Doug Polen
Former AMA and FIM World Superbike Champion and proprietor of the Doug Polen One-on-One Performance Riding School
1963 Yamaha 80
"My dad bought a new Yamaha 80 in '63, when I was 3 years old. He had that thing throughout my entire childhood, and I would just look at it and think, 'Man, I gotta ride it!' He made me wait until I was 12; that's how old I was when I could finally sit on it with my feet on the ground.
"I first rode the 80 about a month before we moved to Texas from Rochester, New York. We moved to this place about 30 miles north of Dallas, and the house was one of the early homes built on a massive development. There were only a few houses in the neighborhood, but the infrastructure had been built for thousands, so all the roads were there, but they hadn't been paved yet. So there were literally miles of compacted, graded dirt roads for me to ride on. I learned a lot of skills ripping around those roads!
"My brothers and I rode our dad's bike a lot, so he bought us a '74 Honda XR75 to share. Man, we rode that thing into the ground! I'd ride it for a tankful and then hand it off to my brother and he'd run a couple gallons through it; then he'd pass it on down the line. That first summer we rode the XR eight hours a day, sunup to sundown.
"I first learned how to wrench on that bike, because it was up to us kids to do the maintenance. It was sort of toaster-oven mechanics: I just busted into the motor and figured it out so we could keep it running. When I got a little older I got a job at the local Suzuki shop, and then Freddie Spencer's brother Danny bought the shop. We ended up building one of Freddie's first Superbikes that he raced at Daytona in '79.
"Without a doubt those early years in the dirt were crucial in helping me figure out how to ride a bike and how they work, and then working at the shop got me exposed to racing, which paved the way for my career. It all just happened real easy."
Tim Ferry
Team Kawasaki factory motocross racer
1982 Yamaha YZ60
"When I was a kid, the mini-bike class was just getting big. The gate would be packed, and when I saw that I knew I wanted a bike. Dad made me promise to do well in school, and then he bought me one. I was about 7 years old, and the bike was an '82 Yamaha YZ60. That was bike back then; every kid had one or wanted one.
"Dad bought the bike sometime in the summer and we took it to the sandlot near our house to try it out. It was a stormy afternoon and thunderheads were rolling in with flashes of lightning. That had me scared, but dad coaxed me onto the bike and I rode it that first day. The sand in Florida is like beach sand, and there are some cool pictures of me riding there with roost coming off the little YZ's tire.
"It was only two or three months before I started racing. I was slow, but I was out there. I raced the YZ that first year, and then I got a KX60. The Kawasaki was faster, but the YZ was bulletproof and I still raced it when the KX broke. The first three or four years I was just having fun, racing locally in South Florida at Moroso and Fort Lauderdale. I started taking it seriously when I was maybe 13 or 14, and then dad and I started hitting up the tracks further north. I turned Pro at 16, and haven't looked back since. I still have that YZ60. It's in my shop at home with my old number still on it."
David Roper
Noted 62-year-old vintage racer and the only American ever to win at the Isle of Man TT
1967 Ducati Diana
"I got my first bike when I was going to the University of California at Santa Barbara in '67. I debated between a Suzuki X-6, a Bultaco Metralla and a Ducati Diana. At that point, the entire extent of my experience with motorcycles was 2 hours of seat time on rental bikes. I'd spent one hour on a Suzuki 80, then went back to the dealer to upgrade to a Suzuki 118 for my remaining hour. No instruction, just, 'Here, go play in traffic.'
"After that, I was ready to buy. However, the Suzuki dealer rubbed me the wrong way, and it would be a month or two before the Bultaco was available, so I bought the Ducati from Mullany's Cycles, a BSA and Ducati shop in Santa Barbara, for $719. The bike came with clip-ons, a velocity stack and open megaphone in addition to the 'Western' bars, an air filter and Silentium muffler. It also had rearsets, which meant I only got about 45 degrees of travel out of the kick-starter. It didn't matter: I bump-started it most of the time anyway.
"I didn't know what I was doing, and it's a wonder I lived through those early rides up and down Stagecoach Road. One time I was going around a blind corner in the middle of the road when here appears a VW Beetle coming at me--in the middle of the road! For some reason we both decided to go to the 'wrong' side of the road and just avoided each other Anyway, I did live through it, though ultimately the Ducati didn't, but that first bike really set the hook."