My Dad was always going to get me into bikes, but he needn't have worried - first year of senior school I got hooked on being involved in building our metalwork teacher's Kawasaki H1 engined sprint racer as a project, moved on through a series of school projects to my own project, a school-built frame for a C90 engine I picked up for £5, followed by making all the bits to fit forks, wheels, tank/seat etc etc until we had a working field bike.
Dad bought me (or was it him) a FS1E before my 16th birthday, so that he could ride 20 miles to a site for me to practice on it. But, I was totally hooked.
Hardly surprising really as I was apparently conceived either in the Black Forest, Luxembourg or Liechtenstein, during my mum and dad's last bike touring holiday before they started a family.
As I got older and bought my own bikes, my dad used to steal the keys occasionally so he and my mum could go for days out (I didn't mind except when he took my new FJ 1200 put and rang me from the Lake District to go and pick them up because they'd gotten a puncture).
Anyway, when he was 72, he was diagnosed with cancer, so he bought himself a Suzuki 600 and for a couple of years, well into his mid 70's, he'd come out with me, my younger brother and our mates, on the bikes, hooning all around the north of England and the Scottish Borders, it was brilliant seeing the looks on people's faces when we pulled up and he took his helmet off - an old gadgets on a sports bike with a loud pipe