When I was a little kid, some of my favorite memories involved helping my grandfather outside. Sometimes we were in the garage. Sometimes we were in the garden. Other times, we were just out in the front yard.
The most important part was helping, and learning how things worked.
He was a very hands-on kind of person; always working with tools, taking things apart, putting them back together, and with a kind of quiet curiosity about how things worked, at all times. I might not have understood it at the time, but as I've gotten older, I've really appreciated how he sparked that insatiable curiosity in me, as well. I will never, ever know all the answers to all the questions I have, and that's OK; it just means I'll keep on looking and learning. That's a good way to live, in my opinion.
He taught me a lot, but that's not how I got started riding motorcycles (unfortunately). Still, one story I've told many times before involves him fixing up an abandoned bicycle so I could ride it when I visited, and using a rattle-can of electric blue paint to turn it from a drab, rusty, bent-up thing into a really cool-looking machine fit for his granddaughter. I also distinctly remember him hammering the metal connector that held one of the foot pedals on, because it had been smashed in and was rubbing against the frame. A few taps were all it needed to bend back into place, ready to ride.
So naturally, watching Matt Walksler from Wheels Through Time invite his 10-year-old daughter into the workshop to fix up her first-ever Harley-Davidson is an absolutely heart-touching experience. If you've ever been on either end of the adult-kid fixer-upper bonding experience, you'll probably feel it too if you watch. It's so sweet, and excellent to see.
Now, one definite advantage this 10-year-old girl has over me is that she's already been riding dirt bikes for pretty much her whole life. So while this small-displacement 1961 Harley-Davidson Super 10 might be her first Harley, it's far from her first motorcycle, and it shows. The confidence and ease with which she's able to both go and stop, as well as rearrange herself so she can get comfortable with how much of her feet she's able to touch the ground is something else. Good for her, and good for anyone else who's lucky enough to get started when they're a kid, so it becomes muscle memory from an early age.
Although the Super 10 has been sitting for some time, it doesn't take a whole lot of effort from dad and daughter to get the carb cleaned up, check for spark and compression, and kick it into a nicely running state for its first little rip around the yard. To make matters even better, they're also fixing up a similar small-displacement Harley-Davidson Pacer for Matt to ride, so he and his daughter can go riding together on a pair of machines that were derived from DKWs in the post-war period.
This video is just under 45 minutes long, but if you're any part of a motorcycle family, you'll want to watch it for sure. Especially if your moto family is around, and you can watch it together. This is the kind of thing that never gets old, even if the bikes are from the 1960s and the video is from 2025. Maybe especially if that's the case, because this kind of thing is what it's all about.
New and shiny can be nice, but it's not necessary; especially if you have the tools and skills to fix up a classic and get it back out and running for a new generation to enjoy. The best bike is always the one you have, and can ride. And it's even better if it's with family.
