What I Learned While Teaching My Sons to Ride Dirt Bikes

Meanwhile, as my youngest turned 6 yrs old, his KTM Mini adventure started to look a tad too small to keep him on it, despite having already raised the suspension up to the highest postion. It wasn't so much with the size of the bike, but rather the small 10" diameter wheels was holding him back from riding through ruts & deep sand. So I thought it was time to get him going on a bike w/ bigger wheels and teach him to
shift gears. I let him try riding his brother's KLX110. The seat had to be shaved down quite aggressively in order for him to reach the ground, but he was able to ride it just fine. The larger wheels (14" fr, 12" rr) definitely made a difference, as well as the bigger engine. But now he has to learn to use the foot braking pedal with this bike. This will prove to be a skill that he'll struggle with until he's well into his teenage years.


Be as it may, though, he was turning over a new leaf at this period in his age. Whereas with my oldest, riding dirtbikes was everything to him; with this youngling, he's a quiet child, wants to spend time exploring other things - things which I nor dear wife don't have any experience nor knowledge about. Out of the blue he wanted to learn music... so we did our best to provide him with some.


you know what? dang, he didn't sound all that bad...then he asked to play the violin. So we got him a violin. Along with that, we got him afterschool lessons, and in time, he started playing with other city kids in his age group.



Then when he was old enough to play in the school orchestra, he surprised us again by signing up to play the bass instead of the violin. Dang! He don't sound all that bad on a bass either.


For his birthday, guess what he wanted?


I have to admit, having a budding musician to fill a house full of music is such a delight. So this is where we started to see a disruption in the force. As each subsequent weekend come and went, riding dirtbikes got in the way of his musical interests and lessons, so I began acomodating his interests and let him have his weekends to do his music. I did hold on to what little hope there was for him to come back into our dirt bike riding world, and always had that KLX110 full of fuel, ready to ride, his gear all clean and hung up, ready to wear.

That's not to say that my youngest stopped riding cold turkey...we were avid AMSA club members, so we had family day rides once a month where all of us would look forward to attending, rain or shine. AMSA riding days are very relaxed and easy going. My youngest would often times tag along just to be around his brother and not even ride, even though he'd gear up and look the part. From spending time with him out on these riding weekends, I got to know him a little better. He's not like my oldest, who's more reckless; he's more pragmatic....knows that he can ride as well as his older brother, but doesn't see why he has to. It's dangerous trying to go that fast. And I sense that in him, and it was time to let him bow out of this sport on his own terms.

Before I did so, I did manage to drag both my boys to one really neat event called the Last Man Standing back in Nov, 2005. This was the 1st LMS competition out at Red River whereby we saw with our own eyes this KTM racer named David Knight just blowing out the competition w/ some insane riding skills and taking 1st place w/o even breaking a sweat. He was literally 10 minutes ahead of the 2nd racer named Mike Lafferty throughout the whole race. I think this LMS event must have been one of the first extreme enduro style of racing to hit the USA.

After seeing the huge advantage that David Knight had on everyone, the buzz was that if you have trials riding skills, you would become a better enduro rider. Trials? How can that be? Those guys ride very, very slowly. Enduro racing requires skills with speed.

A couple, maybe 3 or 4, months after this event, I saw that there was a trials competition held in Austin's City Park. So, my older son and I we went out there to check it out. As we rolled into the parking area, we both could not hold back all the excitement from seeing all the big rigs set up w/ what looked like hundreds of trials bike all parked under tents, leaned against trucks, and riders going in and out of the parking lot. Some of the rigs belonged to racing teams, some from bike manufacturers, some privately owned. Come to find out, this was a STATE level competition, so attendance was from multiple states, not just local.

As we started walking up and down admiring all the trials bikes, I noticed several that had for sale signs on them. So I got to talking with these sellers, and had no problems getting test rides from each one of them. These trials guys are all extremely easy going, didn't have a care in the world, and just seemed like everyone knew each other. Expert riders hobnobbed w/ beginners, old timers chewing the fat w/ teenagers, and women competing alongside men. And so, after test riding many trials bikes for sale, I made a couple of impulsive buys out there and brought home these two used trials bikes.


I rationalized that because trials bikes are not exactly easy to locate to buy, I better snatch up these bikes while the picking's plentiful. The blue one's a 2002 Sherco 2.9 (270cc) I bought from a trials dealer in DWF. He just got that bike as a trade-in the night before and was more than eager to make a deal with me. So I haggled, and he accepted my offer. He even changed the oil for me while I was looking at a second bike for my son.



The yellow one is a Beta Rev 50, 50cc w/ a 4 speed trans, and with smaller dia wheels. Trials bikes for young teens are quite hard to find used. I lucked out in finding this one b/c it's sized PERFECTLY for my 9 yr old son.



These funny looking bikes opened up a whole new world of riding challenges for us. To be fast, you have to go slower. We now can ride, or in our case attempt to ride, the main loop that snakes all over Emma Long Park w/o destroying our enduro bikes or our bodies. Just riding the main loop alone helped greatly with acquiring basic trials skills. W/o a seat to sit, you HAVE to learn the balance point of your body while in motion. This is probably the biggest skill we picked up w/ trials riding that made us better enduro and mx riders.



For the next 7-8 yrs, I got more involved with trials riding, got to know the local trials club riders, and even did several competitions through their summer series. AMSA family days started to take a back seat as my boys got older from them being more involved with the Cub and Boy Scout troop. All weekend long camp outings and their desire to move up the scout's ladder started to cut deeply into our riding weekends, not to mention other after school activities and fund raisers. Looking back on those crazy but rushed times w/ the boys growing up, it's a wonder we got any sleep at all.

During those trials bike years, I don't remember us riding much track or trails....mainly rode the trials bikes out at Emma Long. Riding at Emma Long cut our travel time (from 1-2 hrs on the road) down to 20 minutes. We didn't have to pack food, several gallons of fuel, extra tubes and tools, water, etc... just jump in the truck and head to City park w/ our gear already put on from home. So convenient that we could ride and practice on weekdays after school if we wanted to. No gates to open and lock up- no gate fees.

Thus I felt compelled to try to introduce this amazing park to my youngest. But his KLX110 would be too heavy and seat too tall for Emma Long. So in looking for something lighter and with a much lower seat, I got him this PW80, 25lbs lighter and almost 2" lower seat height, the lowest seat height of all the mid-mini dirt bike w/ a 14" / 12" dia wheel set.



THat funny looking silencer was something I added onto the PW80 to make the bike spark arrest compliant. So, I lured my youngest to give Emma Long Park a try. As expected, he did fine riding out there, but after a couple more times, he lost interest. I can't blame him... those ledges and drop offs out there's not for the faint of heart.


We did lure him out to a couple more family day rides




and did a ride out at my friend's farm whereby he and his brother got introduced to target shooting...


That was a hoot! We aren't gun owners, so this was one very special day for them.

By the 2nd year of riding trials, I decided to take trials to the next level, get more serious. I bought a couple of instruction DVD from Ryan Young, tried a few of his techniques here and there, but really got nowhere with it. It was fun to watch but applying it on your bike is not all that easy. So I asked the Pres of the local trials club if they have any training classes, and sure enough, one was already in the works, about to start next week or so, and all I had to do was to sign up for it. The instructor was Ray Peters, a 10-time Expert Champion, and he taught a 2 day class, teaching a diverse group ranging fromup and coming teens & adults about to break into the expert class all the way down to noobs like me. That class really opened up my eyes to the observed trials bike world.

Ray, son, Don (Club Pres. back then) @ Emma Long M/C park



learning techniques from some of the best trials riders in Austin...


...doing a bunny hop on a flat ground...

.... controlling his descend an inch at a time ...


If you notice, he's now riding my bike....within that yr, that boy grew almost 5 inches!

These were some of the bikes used for STORM, TORCS, and TSCEC races....

Once I replaced my CR500 with the KTM 200SX, we started to ride equal parts offroad and MX tracks. Since the 200SX had its suspension revalved for offroad racing, it was just not a good bike to do jumps, so in '05, I bought another bike just for MX only.


The two coexisting in harmony...left, '04 200sx for Storm & enduro, and '06 125SX for jumping and TORCS racing


one of my first TORCS race (a hare scramble course w/ a motocross track thrown in and bedrock of boulders too just for spectators' amusement)...demonstrated a dire need for better suspension.


If you've ever owned a 2002-2007 KTM, any KTM, you probably realized that the suspension on them was just awful. some days it would work ok, other days, it felt like riding a pogo stick or a bike with no suspension at all. I had already spend a small fortune sending out the forks and shock to a very reputable suspension guy, and the results were quite stellar. Until one day, I rode a friend's Honda CRF bike, I could not believe how much better his bike rode with stock suspension. So, the seed was planted, and the decision was to go all out on setting up my KTM's suspension to be as good if not better than that benchmark CRF.



The WP forks got replaced with new Showa B-Kit forks, and a set of air tanks added in for good measure. The stock shock got completely gutted out, and replaced with some proprietary valving that was quite revolutionary at the time. It came from Novation Racing.



Then a couple yrs later, the 125cc motor got replaced with a 175cc engine built by Clay (can't remember his last name) of Munn Racing. IT's basically a 200cc top end and powervalve and rod with a 125cc crank. With a custom built motor, finding a pipe to work with this strange combustion size was not exactly easy. The 125cc and 200cc pipe didn't exactly allow the motor to reach its full potential, one cutting off the overrev while the other falling short in the low end. Then Clay swapped his KTM SXS works pipe for one of my 200sx pipe and the transformation was complete.

The transformation was complete: KTM 175cc w/ a works pipe, Showa B kit forks, Novation racing shock. You'd think with this mean machine, I'd be winning a race or two...nope, I'm just as slow on this bike as I am on an XR70...


Still, there's something about the KTM that wasn't right, so I decided to change colors and went red.


OMG! STOCK, right out of the crate, this bike was such an eye opener. The handling is just spot on. Riding just got alot easier.
Before long, I moved the B kit forks to the CR250...


eventually converted it to offroad riding w/ a larger gas tank. Even used this thing called a DB snorkel attached to the back of the exhaust to quiet down the noise....


To this day, my sons and I still ride this bike.

one summer, we took a hiatus from riding dirt bikes, and the boys got into aquatics. The City of Austin has a fantastic aquatics summer camp program whereby each neighborhood swimming pool would have their lifeguards teach swimming lessons and form a swim team.



Then each neighborhood swim team from all over the city would hold competitions on the weekends to eliminate and whittle down to one city winning team.



The city winning team would then compete for state championship.



We're not swimmers, nor have we ever competed in a swim team, so we just tagged along with their summer camp and went through this marvelous discovery....



Had it not been for this camp, we never would have known that they could swim this well.


... son wins his heat.
https://youtu.be/tXyPb_ZcwT0

Having spent those early development years riding dirt bikes no doubt contributed towards their ability to move into this new sport with ease and confidence.