Previous forum member...WR250R rider from central Alabama

Was a active member here not long after it was formed but gradually became less frequent to visiting. Had never intended to become non active but it happened. I bought my WRR new in 2009 as a left over 08 model ....saved a little.
I have rode bikes since childhood and remember all the stages of progression bikes have went through first hand....especially dirt/mx type. When i was a kid...most of us dreamed of getting or buying one day the latest and greatest mx bike but usually had to settle for a dualsport type bike. We worked pretty hard at eliminating all the street legal stuff and tried to make our settled for bikes more off road worthy. Now it is almost the reverse for a lot of folks. I have several friends riding tagged dirt bikes.
I have modded my WRR into a more dirt type of a bike and really enjoy riding it. I have other bikes and atvs...and it is nice to get on my WRR from time to time. Really fun 250 4stroke.

Howdy.
I have seen your old user name on this site with that old fuel pump thread.

Since it's a lazy, early Sunday morning in late December:

I owned a 2008 WR250R and a 2008 WR250X, starting a little over 10 years ago.
I did not own both at the same time, but bought the WR250R in the summer of 2009, and the WR250X in December of 2010.
Both were used bikes, not brand-new.
The WR250R had (if I recall) 170 miles on it, or somewhere around that low figure - barely used.
The WR250X had the typical couple of thousand miles on it with a couple of juvenile decals stuck to it.
Both were in excellent condition, all-in-all, and both got the common modifications of getting rid of the airbox flappers, FMF fuel programmers and FMF Q mufflers and header pipes (the WR250R got the Powerbomb head pipe and the WR250X got the Megabomb head pipe).

The WR250R was ridden with Bridgestone M22/M23 hard terrain motocross knobby tires all the time I owned it since I used it as I have always used my dual-purpose bikes:
Back and forth to work on secondary roads as well as trail riding on weekends and before and after work.
The tires didn't last all season, but the increased traction over typical dual-purpose 50/50-type tires made it worth it, even as they wore.
The WR250X was ridden with appropriately-sized Michelin Pilot Powers, and that bike was a fun light-weight sport bike.
In fact, a couple years before, I owned a 2009 DR-Z400SM with the kitchen sink thrown at it, and I found out I preferred the WR250X, overall.
It just seemed like a more fun bike to ride as a street-going sport bike on back roads.

As a side note, I read all of the popular DR-Z400 forums and threads on the Internet, and I'll always remember the DR-Z400 models as the one bike I have owned (from brand-new) that had so many recommended modifications that were put across as must-dos, or else.
They called them "Reliability Modifications" such as smearing red Loctite on the crankshaft taper where the flywheel mounts, or else your flywheel holding nut would loosen, or using more red Loctite on the nut securing the primary drive gear/cam chain drive sprocket to the other end of the crankshaft, or making a second electrical ground wire terminal mount in order to prevent an electrical malfunction.
There were many of them that were recommended every day by somebody to somebody.

Hope you like to read...  :)

As far as how motorcycles and riding has changed for me since I started at age 15 in 1981, and how it seems from my personal perspective, I'll list my main points:

1) Perhaps the single biggest change (besides ever-present price inflation) has to do with what brought on the Consumer Product Safety Commission's ATV Consent Decree of 1988:
Ambulance-chaser lawsuits resulting in a great excuse to close riding land once and for all.
The environment being raped was a good start, and the ATV Consent Decree rammed it home.
After that, the governments got the helicopters out to issue tickets to riders at places that a couple years earlier had much riding activity on a given weekend.
Glad I was able to experience it first-hand before it came to a screeching halt.
Today, you are literally a criminal for riding a dirt bike over some sand pit/gravel bank/ex-garbage dump waste land that still looks like a bomb went off from all of the heavy equipment and dumping of waste products and chemicals while working these sites for decades.

2) I started riding smack dab in the middle of the dirt bike suspension revolution, and liquid cooling was gradually becoming the norm.
Every single model year motocross bikes from Japan were new designs (or at least had significant changes compared to the previous model year) from the late 1970s until at least the early 1990s.
The YZ125, for example, was a different bike from 1979, to 1980, to 1981, to 1982, to 1983, to 1984.
It was a great and exciting and very interesting time, and quite a change from today's much more stagnant times.
However, when bikes like the Yamaha IT series (the last being the 1986 IT200S) were eventually discontinued, the writing was on the wall:
Some planning guys at the manufacturer's factory knew pretty well what was in store for the coming years.

3) When I learned about motorcycles back then, we called our dual-purpose bikes exactly that:
A dual-purpose bike, one for riding both on the street for our commuting, as well as using that same bike for our off-road trail and gravel bank riding.
They were basically a Yamaha or Honda dirt bike with changes to satisfy DOT regulations such as DOT-approved tires, lighting, reflectors, etc., but it was obvious the bike started on the manufacturer's drafting table as a dirt bike.
Then, around 1990-ish, some marketing men came up with the term "dualsport".
That still sounds dumb to me to this very day, and probably not coincidentally, with all of the former riding spots by then off limits, the so-called dualport bikes were becoming more like street-biased bikes.
The 1990 Yamaha XT600E, the 1988 Honda NX650, and the original Kawasaki KLR650 are examples.
They got heavier due to electric start, even bigger mufflers, and goofy (to my eyes) street bike styling that was supposed to remind you of a Paris-Dakar race bike.
To me, they just looked boring and heavy with fuel tanks that were (to me) twice the size that was actually required by me or anybody I knew.

Ironically, today, on December 29th, 2019, you can log onto a forum dedicated to "Adventure Bikes" (the descendant of the term "dualsport"), and actually read many threads and articles asking such tripe as (I'm paraphrasing here), "What kind of rider is the Honda CRF450L intended for?", or, "How can I make my 2018 KTM 500 EXC-F better for 'round the world riding?"
Yes, around the world riding.
Just how many riders do you personally know that are planning on riding around the world?
Why would I want to?
The idea does not sound like a good time to me, but more like a pain in the butt.
Besides, I need to go to work in order to bring money in to pay my bills.

So, there you have my perspective on how things have changed over the years.
Hope the reader enjoyed it.

Ha...nice read. Pretty much mirrors a lot of my experiences except for the timeline for my story. I started at a earlier age because i was fortunate enough to have a friend (s) that their whole family rode. My dad also got back into it. Even later on my mom had a cpl bikes...but lol,not too good on offroad...mom

I remember waiting on the mail to deliver our bike magazines...the internet of the 70s..lol

I used to dream of what a bike like a new yz or kx would be like to own and ride.

My first non mini bike type bike was a HT1B Yamaha enduro...used...but had a 100cc top end and I rode it until the crank bearings wore out.
Drum brakes and less than 6 inches of horrible suspension and air cooled engines were the standard then.

Yes, I'm familiar with vintage bikes because I forgot to mention my first bike was a 1972 Yamaha AT-2, the 125 2-stroke dual-purpose bike.
I bought it for $100 in September of 1981 after working clearing brush at a summer job, and since that was during the days when dirt bikes were improving every model year, it was well-obsolete from the day I bought it.
Compared to the other dirt bikes I would sometime see up close (either on a dealer's showroom or a local motocross racer out practicing in a local gravel bank), my AT-2 was like comparing a 1972 Volkswagen Beetle to a modern sports car, performance-wise.

Nobody wanted those older bikes like I was riding if they had a choice, and the only reason I was riding that old bike was because my parents would not (actually, could not because they had no money) buy me one, and the small amount of money I'd earned to buy a dirt bike could only fetch me something outdated like that.

That's why, today, when I see a vintage dirt bike for sale for some high sum of money, I just scoff because of my perspective and experience with mine and how back then they were simply obsolete, not yet old enough to be considered collectable, never mind desirable.
It's not that I have some kind of hatred for my old AT-2, but because I knew even back in 1981 it was obolete and not worthy of being put on a pedestal, other than wanting to care for and learning how to properly maintain it so I could reliably continue to ride it until I could get the money for a modern bike.

In fact, it makes me recall the time a kid in my village (he was about 13 years old at the time) was in his back yard riding a 1980 Yamaha YZ80G.
This was back in 1981, shortly after buying my AT-2.
As far as I was concerned, a 1980 YZ80G was a thoroughly modern dirt bike and something I'd love to own because I actually had access to land to use it on.
What a concept.
Well, this kid suddenly got frustrated with his YZ because it was not to his liking, gets off the bike, and throws it down to the ground while saying how the 1981 Honda CR80R his visiting cousin was riding was so much better.
You can probably guess what I thought of that behavior.

A couple of years later, I did finally get a full-time job and earn the money to buy a more modern bike:
My 1981 Honda XR250R, bought used from my sister's then-boyfriend in September of 1983.
Man, what an improvement.