This is a series of stories about people who are older who still do or once did ride motorcycles. Here’s the first entry – about me.
- What is your name? Rick Forristall – theAgingMotorcyclist.com is my blog.
- How old are you? 62.
- When did you buy your first motorcycle? Around 1979.
- What was that motorcycle? A used 1973 or 74 Honda CB 350.
- What was your reason for buying that first motorcycle? Purely pragmatic. I was 19 years old and I needed transportation to get back and forth to college in Boston. I attended Wentworth Institute of Technology after graduating high school. For the first year I rode the bus and subway to school. Later that year, a high school friend offered to drive me – on the back of that very Honda CB 350. Later he offered to sell it and I bought it for $600.00. I was hooked! I had no formal training and had trouble learning to get going because I didn’t understand the concept of the clutch’s friction zone. Eventually I figured it out. I had to sell the CB 350 in 1981 when I joined the US Air Force because they wouldn’t ship it for me to North Carolina.
- I ended up waiting 30 years before purchasing my next motorcycle. That was in 2011 when I bought a 2011 Triumph Bonneville SE. This time around I enrolled in a basic rider’s course at TEAM Arizona in Gilbert Arizona (link) which was awesome. It taught me the right way to ride and at 51 years old, it was a good idea for me to do it right this time.
- What is it about motorcycling that keeps you riding? As I age, I feel a strange dichotomy. When I view the world through my eyes, I don’t feel like I’m aging—my thoughts, ideas, perception all seem to be the same as when I was 30 years old. But, when I see myself in pictures or videos, or catch a profile view of me in the mirror and I see the sagging skin under my chin, or I notice the sagging skin on my forearms or thighs I realize that I am indeed aging. While riding the motorcycle there is no feeling of getting older—the open air, the exposure to the road right below me, the wind, the feeling of beating gravity while turning a corner—all that combines to provide a sort of euphoric feeling. It truly helps me stay feeling younger.
- What words of wisdom can you offer for new motorcycle riders or people interested in becoming a new motorcycle rider? Take a basic rider’s course and then some advance riding technique courses. These will make you a better rider and give the skills that allow you increased confidence in your riding.
- What funny motorcycle stories do you have? When I first bought the CB 350, I had no idea about how the clutch worked. I sat in front of my house for about an hour starting the bike and trying to figure out how to get it going – constantly stalling the bike. Then, after an hour, I got frustrated and over-revved the throttle. I let go of the clutch, the bike lurched, and I crashed into the back of my neighbor’s car about 15 feet from me. When I got up and realized what had happened, I knocked on my neighbor’s door and explained what happened. He said, “don’t worry about it, my wife has so many dents on the car anyway.” I eventually got the bike running and happened to see another rider one day feathering the clutch to get his bike going. I tried to replicate that and finally realized the right way to get the bike going from a stop.
- What is your current motorcycle? 2018 Triumph Street Twin.
