Fifty Plus (50+) - Cycling in the 50's Article

Came across this article (http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=3Tzut&page_id=83727&v=5P) that I thought you guys would enjoy.

In the mid 50's I was 10. I believe that I spent about every waking minute on the bike. It didn't look a lot different from this.

That's great stuff... inspiration for sure!

Thanks for posting it.

Ramius

That's a super collection of photo's! During those years I was in the Boy Scouts and our troop #788 in Southern California of early 50's was a similar group of boys.

We rode our bikes everywhere but did our campouts with the aid of the automobile.
One of my friend's father had a dry cleaning business and we would pile all our gear into and on top of his delivery van, then stuff 8-10 boys inside & head for the hills.

We did a lot of backpacking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and used those same Primus stoves. Its fortunate the author was into photography & recorded the history of that time so well. I have no photographs of those happy times, just memories.

Da iawn. (very good) St. Gabriels CC seems to have created a life long interest in cycling for these lads.

I wasn't quite 10 yet in the 50's, but that's when I first graduated from a tricycle to my first 2 wheeler, and I've never looked back. In those days, kids, boys especially, pretty much lived on their bikes. For me, it became a lifelong passion, but unlike many of today's speed, weight and race obsessed people, it was tied in with a love for the sights, smells and sounds of nature, with freedom and with a kind of meditative contemplation of life. Most of the other kids I rode my bike with probably long ago became suburban car people. Why most do, and a very few of us stick with cycling as a passion into advancing age is something I don't know. I guess that among other things, it may make some people more interested in remaining as fit as possible throughout life, and because a bicycle, even a racing bicycle, is a relatively simple mechanism, it gives us an appreciation of simplicity in all things.

I enjoyed looking at those pics. Thanks for posting the link.

Very interesting, thanks for posting. I wish we would have had better bikes on this side of the pond during that time. We were stuck with those 50 pound ballooners.

Most excellent. :thumb: