Emi Van Cleave, Age 8 San Francisco, California Paul Van Cleave did everything wrong when he learned to ride a motorcycle. No lessons, no gloves, no helmet—just snagged someone else’s bike and hit the highway. Fortunately, this approach to riding didn’t end in disaster, and he remains an avid rider to this day. But he knew that his daughter, Emi, would be around motorcycles for as long as he rode. And he didn’t want her to learn to ride the same way that he did. So he got his daughter on a mini motorcycle and put her in a riding school when she was six years old. Two years later, Emi Van Cleave is the 2012 Northern California Junior Overall Champion for Minimoto USA. Emi was reluctant to give the sport a try. Her father had gone to a Supermoto event in 2011, saw minimoto machines and signed her up for a class. After a crash course in learning to ride a bicycle without training wheels, Van Cleave showed up for her minimoto class at the kart track at Atwater. “I kind of didn’t want to do it,” says Emi. “I kind of thought motorcycles were supposed to be fast.” But she stuck with it. A month later, she was racing in the Beginners class. In 2012, Emi won a string of races—five, to be precise—as a Beginner. Minimoto USA rules stipulate that anyone who wins five Beginner classes has to bump up to Junior. Emi liked winning, and initially did not want to move up, her father says. It took some persuading from Dad and race officials to get her on board with the change. The Atwater track is the closest one to home for the Van Cleave family, and was the site of Emi’s first Junior race. She stepped up and put the bike on the podium, finishing third. Emi enjoys turns—the tighter and twistier the track, the better. “When there’s a lot of turns, people get stuck in the middle of them,” she says. “Then I pass a lot of them— yay!” Paul Van Cleave had never turned a wheel on a racetrack when his daughter started. But after watching her, he decided he wanted to join the fun. At the time of this writing, Emi was leading the Minimoto Junior and the Mini GP Mod Junior classes, and Paul was second in the Brittle Bikers class (for riders over age 30, no old-school pros allowed).