What is your first motorcycle memory? What was the moment you knew you’d ride motorcycles? Were they the same moment? When you think back to it, how does that memory still grab you?

For me, it was 3 things. I remember being a wee boy, maybe 5 years old, and my dad riding me around on a big black motorcycle (if I remember correctly, Dad, wasn’t that a Honda Shadow?) That was my first memory, but to tell the truth, I can’t remember how well I liked it.

Fast forward a few years to 2003, I was in Thailand. Rented a, well, glorified hair dryer — a 150cc Honda Crystal or Dream, I forget which — and rode around all day. Went to ruins, went hiking, got humiliated when I couldn’t kickstart the bike but a 15-year-old Thai girl — in heels — could, but still, it was a great day, and I had so much fun.

It was about 2 years later that the itch, the true, from-the-inside-out itch hit me. Then in 2006 I first heard about the Ural, and I read, and researched, and lurked in message boards, and took sidecar training, with all this culminating, at last, in Feb. 2008 when I finally took delivery of my 2007 Ural Patrol.

What was it for you?