Re: pillion age?
 

11 year old lad! Round here we would expect him to be quite competent on the front of dads bike whilst he is at work etc.

Hide your keys.

Re: pillion age?
 

My 15 year old son has been on the back of my bike regularly since he was about 8. You obviously need to be quite confident in your own riding to take on the added responsibility but generally there are plenty of other ways kids can hurt themselves so you just need to keep things in perspective. It is worth investing in some proper kit for them though which tends to be expensive given they grow out of it quite quickly (plug...my son is flogging some of his kit on Ebay at the moment) and definitely think about one of those handle belt things. Kids only have little arms and if they have to stretch to get their hands around you then not only is it uncomfortable for them but after a while they stop holding on! Oh, and if you haven't an intercom work out a few easily understood signals to, my son quickly learnt that if i changed down a gear he needed to hold on tighter...!

Re: pillion age?
 

My daughter is 10 and goes on my Dads bike a Vn800 but there is no way until she is a teenager I will let her on my ZX6R.

Re: pillion age?
 

Best mates youngest does that, and hes 14! The amount of times shes had to zoom ahead of her husband, on her own bike because she can see her son nodding off is quite alarming! The older son doesn't do it, and at 15(in France) has just bought his first scooter:cool:

As is true around here, no lids, tracky bottoms, should be at school:smt013

Re: pillion age?
 

My first ever trip on a bike on the road was when I was four, a Triumph with the luggage rack on the tank, (I think it was a T110 - it was a while ago), belonging to my Mum and Dad's friend Larry, being as I was very short, (I still am), I coudn't reach the footrests so I sat in front of Larry on the tank and held on to the rack, helmets were not compulsory then and no-one seemed particularly worried about such things.
I remember every inch of that short trip so vividly; from my house then turn right onto Mansfield Road, through the lights and past the Stag, across South End Green and up Donkeystand Hill, around the Whitestone Pond and along Spaniards Road through the old toll gate then onto Hampstead lane to Highgate, turn right at the Gatehouse and past The Flask, down Highgate West Hill and then right onto Gordon House Road, under the railway bridges at Gospel Oak, (ohhhh the noise!), onto Mansfield Road and then back into my street. I wished it wouldn't end so soon.

It's very difficult to put yourself in the shoes of a four year old, memories fade and the capacity for wide eyed wonder is something that age somehow breeds out of us. That brief memory from *cough-cough* years ago is so burnt upon my memory that I can close my eyes and, almost, take myself back there now to that wonderful moment when I was so speechlessly astonished by that fantastic experience. I think I grinned for a month, and I knew that this was something I wanted to do too - I so wanted a motorbike and I became utterly obsessed by them.

Your children will grow up and that capacity for wonder will be gone from them too.

Don't deny them the chance to feel like I did.

Re: pillion age?
 

KITKAT------Where are you? Seem to remember a little girl with a sheep rucksack many many moons ago:D