plus tax, title, freight, and a flat $250 doc fee... No setup.

HoneyBadger was one of the very first FLHXSE3s on the road in Georgia... perhaps the first one, I don't know - but mine was the first one I found at any GA dealer, and I called ALL of them! I'm pretty confident she was the first Hot Citrus SESG in these parts, and it was a full year before I saw another one on the road. I've put a lot of dough into her too... but she's never going to be sold while I'm still alive. I'd trike her before I'd ever sell her!

Ken

[RGlideKid]

This wasn't my first bike, y'all saw that one in the first post, but this was my first touring bike and I loved her dearly.  This 1982 Honda Goldwing Aspencade (1100cc opposed 4 cyl) was what got me into baggers and touring, and from then on I pretty much never looked back.  I think I paid around $8,000 new for her in 1982 and the dealer in Tucson threw in two color matched Shoei full face helmets (something no dealer would likely ever do today!).  This picture was taken in 1983, but I'm wearing a Bell full face I bought in 1975.  Man I thought that helmet was so cool!  I sold that bike right before getting married, and have regretted it to this day.  I still see that same model running around every now and then.
I weighed 150lbs back then with a 30" waist (in the military).  Now I'm 215 and a 37-38" waist (retired).   

[North Georgia Hawg]

This wasn't my first bike, y'all saw that one in the first post, but this was my first touring bike and I loved her dearly.  This 1982 Honda Goldwing Aspencade (1100cc opposed 4 cyl) was what got me into baggers and touring, and from then on I pretty much never looked back.  I think I paid around $8,000 new for her in 1982 and the dealer in Tucson threw in two color matched Shoei full face helmets (something no dealer would likely ever do today!).  This picture was taken in 1983, but I'm wearing a Bell full face I bought in 1975.  Man I thought that helmet was so cool!  I sold that bike right before getting married, and have regretted it to this day.  I still see that same model running around every now and then.
I weighed 150lbs back then with a 30" waist (in the military).  Now I'm 215 and a 37-38" waist (retired).   

Quite a few of those early-80s GW Aspencades and Interstates still roaming around out there. Seems like every time I ride the Cherohala Skyway, I see at least one. They were great old tourers, and their owners are always fanatical about them!

Ken

[DCFIREMANN]

My first bike was an old 1973 Ironhead Sportster. It was a blast to ride.

Be Safe

THE DAWG

[TNCarters]

A bit off subject but recently saw a photo of a very large fellow, probably 7' tall and 400# sitting on one of those old GW and had to sit on the passenger seat to fit and made the bike look like a scooter.  Comments above just reminded me of the pic and brought a laugh to the day.  Please excuse the distraction.  Found it!

[DaBigNuttedMan]

Found my first one at the back of a garage when I was walking along some rail tracks it was covered in vines, all I could see of it was the left hand grip. I was curios so I hopped the back fence to take a look and there it was a complete bike. I went to the house and asked if he would sale it. He said that old thing! if you want it give me 20 and it's yours but you have to move it. I shot home told my dad that I had just bought a motor bike he said what kind of bike I replied, It's called a Panther a 1936/39 350cc. I was 18 I tore down the motor had new bushes made up at the local machine shop, cleaned it all up and that was that she ran like a top.

                                               The pic is the replica of what I had that I found in the Panther diary

today on craigslist there is one of these for $14,300.00 I think they call it a 1962 sloper.  Craigslist Indianapolis, under Motorcycles Parts and Accessories the add id # is 5140623116   go get um Longlast your young again !!