Choosing my first motorcycle FOR KIDS

Choosing your first dirt bike:


We will start with the youngest age group and then move up all the way until the pre-teen age group. Choosing the first motorcycle depends a lot in how old you want the kid to start racing, since we are talking about minors here, it is all up to the parents decision to decide when is it a good time to start and then selecting the correct bike to help and enhance the learning process of riding a dirt bike.

2-4 years Old

My clear choice when I will be in the situation would be to let them start with a bicycle that would allow them to understand how balancing works and how to move in two wheels, this would be a great start for any kid not only for a normal kid growing up toy but also a great jumpstart in how to move with their first vehicle in their lives. I would recommend the KTM toy bike as it was specifically designed for this purpose or just about any kids bicycle for that specific age group.

A great way to start

  
4-6 years Old (Beginners)

Ok, your kid can clearly balance himself on the bike and he more or soo knows what it takes to move forward, turn, brake. So now is time for you to start looking at motorized options. The two best choices for the first motorcycle ever are the Honda CRF 50 and the Yamaha PW 50. They are both extremely mild at delivering the power and can even be limited to keep the speed low and therefore making it more safe for the kids. They both have automatic transmissions soo there is no gear changes in the operation of the dirt bike, they are also very reliable and easy to maitain as is expected from a brand name japanese manufacturer. They are very small and very light, these bikes are just designed to be used by kids soo the whole experience is relaxed, fun and safe for them.(As long as you are not screaming at them to go faster, please be patient, let them have fun, speed will come with time if you stress them out they might end up hating it and the chances of you going out riding with your kid will be destroyed). Both of this mini motorcycles have the options of attaching learning wheels that can be easily removed once you see your kid riding better, with more control and of course more balance. 

The Honda CRF 50 without and

with training wheelset

The Yamaha PW 50 without and

with training wheelset

Please stay away from the cheap chinese shit replicas, they look alike, are very cheap even brand new and will only work without giving you a headache for a very limited time. Then they will start failing and start giving you unlimited problems. Maintanence is a S.O.B and replacement parts are very hard to find, you will end up building a frankestein mini bike with whatever you have available like a cuban mechanic. I tell you this by experience as i bought a mini bike to mess around in my backyard and the pull-starter which I later discovered was made out of plastic ...wtf???? started  desintagrating, by the time it was 1000 little pieces, they had gotten completely inside all the important componets, requiring a COMPLETE overhaul which i ended up not doing it and just sold the remaining parts on ebay. DONT buy these replicas, they suck and they will become a pain in the ass for you. Look for a properly maintained used japanese name brand, used bike (I will tell you tips for buying a used bike on a future post) and save yourself the hassle of a chinese replica.

Exhaust valve breaks while running and impacts the piston on a chinese replica pit bike the thing with the whole is the piston

4-6 years Old (Intermediate and Expert)
Ok, your kid can ride, it is clear, he has complete control of the motorcycle and as much as he try to go faster, the beginners bike has reached its limit. Its time for an upgrade, there are several options on the market and please do not be mistaken, the motorcycle that i am going to show you are full race bikes just in mini size, they are fast, really fast and specially for your little man. Make sure that you know what he is doing before purchasing one of these bikes. My top picks are:

- KTM 50 SX Mini
- Polini minibikes
- Cobra minibikes

KTM 50SX Mini MX motorcycle

Polini mini MX motorcycle 

Cobra mini MX motorcycle

4-6 years Old ( Expert ONLY)
Ok, if your kids can outride his motorcycle by now, it is time to give him a more racy bike which still has an automatic transmission so that he can keep moving up on the racing pedigree before making the jump to a race bike with gears. My recomendation would be the following:

- KTM50 SX
- Husqvarna CR 50 

KTM 50 SX Mini vs KTM 50 SX 

Husqvarna CR 50 

The motorcycles are taller than the mini version and faster, the perfect step before the 65 cc bike.


Now that your kid has completely mastered the automatic motocross bike, it is time for you to upgrade to gearshifting and give him a motorcycle with a transmision. The motorcycles i am going to show you now are FULL-RACE bikes and they only differ from an adult competetition motorcycle because of the size and the price. Racing engine, race suspension, everything is strictly designed to go fast and race. My top picks are:

- KTM 65 SX
- Husqvarna 65 CR

What kind of moto person r you? When to start

What kind of motorcyle fan I am?

If you like motorcycles you are one of two available kinds. You have always liked them for as long as you can remember or you got to like them at some point in your life, you saw a race or maybe saw a friend ride, or got even luckier and rode someone elses bike to try it. I was the second kind, i was crazy for motorcycles once I reached my teen years and I kept begging and begging for my parents to get me one. My parents knew i wanted one but they waited until i was a teenager to finally give me one.

First kind of motorcycle fan, always loved motorcycles

The second kind, falling in love with motorcycles at some point in their lifes

What is the best age to start?

When I got my first motorcycle I was really grateful they did but I wished i got started on the motorcycling world a lot younger, when i started racing the kids my age had already between 5 to 10 years of solid racing experience under their belts, it was very hard to play catch up, so if you get a chance try to start as soon as you can.
I dont think there is a perfect age to start riding, it all depends on the possibilities that you have and the opportunities that come your way, but if you get a chance to get started, do it, you wont regret it.

Starting young

Starting old, its never to late

Why should I ride dirt bikes? Convincing parents

Why should I ride dirt bikes?


The reason is very simple, it is a LOT of fun there isnt another clear explanation. There is just something about interacting with a machine to work together and move together that just makes riding a motorcycle a experience like no other thing on this world. When you race a marathon you only test your body and mind and they work together to get you to the finish, with a motorcycle you have the man,mind and machine working together to get to the finish, is this blend of physical and menthal strength needed to control a machine with an engine and two wheels that just makes of it an exiliriating experience. If you are unsure you like them, try one, you will know right away if you want one. Some time after that you will decide whether you prefer to ride and race or just ride for fun, whatever you choose to do, I am sure you are going to like it, like it A LOT.

Riding dirt bikes is FUN

Convincing your parents?

Nobody in my family or in my circle used to ride or race competitively but i was completely crazy about them and i always wanted to get one regardless of what anyone said about them and "how dangerous they are". I mean of course there is danger in anything you do in your life, but you can also hurt yourself with a kitchen knife or a slippery shower or even just playing soccer or football. The bottom line is that if you act stupid you will get hurt regardless of the activity and including motorcycles. So as long as you act normally and always ride to the limit of your riding capability, you should be OK. If you tend to visit the hospital on the monthly basis for doing stupid stuff to record videos on youtube, your parents arent going to probably agree to get you anywhere near a motorized vehicle, so if you are serious about motorcycles and riding and racing, show to your parents that you really want it and are commited to it, you really need their support to get started and they will be willing to support you as long as they see that you really want it and not just pretended you did (like when you made them buy stuff from the sports authority and collected dust for years in the attic and finally were sold for pennies at a garage sale).

Be a good boy, show your parents you really want to ride and they will reward you, this could be you

February 2010, Trial riding in, Barcelona, Spain

Hey guys this is actually from a previous blog I used to have so the dates wont actually make sense but the content will....................................I promise.


Tuesday February 9th 2010 was a great day, one of the coolest ones I have had in a very long time, my whole life I have been a total nutcase for motorcycles...(except choppers and Harley's..of course).

Last time I rode something competitive was at least 4 years ago (excluding a minibike race in Sweden last summer). I have never ridden a trial bike before but started looking at some videos on YouTube and was amazed of the capabilities of the riders and bikes,check out this video


I meet Dani through a friend from a friend and he is also crazy about motorcycles and specially Trial bikes, him and his family happen to own a house in the mountain an hour away from Barcelona in a small town called Castellterçol.

Dani and his Arsenal

He is an extremely nice guy and invited me over there, i hesitated about the opportunity since I dint have a bike or gear, but he agreed on letting me use one of his brothers bikes and gear, so i jumped in the opportunity of trying this new kind of riding. The day itself I was really excited, I couldn't believe somebody would be kind enough in letting me use their bike and gear, But is nice to know that when you are a good person to the rest somebody will be good to you as well. I took the bus to the northern part of the city of Barcelona but forgot that at 8AM is rush hour traffic so was late to start with....damn it!! and the bus driver left me at the wrong stop...shit, I was late tired and pissed off, but its OK...we are going riding...Jeje!! The trip takes an hour to get there and we get to his house, which by the way was amazing and then we took the bikes and headed out for riding......until my friend realizes that his bike has run into trouble and we have to go to the mechanic to drop the motorcycle off and go back home to get another one.

Our weapons of choice SHERCO 250 and MONTESA 300

After an hour of going back and forth we get riding, only for another our until the chain came loose and jammed the driver sprocket, after some time using whatever we had, we managed to fix it...jeje..we win!, Walking home would have sucked.

Stupid chain decides to come out and jam when we were under the shade and therefore freezing while we were trying to find a way to unjam it, two wheel wrenches and a pair of pliers were enough to get it out and kept on riding.jeje!!

At the beginning the riding position feels really weird but once you start riding you get used to it, then comes the actual capabilities of the bike that are obviously connected to the ability of the rider, jeje. In my case the bike kept amazing and amazing me over and over again, these bikes are incredible, they can go up the most slippery of mud, get you out the bottom of de deepest rut and pretty much go up anything you have the courage to attempt. These bikes will take you places not even the latest high performance enduro bikes will, they open a whole new world to a rider.

In the middle of the trail for a well deserved break

The single most important thing that i learnt about riding this bikes is the use of body balance to move the bike anywhere you want, the center of gravity is set so low in this bikes that they will react to the slightest body movement and go..the way you want it to go.

Some of the crazy stuff you can conquer on a Sherco trail

After several trials and errors, I managed to get up a steep hill which was a lot harder to master than going down in super steep hills, with the grip of the tires, you go down them once you commit to it, if you hesitate half way and brake hard, you will take a nice dirt sample with your face..jaja.

Some more of the crazy stuff you can conquer on a Sherco trial

Just like anything else it takes times to master but I am hooked, I don't think there is another kind of riding that would improve the overall performance of the rider in any other discipline, because you get to master your control on the bike. I am already dying to go again and I am already looking for gear. The trial gear is so comfortable, i really liked it and it allowed extensive movement, flexibility and it was so light. Hopefully for the next post I can document it with more photos, but for now look at some of the ones I got.

I dont like these stupid helmets, they make me look fat and more chubby than i am, jaja. You get soo much air with this helmets it is unbelievable

Who am I and why should you read what I will write

Hi readers, my name is Jorge Hedian from HRT Ecuador, passionate motorcyclist, absolutely crazy about racing and someone who is already preparing for the most brutal races in the world.

Who am I?

                   
Me training for the National Hare Scramble

I am a 28 years old ecuadorian native who currently lives in barcelona spain and absolutely loves racing. At a very young age(4 years old) my dad took me to a rally race and after we spend washing our car the entire afternoon, we parked near the stage and waited for what would be my first contact with motorsports, When I saw that first rally car of my life, its headlights flashing through the woods along with the incredible sound of a tuned engine with no exhaust echoing on the forest and the ground shaking as it slid sideways near us splashing us with marbles, I remeber soo clearly thinking"I LOVE THIS, I want to do this the rest of my life""I Love Racing", soon after that my passion became tractors and there was nothing else I would love most that watching tractors work on the road and release this fresh arome while moving loam.

Rally racer in Ecuador

My brother racing on a rally in Ecuador

After a unseccsessfull teenage tennis carreer, I got hooked into bicycles, I love it but the freestyle move back in ecuador was more of drug addict castouts more than extrem athletes soo soon after I started I left it.Then it was my first motorcycle age 15 after begging for years they finally allowed it and gave me a motorcycle, I got it on a 15 of march and I raced my first rally 2 weeks after that, had no fucking clue how to ride, little less race. I still remember my dad telling me, there is a race in 2 weeks, you want to race..sure. Up to this day I wonder who was more crazy, me or my dad, my dad for giving me the option to race or me for accepting it. He did it because he knew how much I love it and because I was always a good kid, jaja..

After that first race, after that takeoff, after knowing that I didn't have No idea in what I gotten myself into, I absolutely know that this is what I want to do the rest of my life, it took very little time to realise about that and its taking me a long time acomplishing but I am sure I will.

                 

The kind of motorcycle rally racing that got me hooked on racing                  

Why would you read what I have to say about motorcycles?

Although I have been very inactive in the racing world for the last 10 years. After I raced a full year of rallies, enduros, cross countries and GNCC's in ecuador(my native country) and two american National Hare Scrambles I have never been away from motorcycles and the racing world, i dont want to sound cocky but I know A LOT about motorcycles and I want to share this knowledge with people who also have this passion for racing and specially for motorcycles.

It has been burning myself inside, the racing bug day and night there isn't a day that goes by without me thinking about how much I want to race again. I haven't been able to race due to several reasons, moving away from the confort of home to achieve a degree of mechanical engineering in the US, then the lack of funding to do it simultaneously along my degree. Then was the biggest personal lost in my life as my grandmother and Dad passes away on the same year and last but not least the pursuing of even higher level of education by obtaining a master's in mechanical engineering degree in Europe. I feel like I could have raced if I really wanted but I could say that the situation I was living in and the limitations I had didn't help. But after the month of july I will be graduating and completely finished with my higher education and I can finally pursue my dream of racing with the best in the world and beat them.

My goal is to be racing competitively before my birthday in october 28 and I will be racing no matter what, i am sure.

Nico, my dad, my best friend Leo, my brother Dany and me after successfully completing a round of the National Hare Scramble

In the meantime I decided to create this blog for just about anyone who likes motorcycles and offroad which is my area of expertise, doesnt matter if you are new to thes world or a seasoned expert I am sure you can learn something from me and i can learn something from you. :)