Advocacy & Safety - Ghost riding

Ive spent many hours repairing my sons bike . A BMX type . His friends started rambling on and on about ghost riding . I ignored this at 1st , but I had to know, What is ghost riding ? I was told they get up some speed and then jump off the bike to see how far it would go with out a rider on . Now I know why Im fixing this bike all the time . Bwahahahahahahahahahaahaahaahahha
jarhead#42

:eek: Sounds like fun, maybe I'll try that with the tandem.... Oh, then that wouldn't be ghost riding would it? It might be ghost-captain and very startled stoker riding!! :D

Sounds pretty stupid if you ask me...
Then again sounds exactly like something kids would do.

I used to do it at 7 to my really ****ty bike. It gets old. Unless you do it off a cliff :)

Sounds pretty stupid if you ask me...
Then again sounds exactly like something kids would do.
Yeah, kids are stupid. When I was a kid the rage was racing into the wooden fence at the end of the dead-end street or the chain link fence at the end of the playground. Yeah, you heard me, racing into the fence, not to the fence.

John

Ive spent many hours repairing my sons bike...


You have a kid?!

You have a kid?!

I'm surprised they let him breed

I always thought that ghost riding was when you rode one bike while pulling another behind you.... Guess I was wrong.

ghost riding is riding, then jumping off and letting go on it's own.

the most fun comes from ghosting your bike over jumps or off things like stairs. the bigger the better.

it's been a dang long time since I've ghosted my bike but I always enjoy watching others do it. :D

I used to do it. Of course, I was a kid-and didn't have to pay for repairs.

I used to do it. Of course, I was a kid-and didn't have to pay for repairs.

Me too. We used to love doing it on dirt tracks and in construction sites. It's just a silly thing some kids get a kick out of. Wears out pretty quickly (but fun while it lasts).

Mind you, if you're fixing the bike the kid keeps on wrecking it by ghost riding, you're being far too nice. Let him do what he wants, it's his bike. Just don't let him take the mickey by expecting it'll be magically repaired for him when he does wreck it.

And, well, for a kid it is pretty cool. Once a bike gets enough speed to keep the momentum up, it can go by itself quite well. "It's like a ghost is riding it! Neato!"

When I was a lad, my friends and I used to ghostride our bikes all the time. We would compete against eachother to see who could ghostride the farthest. Surprisingly enough, I never did any serious damage to my bike. Goes to show how tough a good bike is.

The real trouble started when some of the neighborhood parents got wind of our more "daring" stunts...like laying down next to a homemade ramp and jumping our bikes over eachother.

I had a blast as a kid doing crazy things with bikes. We built very large jumps for the BMX to clear each other length wise, ride the 8mi very steep downhill at 55mph on the '10speed', build ice bikes, ski bikes, etc. Same with skis in the winter. Stuff thats scary to think back on. I also did century rides on weekends.

We also fixed all our own bikes - spent hours working on them, customizing, etc.

I can't believe how comfortable we were in handling. Things I can't even come close to doing now.

Al

we did so many stupid things as a kid, on or with our bikes.

I like to think I did most of the repairs on mine but I know my dad really is the one to thank.

I remember one time when I was maybe 15, my parents left for a week, leaving me the house to myself. (older brother was somewhere around, living on his own in the same town though)
my friends and I went riding and I tried to hop over a curb and land a few feet lower in another parking lot. went over the bars so hard and fast I got scars on the backsides of my hands. took all the skin off my face, neck and part of my back. good times.
it wasn't the first time I'd hit my head on the pavement and it wouldn't be the last.
no one ever mentioned wearing a helmet, those were left to the guys that played football and rode motorcycles.

When I was a kid, the neighborhood bullies used to threaten to ghostride OTHER kids' bikes.

Well i learnt that it's a bad idea to ghost bikes a couple of years back. I was riding to school with someone who was walking and he had the idea of ghosting it. We did it twice (once each) into a brick wall at full speed. The forks got bent slightly but thought nothing of it. When i was riding home after school the forks snapped off which hurt quite a bit as i'm sure you can imagine.

Ive spent many hours repairing my sons bike . A BMX type . His friends started rambling on and on about ghost riding . I ignored this at 1st , but I had to know, What is ghost riding ? I was told they get up some speed and then jump off the bike to see how far it would go with out a rider on . Now I know why Im fixing this bike all the time . Bwahahahahahahahahahaahaahaahahha
jarhead#42

I just learned this term at the LBS yesterday. I was telling the mechanic there about what i was seeing these "dumb kids" doing. He said, yeah that is called ghost riding, they all do it. I call it spoiled when you take a perfectly good bike and trash it like that.

Guess when i was a kid i thought i was lucky to have a bike and new if i broke the one i had i may not get another. Just a symptom of our times i guess. If i see my kid doing that when he gets old enough, i will take his bike and sell it to somebody that will take care of it. :mad:

I... I call it spoiled when you take a perfectly good bike and trash it like that.
:mad:

I call it being a kid. It's what they do - play with stuff in ways they weren't supposed to be played with. And no, I wasn't spoiled.

You have a kid?!


HOLY......

I call it being a kid. It's what they do - play with stuff in ways they weren't supposed to be played with. And no, I wasn't spoiled.

So when the bike gets broken, what do you propose? Go buy them a new one or you foot the bill for repairs? I'm with you on playing with things the way they weren't intended. Jumping off of a bike and watching it crash hard into the ground or a wall on a regular basis doesn't fit that description to me. That is called abuse.

What sort of values does a kid have that does something like that to a bike? Does he understand the worth of anything? That bike costs money. He needs to realize that. It isn't so much the bike that is important as much as learning that money doesn't grow on trees. Some people actually work hard for it.

I thought ghost riding was when a guy on the highway on a sportbike is doing like 90mph and he gets off the bike and crouches down next to it, hanging onto the handle bars for dear life or even hanging on behind the motorcycle riding on his shoes?

that would be cool on a bike that dosent belong to you ;)

it's not as bad a trek rider or belfast biker having a kid. ;)

jump off the bike to see how far it would go with out a rider on . Now I know why Im fixing this bike all the time . Bwahahahahahahahahahaahaahaahahha
jarhead#42

Sounds like he's ready to begin repairing his own bike. Mysteriously kids get better at landing a bike when they have to help fix it. Give Ghost riding a try.

So when the bike gets broken, what do you propose?
I don't know. I was just trying to stress the point that kids are kids, which you seem to understand. All I know is that in my case my bike never got seriously damaged. Either your kids' bike is a step up from the super-cheap solid tank I rode and therefore more susceptible to damage, or he is really ghost riding hard.

Mind you, I never did anything like banging my bike straight into a wall, either. That seems a bit pointlessly malicious to me. And I certainly would have more issues if my kid was doing it with a nice bike instead of a cheapo.

I do understand the desire to make children understand the value of things, I feel very strongly about that myself. I guess this is the grey area where you have to draw the line between letting kids do what they naturally do and spoiling them.

As I said, my bike never really got damaged and I did stuff like that for the fun of it, not because I got a kick out of wrecking things. But I understand how the line gets a bit fuzzy between fixing your kid's bike and spoiling him, and letting him just have fun his own sick, typically twisted boyish way.


What sort of values does a kid have that does something like that to a bike? Does he understand the worth of anything? That bike costs money. He needs to realize that.
Well, you make the judgement call based on your situation. I just wanted to remind you that a kid ghostriding his bike does not necessarily mean that he doesn't appreciate the value of things or that he just wrecks things because he's spoiled.

(change all "he"'s in the text to "she" if I got the sex wrong. Damn nuisance PC writing!)

you could always just buy the kid a junker to do ghosting on.

At my first apartment in college someone left an old huffy by our back door. It just sat there and rusted until we had a big kegger one night. Then it turned into free style bike olympics. There were two events
1. Hold on to the seat and run a designated line then let go of the bike. Whoever got it to go the longest won.
2. Grab on to the bike however you want and toss it through the air. Kind of like discuss.
Funny, we only did this when we were drunk.