Motorcycles can be part of some great adventures.
The easiest way to start with motorcycles is when you are very young and have a good bounce factor. I flipped my first minibike when I was eight years old.
There was a time when you could get away with almost anything and each time you crashed you learned to not do it the same way again. As time passed I move on to larger bikes.
And then to even larger bikes.
Eventually, I settled on a couple of bikes for some off-road riding.
I have gone out riding with some other old-timers on the trails for a little excitement. Colorado has some great trails for riding with a view. The mountains are beautiful, the rocks are hard, and the water is really cold. Due to the miracles of modern riding equipment I was able to hit a rock and lose the bike and complete a downhill run on my chest with the reflexes of a drunk turtle. This happened on the first day of a week of riding. With motorcycles dress for the crash and not so much the weather. I found out had a cracked rib when I got home but the miracle of Ibuprophen helped with that.
The Aspen trees are beautiful.
There was snow but not enough to be a problem.
The water was cold.
The rocks were hard and of a small movable size that made it hard to drive straight.
Still the mountains are amazing.
Unfortunately, I never had a place to teach my son to ride until recently. I have heard many stories of how people try to start learning to ride motorcycles late in life and they are often dangerous and basically stupid. You don't put somebody on a full-size motorcycle and give them instructions. You put the person on a slow underpowered motorcycle in a dirt area with no traffic. You let them roll down a hill with the motorcycle off and get used to the brakes and feel of the bike. Then you start it, put it in gear, and practice letting the clutch out until the bike pulls then pulling the clutch back in. Eventually, you practice fully releasing the clutch going slightly downhill. We did this and he was riding within an hour. Anybody can ride a motorcycle you just need to start the right way.
That was a fun afternoon.
When we were in Costa Rica we took a ride through muddy trails on quads and that was fun but quads are not as quick as motorcycles.
Also, you are never too old to learn some new tricks. That is why I went to the California Superbike School. I have ridden regular motorcycles on and off-road for years but I had never ridden a large racing bike on a paved course with the expectation of going fast and leaning the bike. The school focused on several key ideas that I had not considered before including choosing several points in each turn to place the motorcycle on the best line, slowing before turning points, and accelerating consistently through the turns, and looking ahead through the turns to see where the bike will be seconds later. I felt like I learned a lot from the course.
They have a fleet of the newest BMW 1100rr motorcycles.
They have camera bikes so they can follow your ride around the track and discuss what was right or wrong.
After riding their bikes I really had the feeling that I needed one of these BMW bikes.
Long story short, there are a lot of motorcycles and a lot of ways to have fun with them.
Comments