couple years ago when i was in like 5th grd, my pops got me a mongoose (don't remembr the model) for me to haul up the trails, which was fairly hard, as some of you have said, cuz they are "heavy as hell". After my dad got him self a decent diamond back, he became addicted. That is what got me really started. Then, a couple of years later, i got a new bike (Giant vt2) and he got a new Heckler, and we have been hitting the trails ever since.
As of the last summer we just had, i earned about $300 "scraping out" his drywall sites, and then sweeping the floors ect. to put towards my new Kona stuff, cuz my vt2 wasn't made for djing or urban riiding, which is my new fav thing to do. so, i am not quite close to the stuff, but just a few months of work, and i will be ready to hit the campus.