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Moving up to a CR80 was awesome.
I begged & BEGGED my dear ol’ Mom & Dad for that 1973 XR75 they had on a display rack under the lights at our local Honda dealer in the spring of 73!
That thing was the epitome of 70’s cool back then!
So it was a bitter sweet 8th birthday that summer when I got the brand new 1973 Honda I’d been dreaming of!
I was thrilled to get a new bike and knew it was a stretch for my folks to buy it, and while I was happy and grateful to have it, the problem was that it was the wrong 1973 model and it was really hard to imagine that I was gonna be the next Jeff Ward, wheeling into the sunset while I tried not to tear the blinkers and taillight off on my XL (not XR!) in the fields behind my parents house! 🤪😎👍
Dad was pissed when we went to sell the bike and I had either lost or thrown away many of the components I had stripped off.
When my younger brother got a little too big for his Z50, my folks found a clean used 72 XL just like mine in the local paper and we just wore the vacant fields behind my folks house out on those little Honda’s back then! (And there was a shelf in my folks garage that was littered with broken mirrors, turn signals etc!)
Even now I think back on how dang ball-peen hammer reliable those two bikes were! My brother & I hardly ever changed the oil compared to how much we rode and honestly I don’t think we even knew there was an air filter to service back then!
I woulda given anything to have that XR75 but my brother and I had the best of times on those little XL’s!
I would run home from school and get a good ride in before the folks got home from work. Such good times. We were lucky to have a big open field behind the house for high speed riding and occasionally race kids who showed up to ride our field. We had amazing wooded trails too. Hilly trails for days.
Seems like a dream now.
(My 1973 XL70, my bro’s 72 XL70 and me in all my 1970’s Napolean Dynamite coolness!)
Another kid I went to elementary school with was lucky enough to get the very XR75 that I was hoping for!
We got to be pretty good buddies that school year and occasionally my Dad would take my younger brother and I over to ride with him and a few other kids in a field near his house!
I got to ride his XR75 quite often when we’d trade bikes and I’d imagine being a moto hero (while I assume he imagined being a safe driver signaling his turns and braking safely etc?! 🤪)
I was always impressed with that XR, thought of it as a “real” race bike and still wish I coulda had one too but I digress…
My little 73 XL70 was amazingly reliable and was still running perfectly when my folks sold it to a nearby neighbor that bought it to ride at their lake house.
What I would give to be able to get that exact little bike back now and refurbish it back to it’s 1973 glory too!
And you’re right about all those vacant fields! There were 4-5 different fields we could ride in right behind my folks house! All those fields were long ago developed and have businesses, houses etc on them now, and unlikely that whoever owned them would allow kids to ride on them these days even IF they were still vacant fields! Ahh the good ol’ days…
Pit Row
Oblivious
I restored a destroyed xr100 not long ago in memory of my first ride.
When all my friends got kx80s and cr80s my parents surprised me with a kdx80. It was a fun bike and they meant well but i wanted the kx.
I bet you & I felt exactly the same way about those brand new bikes! I was thrilled and happy to get a new bike but DAMN it I wanted that XR (you-KX!) oh so bad!
That is an AMAZING pair of cool bikes right there!
That is exactly what I had WISHED it looked like in my parents garage about 48 years ago! 😎✅👍
I know those destinations existed but I’m not sure when they started or honestly even what if any differences there were between the S & X models?
I know the 1972 & 73 models that we had were the XL designation and when I get back to the house later today I’ll dig up and old pic or two that shows the XL on the side panel!
And MX558, your description of the field at the end of your subdivision is EXACTLY the way it was and the way I remember it in our neighborhood too!
A track that ran along and through the creek in the middle of the field, and trails all around the perimeter!
My brother and I and all our buddies had 60’s 70’s and 80’s, and several of the older neighborhood kids had “real” race bikes and at times there’d be 16-18 kids zipping around after school!
Those days are but fond memories now and gone forever! When I went to elementary school I hardly knew a kid that didn’t have a dirt bike, when my son went to elementary in the late 90’s/early 00’s…he knew ONE other kid at school that had a dirt bike!? (Sad!)
And the only field anywhere near our house that my son could have rode in was an absolute No Go for riding there! It was posted and the grouchy old owner would run anyone off that tried to utilize it in any manner!
Those afternoons in the fields behind my folks house were some of the best of times and I’m sorry my son couldn’t have done that too!😎
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