Originally Posted by
Murray Missile
When I was a kid in the 60's we were making trails in empty lots and the local woods with jumps, mud holes and other obstacles to ride our Stingray style bikes on to emulate the off road racers we watched on ABC's Wide World of Sports LONG before anybody ever thought of the term "bicycle moto-cross", aka BMX. BMX is as much rooted in "stingrays" as mountain bikes are rooted in old stripped down "tanker" bikes.
+1
I have been known to say (jokingly) that a few hundred Central Florida kids invented mountain biking in the mid 1960's, years before Marin County and Repack. We all did exactly what you did- took the slicks off of our Stingrays, mounted fat knobbies (front and rear) and rode and raced them all over the phosphate pits, orange groves, and dirt roads of Central Florida. We jumped over, and off of any, and everything. We broke seat posts, handlebars, banana seats, and smashed rear wheels honing our skills over every surface available (except mountains). Of course kids like us were doing the same thing all over the country.