Rick Carmody
President, Cretins M.C.
"My first motorcycle was a 1977 Yamaha YZ80. My dad bought me a dirtbike for my 10th birthday after I was caught riding my uncle's KX60 without his supervision--or a helmet! I cleaned and polished every part of that bike the first night. The next day, dad took me down to the Arkansas River in Oklahoma and told me to ride near the water where the sand was hard. I was wearing an oversized, gold-metallic, open-face helmet stuffed with a T-shirt and some old, cheap goggles. I got bored really quick and saw dad and his buddy racing across the dunes. I raced up behind them until dad noticed me, and immediately sent me back to riding next to the water. Dad bought me a full-face helmet, finally, after I dragged my face across the ground and broke my nose a few months later. That bike was a wheelie machine!"
Don Miller
Proprietor, Metro Racing
1960s Kawasaki
"I only have one pic of me with my first bike. I wish I had some riding pix. My neighbors may have an image of it in their rifle scopes, or can still hear its ping-ping-ping ringing in their ears late at night. It was a late-'60s Kawasaki--one too many hits to the head keep me from remembering the exact model and displacement. This picture was taken moments before it became my bike.
"My older brother raced it in District 6 scrambles around Eastern Pennsylvania. He is hunched over the bike, yet again working on it. He may have been a little big for the small bike, as he blew it up on a regular basis. This was the last time. I remember him saying to one of his friends, 'I'm giving it to my kid brother. I'm going to Deal's Bultaco and getting that 200cc Sherpa S.' I was overjoyed to hear that the shiny-red Kawi was mine! It didn't matter that it didn't run--I had a motorcycle! I was already planning that victory wheelie over the finish line.
"We lived in a small town where they were putting in I-95 just feet behind our backyard. That left plenty of flat riding space for kids from miles around. I pushed the bike around the backyard for what seemed like forever before my dad fixed it for me. Either he finally found some spare time, or he couldn't take me asking him a million times a day. I think I even wrote him a note on the bathroom mirror in soap!
"Once it was running, they decided I needed a helmet to ride. Instead of going out and buying one, dad suggested I wear one of my brother's. It was a little big, but it would work. Luckily, mom was there to save the day: 'It's too big; he can't see out of it. Don't worry, boy, I can fix that.' She came back out of the house with my Philadelphia Flyers winter beanie, complete with the big tassel on top. That was the ticket. The helmet was kind of snug and I could see.
"I made it two summers, riding all over the woods at the end of the street and on the paths of the new highway, before we moved to a neighborhood that didn't have anywhere to ride because of my dad's job. That put a damper on my riding until I started to race a speedway bike when I was 16.
"I think the coolest thing we did back then was ride through a big, cement drainage tube under the new highway to get to the dirt mines. The mines were a big area that they used to get fill from for the new road. It was awesome! Lots of people would show up there on weekends. It was one of those things that I thought would never end. It's filled in now, and new 'McMansions' cover our sacred ground. I wonder if they ever hear the screaming two-strokes of the '70s echoing through the night air?"
Andrew Leisner
Managing Partner, Hardcard and former 250cc Grand Prix competitor
1970s Chibi 60
"In elementary school, my two neighborhood-terrorizing riding buddies (who would later go on to become professional car racers, Tommy Kendall and the late Jeff Krosnoff) had Honda Z50s, but I was unique and rode a Chibi 60. I had 10cc more, a clutch and two-stroke power. The bike was a gift from my father for my sixth birthday, and I rode it until I was 10. It served as a backyard playbike for several years beyond that. "I still have the Chibi, and my father-in-law (former Motorcyclist editor Tony Murphy) and I are planning to restore it someday. I owe a great deal to that bike, as my life has been centered around motorcycles ever since."
Bill Werner
Winningest tuner in AMA Grand National dirt-track racing
1960s Honda 50
"My first exposure to motorcycles was at age 12, when my neighbor took me for a ride on his big dresser. I was just a kid, and that really made my day and got me interested. Not in any major way, but enough that after that, I noticed bikes more.
"When I was 16, my friend got a Honda Hawk. Seeing that bike up close and personal on a regular basis really got me fired up, and I had to get a motorcycle myself. At the time I was working at a hot-rod shop, and I was big into speed, mechanics and performance. I would have loved to have had a hot rod, but those cars cost thousands of dollars, whereas you could get a fast bike for $500.
"Wandering into the local Honda shop, I saw a CB92 Benly. From my experience at the speed shop I knew what made things go fast, and that Honda had it all: four-leading-shoe front brake, overhead cam, an 11,000-rpm redline and a whopping 15 horsepower. I never could afford that Benly, but I still have the original brochures.
"I ended up settling for a little Honda 50cc step-through. That bike was my first and it served as my sole source of transportation through two years of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, summers and winters.
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