Modern Vespa

What was your first ride on a 2 wheeler with a real throttle?

Let's see it or one like it. Google up a pic for us if you don't have one of the actual machine.



I bet I have the most humble(^^^not mine), a Tote Gote

First ride was in 1948. My Dad had one of these with a passenger cushion.

Not sure of the exact make Terry, but it looked something like this..

I was on back holding on to my brother, rolling up a dirt road in Fallbrook (what up Len! ) and a little rat dog came chasing along side of us, leaped up, and his teeth actually went around my knee cap and got stuck around it! the dog was dangling from my knee, I was screaming bloody murder and my brother was howling with laughter!

I'll never forget that first ride on a motorized bike!

Taco 22 owned by my best friend, who got it for his twelfth birthday. We figured out how to override the governor within a week. Thing could move pretty fast with a couple of kids on it. IIRC, it had a Flintsone-style rear foot brake - a steel plate that just rubbed on the back tire.

Coincidentally, the bike also accounted for my first moving violation.

Friends had mini bikes similar to yours Voodoo but I never got to ride them... when I was maybe 11 my uncle had one of these, a Suzuxi T20 (or another similar looking one in that series). I got to ride it around his big backyard... up an enbankment, down and smacked straight into the side of his tin shed. Luckily the ground caught my fall.



Years later he gave it to me in boxes. I started painting it up but was clueless about how it went together. Then I split up with my girlfriend of 3 years and she ended up with it... got stolen off her front porch.

Vader's real ride from back in the day.

In 1979. It was a Montesa Cota 49, 3 speed and right hand gearchange
Bike is lost in the mists of time.

Sara

Like so many others in the late 60s/early 70s, on my neighbor's Honda Mini-Trail 50.

Oh---the first bike I owned with a real twist throttle? Only after I got out of my parents' sphere of influence did that happen. A '75 R90S in 1982---thanks, Army paycheck!

I wish... an old German man who lives on my block and always stops in to say hi, has a stash of old 70's and 80's stuff in a big container out in the desert! he keeps hinting that he'll give me a late 70's Husky to keep me busy.. I'd love it if he came through! that's a cool bike..

I always wanted a Bultaco.. .probably because I had the T-shirt!

Indian 100 dirtbike. Bought it for $50. Rode it 2 summers and sold it for $50.
Mine wasn't this nice if memory serves...

we used to give the neighbor kid $2 to let us take his Yamaha yz 80 down into the canyons behind the house. this could only be accomplished when his parents weren't home.

That is a nice looking bike Ginch.The split from the girl is sad, the front porch thievery is devastating!

Like SoCal, my first ride on two wheels was a Taco 22. My first two wheeled accident also happened on the Taco (knee surgery followed.)

After that, my next PTW was my 2004 ET4.

SO many dirt bikes!

Me too, this is like the first one I actually owned, a Honda 55, but mine was stripped down some w/ big knobbies and much dirtier.
Not a good bike in the dirt though and I soon found a nice Hodaka Ace 90.
Sold the Honda cheap to get new tires & some parts. Be a nice little street bike today.....

In my early 20's working in Northern Thailand. 2 years, 50000km, 3 rebuilds, one fall.

1978 RM80. Tore up the logging roads in Northern BC. I swear that bike could go 55mph.

My first street bike was red ,I was 12/13.I could not kill it!Rode it to next town n picked up chicks.I always thought it was a 90 but looked just like the 55.
$$yah there's a 90 on cc for about 4k , nice restore.

1974 indian 80 and a 75 Yamaha 125 enduro.

I spent a lot of off time on tacos but the two dirt bikes were for cutting my teeth.

My dad signed me up for a junior hill climb on the indian somewhere around Allentown Pa. I wrecked and fractured my arm and was hooked ever since. Best day of my young life.

The first street legal form of transpo to and from jr high was a Tomos 2 speed.

Payed for it from a paper route.

Heyq claude thats the exact first same bike i had! My older brother used to take me dirt bike riding much to my mothers horror...... Then i lost control one time and bounced off a tree in the bush and mangled up my right foot. My brother copped a hiding for it .In my forties now and mum still isnt happy about my gettn round on two wheels. I loved that yellow bike.

Thats cool. I drove the neighbors crazy. Braaap.. braaaap.. braaaaaap.. braaaaaaaaaap!! Ding a ding ding ding.. Braaaaaap...

My first ever ride... No clutch (for about 10 years, plates had glued together, so I rode it without one!), a few runs later did a mono into th letterbox & smashed th front guard... Damage still visible!
I got it from a farmer (a real barn find) for 2 bottles if scotch. His son and new wife rode it on their honeymoon .

My dad bought a '66 VNB while working in the Congo, Africa. He brought it back when he came back to the states. He'd take my brother, sister and me for rides around the neighborhood. I learned to ride it when in high school. I took my road test on it. He kept it all these years sitting out in the elements. I got it from him in 1999 and restored it shortly after.

Before:


After:

Believe it or not. This was the first thing I rode. I was used to driving manual so it was easy to learn even if it was a heavy bike. I would trade my 1979 Camaro with the 4-speed manual Hurst for this monster for the summer with a friend from work.

What a hoot! And this was in the days before helmet laws! What was I thinking? You would not catch me today without body armor and helmet.

This is not the actual bike but pretty close (even in color).

a brg '79 px125 ...... had 69 airbrushed on the leggy n panels .... ran it till it died n the rear shock came through the frame .... never took a photo of it ... if mobile phones had been out i would have

It was a high end 1978 Motebecane moped my parents bought when I was 12. Rode it for 12 years until some subhuman scum stole it from the carport.[/img]

First ride was on a friends minibike. No clue what it was. His fenced yard was pretty small but we would ride circles all day!

Boy, everyone else has such interesting bikes.

First ride was on the back of a mates 150 Super. It was either THAT ride or the next one that we were on a run to Yanchep and another bike nipped past us and clipped our handlebar. We hit the bitumen hard so I got to experience my first fall as well. Unfortunately I landed on top of my mate. I felt pretty damn smug at how well it all went until I saw him in a wee bit more pain. We picked ourselves up and continued on, but was an experience. I bought my own bike after that. Seemed the right thing to do rather than risk squashing mates on the ground.

First bike owned, a rusted orangey 150 Sprint (early 70's I think) that I saw an old fella riding in Nedlands, tapped on his door and asked if he wanted to sell it, and grabbed it for about $300.

My dad's bike when I was a kid. My bro and I rode that think into the ground. Once in a while one will pop up on CL and I strongly consider getting it.

I grow up dirt poor. To help pay the bills my dad would go around gathering scap metal. One day he came home with a 1968 BSA 350 in the back of the truck. It was tore apart stuffed in milk crates. I beged him to keep it. He said if I had it together within a month it was mine if not it went back into the truck. I was 8 but somehow managed to get that ratty thing together and running. It smoked and and had a t shirt duct taped for a seat but was my pride and joy.

^^^
That's a great story!

In the spring of 1963 I bought a used (late '50s?) Allstate Vespa from a fellow student at the college I was attending in central Indiana. He had ridden it there from New Jersey. Amazing. I rode it for the next two years, sold it to my sister and then bought it back while in grad school. In the summer after my freshman year, I rode it from central Indiana to Elgin, IL, where my parents lived. No helmet. No protective gear. Rode through Chicago on the then-new Dan Ryan expressway to Kennedy expressway. Dumb thing to do, but I made it. Photo attached from Google site; not my scooter.

Now in my late '60s, my memories of that scooter prompted me to purchase a vintage Vespa in 2012, a 1967 150 Super. It's a hoot to ride and always draws comments.

You actually do make a good case for refinishing a rusty old blue Vespa. Not that I could do it... Great story as well.
Thanks guys, some good stuff coming out here. Where's Ebeth?

Got one for my 16th birthday in 1993 or so. Crashed it a few months later and rode it for another year until my father made me sell it. Looked just like the one below and my PX would totally smoke it. Damn slow bike.

he still has his first one....

That's a classic sucks story... you know what I always said: women... you can't live with 'em... you can't live w/o 'em!

Hey! that's pretty good!

Much wise you are!

I fixed that for you...

youre all adding too much to the phrase ..... its ......

thats right got the veloce as my 15th birthday and 17th years later i still ride it




happy new year to you all and cheer