Mountain Biking - I saw a reason for Wallyworld bikes (Don't flame me please)

I was fishing a yesterday and on the shore there were a bunch of kids on bikes. They couldn't have been more that 11 years old and they had BMX style bikes and their idea of a good time was tossing the bikes into the lake. :eek:

Good thing their folks bought them Wallyworld rubbish.

well, that is a total waste money. even if it was like 60 dollars. i could get a nice set of bars for that!

-double posted, dont know how it happened.

Well that's a good use for boat anchors like those things

Did they toss them and leave them? Or just throw em in, and get em out, and ride home? I often wish I was that easily entertained.

I remember back when I was a kid my dad would drop me and freinds off at the lake with our ramp and we would bomb down a hill onto the dock and off our ramp into the water doing tricks and landing in the water. They were hi dollar 20 and 24" race bikes...it was a good time and the bikes were never effected...we were suprised the tires had enough bouyancy to hold the bikes afloat.

I love to hate those crapp-o bikes as much as the next guy. but, I grew up riding one of those cheap, heavy, department store bikes, and at the time I loved it; It was blue.... It had to be blue. It was my ticket out. My friends and I would build jumps, make race courses in construction sites...it was awesome. I didn't know it was a tank, I just knew it was blue, and that it was way better than taking the bus.

Off to rent "On Any Sunday",
gmg

I rode an ugly orange and black Murray BMX bike when I was a kid in the early 80s. I rode that thing into the ground. Now, if I had the chance to own the factory Kuwahara KZ-1 of my dreams I know for sure I wouldn't have had nearly as much fun as I did. Ghost Rider on my Kuw? No friggin way!!

I saw kids at my grandmoms doing that. I think it might be cool to try doing tricks you can't normally do into the water, just not on my bike, some POS bmx.

I spent 20 hard earned dollars as an 11 year old and bought a 20 inch "Mudzilla" bike from a yard sale that came from kmart years ago. It had plastic mud flaps on it and everything, so cheesey. Instead of taking care of my hard earned new item I ended up spending the next day and a half building a ramp.

I would ride down the street as far as I could then cut through my yard. Halfway through I'd jump off and let the bike fly over the ramp into a 15 foot wide bush.

Oh man was that ever fun. Sometimes I would jerk the handlebars up at the very last second and kind of kick myself away from the bike, then the front tire would be off the ground while the rear tire would slam into the ramp, causing it to do continuous front flips. :D

Yea, I was part of the 'Ride your bike off the pier' club back when I had a Wally world special also. when you're a kid, maintenance is layering WD-40 on your chain and raising the seat when you got too tall. I'd be pissed if my parents had bought me any sort of nice bike back then. Why waste the money?

My huffy Challenger4000 was about as good as it got back then. I was one of the few kids in the neighborhood that had a freehub! I definitely beat it up and in all fairness, it beat me pretty badly as well!

This has been a refreshing thread. Yes, we all enjoy being at a station in life where we're able to look BACK on the x-mart bike days, but the point is that we've all been there. The oddest thing is that usually "I've been there" references a bad run or a tough time, yet most of us remember the times fondly. May be worth keeping in mind the next time a kid (or even an adult) in here posts about his all he could afford x-mart bike. Contrary to the widely posted opinion, a POS x-mart bike is definitely better than no bike at all.

Am I the only one that had a siren with the bar mounted switch and used it to play "Dukes of Hazzard"? :)

I was fishing a yesterday and on the shore there were a bunch of kids on bikes. They couldn't have been more that 11 years old and they had BMX style bikes and their idea of a good time was tossing the bikes into the lake. :eek:

Good thing their folks bought them Wallyworld rubbish.

Kids will be kids. Maybe they were just creating a habitat for the fishes?

my buddy and i used to do wicked tricks into his pond on his (what we thought was awesome at the time ) Dyno VFR, it was awesome, do a huge superman and then toss the bike in mid air and try to get a dive into the pond, pond jumping was awesome

If that was my kid I would have a better time when I siked him out going back to wally word and instead of getting a bike I bought him a snorkel and told him to fish them out. Ov course my kid would have been the one on the side with the non-wally bike saying you guys are stupid to the others throwing them in. Maybe its the kids tring to tell thier parents what they want?

well i have always done that and sometimes i still do i get five dollar bikes at garage sale's and then ride down a big hill and take a huge jump into our pond its just as fun as it sounds

I abused my first bike so much(which was a target bike that I spray painted green and yellow) that is rusted all the way through the frame and it broke in half one day while I was riding. (we lived about 30 second walk away from the beach)

ausiewheeler, heck yeah lake-jumpin' is still fun! This thread makes me want to go buy a bike at a garage sale, put some of those floaty wings on the handle-bars and go do a backflip into a lake! hmmmmm my old '99 hoffman e.p. is lookin pretty bouyant... but then again I still flatland so... pfffff. I think they guys on mtv's jacka$$ did some lake jumping after coming out of a full pipe.

We used to get 2-3 car tires and stack them and set up a piece of plywood to make a jump. We'd set it up at the bottom of a hill to get speed and rock off that thing like there was no tomorrow. Ah, my old Redline BMX couldn't be broken.

weave a tire tube in your spokes and inflate it a little, will keep your bike pretty afloat

For christmas at 6 I got a used bike from Montgomery Wards (return, I think. parents weren't real wealthy). It was the best bike I ever got. It would go at least 78 mph, handle 65 foot drops, and weighed 294 pounds. At least the way I remember it. But I did many flips in the pond. I built at least 50 ramps of different heights. We would pop up the back wheel up for a reverse wheelie by riding into the curb or a wall. I could ride a regular wheelie for most of a block. And it never broke more than a spoke or two.
I figure my son will be at least as destructive as I was, so I think we'll hold off on carbon fiber for him a while. Wal-mart will do for the first couple.

I remember i used to abuse my first bike when i was 6 or something, some cheap pos bmx.

Used to send it down a hill as a 'ghostie'....no rider....just give it some speed and watch it go!

Ov course my kid would have been the one on the side with the non-wally bike saying you guys are stupid to the others throwing them in. Maybe its the kids tring to tell thier parents what they want?[/QUOTE]


in this day and age if your kid calls the other kids stupid they will probably kick his a$$ and throw HIS bike in the water

When I grow up I wanna be a bike snob too!

I also rode my pos bikes into the lake. I specifically remember doing it with my Huffy Radio bike... I thought it was hilarious diving down and collecting the bike after a sweet trick or something :D Ahh...the good 'ol days :rolleyes:

the things I used to do with my old WT Grants( a small wlamart type store) bike and the Western Auto bike. boat anchors with me still attached, ditch hopping, cliff dropping.the bikes back then from a dime store were A LOT tougher than the ones today

I remember my first poop bikes. Some red magna style thing, I loved it, trashed it, lost it. Then I got a black magna rebound, 12 gears, hard tail, no suspension. I loved it more then the other magna, but still, I loved it, trashed it, lost it.