Ever go to Trapani's bike shop in Waretown? Lived right across rt9 . It really was awesome growing up there.
That's the scariest of any bike I've ever ridden, the TZ-500. You never know when the powerband is gonna kick in. When it does, it just wants to stand straight up. You'd have more fun with this one. You can ride it one the street and the power is controllable. Wish I'd never sold mine. If I lived in the states I'd be bidding on this one. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1984...1832821?pt=US_motorcycles&hash=item43bead3b75
That rz 500 in the link looks like it has a car fender rear end on it .. -- I rode a couple other enduro bikes before this 1976 CR250 Husky purchase ...but I had never rode a real dirt till this bike ...Mine had the 1976.5 model pipe that came up and under the gas tank instead of that cool side pipe on previous models ... Heikki Mikkola was wining world championship along in this time. He pretty much kept DeCoster from winning a decade straight of 500cc championships ...
My first bike was a 1973 honda MR50... My dad brought it home the first day I rode my brothers honda ct70 by myself. The throttle was so ghetto on these things that the whole tube would sometimes slide off in your hand mid ride. That induced a few crashes... Later,
My mom was cool to hop on the back of my first bike to take a ride across the Brookly Bridge ;-). A Honda 350, I bought from my cousin. Yeah... Stripped those ape hangers and sissy bar off real quick and had fun with an impact wrench back then with those damn phillips head engine screws! View: http://youtu.be/hozY4RaoYpU View: http://youtu.be/ygh69OB85s8
All that talk about New Jersey and the places we rode, brings back the best memories of those times. In 1969 I was 9 years old and my older brother had this 90CC Yamaha that had a step through frame. I'm not sure of the year it was because my dad bought it second hand for him as his first bike. I learned how to ride that in my parents back yard. In 1972 I got my first bike. I was a Yamaha Mini Enduro. I loved that bike and wish I could get my hands on one today.
Started off on a home made mini bike I bought. Wheel barrow wheel & tire on the back, Airplane wheel & tire front. Flintstone braking technology. Then a family friends CT70, then my cousins Hodaka ACE100, Bought a TS250 & TS 185, then brand new 81 IT250.
I also had one of those mini bikes. My first real bike was the Bombardier version of this. It wasn't that old, but didn't run. My dad got it running, and it was fast enough that I could beat my buddy on his XR75. A year after that, my buddy got a CR125, and once my dad saw that, we went over to the Suzuki dealer, and bought one of these. It was really fast and I crashed a lot. I still have a ton of scars from that first summer, but it was one of the best times of my life Thanks dad.
When you are our age motorcycles will have jet packs on them , like the Jetons. You are probably saying who are the Jetsons lol
You missed the best of times. Open riding anywhere that wasn't wilderness. Forest Service maintained the trails. Riding in a burned area was the exception not the rule. We didn't have the Hollywood and New York tree huggers in Western Montana. People loved the bikes and our local MX track had a race a month with ~2500 people showing up to watch. Hamilton's population then was 2500. Cross Country races were held anywhere public and routinely had 400+ riders on the starting line. You could ride all the trails all day and never see another rider/person no matter what trail you rode. 1500+ miles of single track trail in just Ravalli County. I miss riding in the late 60's-70's.
my neighbors Taco mini bike, I was 9 or so. Always rode the neighbors bikes till I finally got my own at 15. was a Hodaka Ace 90
First real bike was a Suzuki TM125(distant second to the Honda Elsinore-but all I could afford!). Saved up the $ from my paper-route: even though my folks weren't crazy about it, when they saw I saved up half the money they loaned me the rest. Dirt bikes were my passion and I'd been racing them for a few years and my parents had never seen me race-one day I was racing at Saddleback, got involved in a first-turn crash with a bunch of guys but still finished the race OK. When I got back to the truck there was a note stuck on my windshield-my folks had come to watch me race, saw the crash and that I got going again but my mom couldn't stand to watch! That was the only time they ever came to a race
Honda SL100 followed by a Kawasaki 250 F81M. Grew up in LA area in SoCal. Before I had a drivers license, we would ride down the RR tracks along Vermont Blvd or take various side streets to get to the local riding areas. Fun times!
Really cool to see all of this stuff. We've all kind of run the spectrum. And, yes, we have dated ourselves a bit. I learned on a 73' XR75. Too small to touch ground so Pops would fire it up, put it in gear, hold the clutch, let me climb aboard then let me go. When I grew tired I'd aim for Pops and, as I got close I'd jump off and let him try to corral the bike (true story). I had several bikes since then. Moved on to a Yamaha GT80, a Yamaha YZ80, a lame Suzuki 175 that I beat this piss out of in the Ocotillo Desert and a screaming greeny KX105 - the fastest thing I had ever ridden (as a kid).
