I grew up riding on motorcycles with my father. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on the back of his bike as we pulled out of our yard and onto the highway. So, when he bought me my first motorcycle at the tender age of 13, I was ecstatic.

He pulled into the yard with the bike strapped to a flatbed trailer. I ran outside just in time to see him ease his way onto the flatbed to release the tie-downs and kick-start the cherry-red Honda 350 dirt bike, pivot it around and peel off of the flatbed and down our driveway toward the highway, a half mile away. Then, he rode back down the driveway, popping a wheelie for the last half of the way and coming to a sliding stop a few feet away.

My dad, a man who had been through many agonizing back surgeries for most of my childhood, was acting like a teenager all of a sudden. All because he was giving me my first motorcycle.

After that display, is it any wonder what my first goal was when climbing onto that beast of a dirt bike (it weighed around 350lbs, I weighed about 120lbs) was? Go fast. Very fast. I got up to 90mph going down our driveway and up to 110mph on the dirt field road behind our house. No, I wasn’t wearing a helmet.

Soon enough, I took to trying some of the more dangerous routes around our property. I rode through the ditch next to the highway, which was half-filled with mud and stagnant water, until I hit a deep spot and stalled the bike. I had to get off and push it up the steep ditch and all the way back to the house, scrawny little me pushing that huge bike.

After one of the fields next to our house was plowed up, I buzzed down one of the plow ruts, which was about two feet deep and two feet across, until I hit a large chunk of dirt at 40mph and was thrown headfirst over the handlebars into a tree. Again, with no helmet.

The first time I tried to pull a wheelie, the bike fell on me. Not straight up and back, like you’d think, either. No, I got it to slide out from under me sideways, so the full weight of the bike landed on my right leg. That was fun.

Like most of my other possessions, I was not kind to the bike, even though I loved it so. After a few months, the seat was in tatters, the headlight was busted and hanging on by a thread and I had to replace one of the foot pegs with a long bolt. Even parts integral to the operation of the bike started to fall apart, as the oil pan began to leak and the clutch cable snapped. I actually fixed the oil pan, as it was just a cracked rubber seal that was causing the leak. But the clutch cable was destined to be a part of riding that bike.

How does one ride a motorcycle without a clutch? Well, you kick-start it in neutral, warm up the finicky engine, rev it a bit and kick it into first gear. Sure, some of the time it will stall, other times it will shoot the bike out from underneath you and into a shrub or tree or car, or it may even rear up like a bucking bronco and toss you onto your back. But when it works, you’re off and running. Once you attain first gear, you just have to let off the gas when you shift, just like normal. Except you can’t come to a complete stop without it stalling and ending up repeating the whole ritual all over again.

In all, it was a wonderful introduction to the world of motorized personal transportation for 13 year-old me. I could hop on that rickety old bike and buzz around back gravel roads for hours exploring the world outside of my yard, away from my parent’s supervision.

I could also come close to seriously injuring or killing myself by pulling stupid stunts and riding way too fast, which, when I think about it, was what it was really all about.