Started riding 50 years ago...
My stable and the wife's KTM and Triumph.

 

1986 I bought my first bike, a Honda VT 500 C. It soon turned into a VT1100C Honda Shadow that I sold in the mid 1990's to use as the down payment on our first house... when the kids came along I vowed to return to cycling once they graduated high school. Fast forward to 2015, and I found a nice 800 Suzuki Intruder... in less than 6 months it turned into a Honda ST1300 which one year later turned into the 2012 Goldwing you see here. The Goldwing has been from Montana to Maine with very few highway miles. We tour secondary and backroads and overnight in small towns. We have a group of 2-5 guys who are all diametrically political opposites but share our love of the road for trips ranging from 3 to 10 days.

I took the Beginner Riders Course in Ohio in 1986. It was free and they even provided the motorcycle if you didn't have one. I guess they figured it was cheaper to teach you how to ride now rather than scrape you off the pavement later. Climbing onto the ST1300 made me realize i needed to brush up on some skill sets. Taking the Advance Rider Class in 2016, the instructor informed me I hold the dubious distinction of going longer between courses (30 years) than any other student. Guinness Book of World Records, are you listening?


Skyline Drive

Capital Reef National Park



Lake Placid with ski jumps in background

 

Pedal Biker here. >_>

Wouldn't say no to a nice free Ducati.

 

Actually, I go both ways

 

I've owned bikes my whole life and riding since i was 16 in 03. I ride my CB750 the most and then my gsxr1100. My Honda 90 is a family memory machine and will be around forever despite lack of use. I'm looking for a Kawasaki LTD1000 to add next; my dad had one new and would get a kick out of riding one again.

 

In my adult life I have lost 5 friends who were bikers, not a single car driver as yet

Just in case you think I'm jerkin your chain, this was the last one:

https://www.burnham-on-sea.com/news/...sh-at-bleadon/

I said some words at his wake as his family told me he apparently he thought me 'a God', no idea why

The reason you'll never find me on powered 2 wheels

Thread killer or what?

 

I don't have an XK, but I have an XJR and 2 bikes. I really enjoy all of them, each in their different ways.

 

not really a thread killer. Most of us that have ridden for a long time have lost some one. I lost my best friend when we were out riding together in 1992. I did not ride for about a year, then cracked on. In my 35 years of riding I enjoy every journey. I even taught my son to ride when he was 17 years old. Although at the time he was also flying fixed wings from 15 years old while going for his PPL.
now that's nerve racking watching your child do his first solo at 16.😳😳

 

I think US biking is totally different than in the UK, you have wider roads and even the 6 x population taken into account its a lot safer to ride there given the sheer size of the place.

This made for good reading

https://www-autoexpress-co-uk.cdn.am...-die-car-users

 

I'm in the uk by the way. Derbyshire Dale's, cat & fiddle for those fellow english men🤗.
Always fancied riding the famous route 66 though, then driving back in maybe a classic American car 😎

 

Marty,
My condolences on the loss of your friend. Life can take away people without a moment's notice, nor reason. For some reason the above posted link won't open for me, so I can't read it.
I'll only say that after riding the country USA) for many years, I don't think it's any safer than anyplace else. Certainly not in recent years, with the advent of electronics and the self entitlement that's come with them. There's WAY too many people that are behind the wheel that just should not be. You have to ride like every one else on the road is ready to run you down. I certainly do not ride in fear, but I also am very cognizant of any traffic around me. I do not hesitate to run away from a developing situation or slow way down to avoid one. Worse, I'd say my wife riding her bike behind me has it even worse than I do. I have watched cars that obviously aren't paying attention to their driving when I'm going by (more like around than by) them jerk the steering to avoid me and then almost run her down. While the urban areas can be worse, the rural areas are no less dangerous. Too many times we've narrowly missed cars that turn across our paths. What's really sad is that we're on huge motorcycles (almost 900 pounds each) with 3 lights on the front (all upgraded and very bright), yet somehow these idiots refuse to see us. But I do think that riding as a pair has helped to keep us safer than a single rider might be as far as other traffic is concerned. As far as the wildlife is concerned, it may actually decrease our safety. The first rides by an animal, which scares it into running potentially across the path of the second rider. We saw that several times in some of our more desolate rides in the various countries. The wallabies in Australia were bad about jumping out when I went by!
This all may sound like I hate riding, but on the contrary, I really enjoy it and that's why I ride. It's roughly the same for driving my XKR, I'm constantly watching the idiots and try to stay away from them hitting my car!

 

SBS,
Route 66 was certainly an iconic road in it's day. Now, there are only sections of it left and you have to work to find many of them. But riding the regions those sections pass through is a very enjoyable time. You should do it on an older bike or car, as you'd have to slow down and enjoy the trip. A modern vehicle just makes it way to easy to cover 1000 miles in a day. That's great if you need to get someplace, but horrendous when the journey is the experiences along the way. A small gas tank or a small bladder is a good thing for this type of trip! I'm less than 5 miles from Rt 66, by the way.

 

While true, a factor increasing the risk of motorcycling here is the rampant increase in distracted drivers. Although many states have laws prohibiting cellphone use during driving, these laws are widely ignored, and motorcyclists die because of it. I marvel still that some drivers text, drink, eat and even read (!) while moving. Some mini-vans are more like rolling living rooms, with food and drink in the front seat, kids in the back watching some program or playing a game on the entertainment system and the dog barking away.

Add to this the well-researched phenomenon of "motorcycle blindness" among American drivers, who are used to seeing cars and trucks but less so motorcycles, with their much smaller visual cross-section. I'd venture that drivers in Britain and Europe are much more sensitized to motorcycles on the road.

Finally, speaking of departed friends, John Ryan was a multiple world-record holder in long-distance motorcycle riding. He set records for, among other things:

• Prudhoe Bay to Key West, 96 hours
• First rider to complete 1,000 miles within the city limits of New York City in 24 hours
• First rider to complete 3 1,500-mile Iron Butt rides on successive days.

And he was a diabetic! I learned this when he came into my dealership one day around Christmas (he rode his motorcycle year-round, regardless of weather and road conditions, and did not to my knowledge own a car), and I offered him a Christmas cookie. Before he ate it, he took a gadget out of his riding suit and started fiddling with it. I asked what it was and he told me it was his insulin pump. He said, "this is great for me - before I had this I would pass out on the bike and just crash."

Sadly, John was killed in a high-speed encounter with a car on an interstate highway, not in pursuit of a record, but on a short ride to a picnic hosted by the motorcycle club of which we were both members. It appears he may have been partly at fault for the collision with a car traveling next to him. No definitive cause for his loss of control was established. If you want to know more about John, the book "The Man Who Would Stop at Nothing" is about him, and a good read for any motorcyclist.

 

yea that's why I mentioned a classic American car mate👍 Often though maybe a 57 Corvette 😎
To tell you the truth I have always really envied the car and bike culture of the USA. Being a Petrol head here is the uk is very hard work.
I often read and watch videos of some of the US road trips. I love the vastness of your country.
We have some great roads here in the UK including the North 500. But at the end of the day we are a small island.
Twice a year I drive across europe (not this year of course). In June I drive to the Lemans 24hr race, then after I drive down the mountain passes and Alps into Switzerland & Italy for 10 days Absolutely love driving and riding in and around the various Alps.
Really got to do American one day though🤔

 

Geez Marky, your wife's pet name for you must be "The Fun Suppressor." Just kidding of course.

But as others have said, I think most of us on here that still ride have been around long enough to be well aware of the risks involved and to know folks who've been lost to riding. I personally know a lot more who've been lost to cancer, and I myself am probably at risk of that as much as I am of dying in motorcycle wreck. Ultimately it's a personal risk management decision that no one is right or wrong about. My roommate in school was paralyzed in a single-vehicle riding accident, and I remember as I rode my bicycle to the site the next day, I wondered if I would be traumatized enough from the accident to give up riding at the time. Instead I noticed what a great day it was and went back home to get the motorcycle. It's a little different now of course with family and responsibility, but the natural cautiousness that comes with age hopefully minimizes the risk a bit. I take things a lot easier than most of the young guys in the groups I ride with now, and I've matured enough not to feel any need to prove myself. But love for riding's in my blood no matter how long it may have sat dormant.

 

All of our bodies will expire.

 

SBS,
The size of the country does make it very enjoyable to travel around most of the time. I have been fortunate enough to now see a moderate portion of the world and find that while there are many places outside the US I'd really like to see, I'd also be okay with never leaving the country again. There is just too much here to see to ever get tired of it all.
A 57 Vette would be a really incredible way to see Rt 66. At least for the first couple of days! Then we might be wishing for something more modern.

 

Not a thread killer. I grew up on the Isle of Man, you knew what the helicopter flying overhead meant in TT fortnight.
For some reason, despite all the losses and those I knew well too, the passion never leaves you.
Its a heartbreak love affair, and its very hard to explain.

i barely ride at all these days because I now have a wife again and young kids, but the bikes are still the big passion in my life aside from my family

 

I was trying to reconcile the position bikers have after thinking about MarkyUK's unfortunate situation, because to the outsider it makes little sense. So I'll leave you with an anecdote:

In the 1990s the Isle of Man TT was on its last legs - it was irrelevant, poorly supported, and of course dangerous.
So the Head of the FIM (the world governing body that governs global motorcycle racing) decided it was time for it to go. The TT was / is seen as the most historically significant motorcycle race in the world, the Holy Grail of motorcycle racing, so closing it down would need a strong case behind it, so he sent his number 2 (armed with the same mindset) along to the event to gather his evidence to make his public case - the TT had to go.

A few days of being on the Island the number 2 conceded, and came out to the media expressing what an amazing event it was, and that was the end of that. The FIM decided to leave it alone from then onwards.


Sir Jackie Stewart, the man most of all behind turning Formula 1 into the dullest event of the modern era in my humble opinion, was, for some reason I will never understand, invited to the TT by the organisers recently (the TT has come back into a big and stronger event than at any time since its peak in the 1920s). Bear in mind the statistics for the TT are not good (151 riders killed since 1907), I was expecting him to throw the sink at it. No, the whole thing left him overwhelmed, declaring to the press it was a wonderful institution that should always remain (or words to that effect).

Motorcycling is a very emotional thing, and like with all things emotional they don't always have to make a lot of sense.

 

Probably the reason I couldn't emigrate...try the motorbike Le Mans, not the same or as good but its a very cool weekend, and you can actually book luxuries like hotels for almost normal price!