General Cycling Discussion - How old were you when you first started bicycling?

How old were you or what was your age when you started bicycling?
By this, I mean riding a bicycle...and not a stationary exercise bicycle.
I just thought I'd ask. I was seven when I started. How about anyone else?

Five! On two wheels, never even knew about training wheels.

i've been biking for as long as i can remember. i can remember riding around the block at my grandparents place on a tricycle and taking my training wheel off my bike when i was 5 or 6 all by myself.

My training wheels came off at 2. I had couple of cousins who spent a day teaching me to ride.
Fast forward 38 years ... I started riding for health and sport about 4 years ago.

Preschool.

Dad brought home an old cruiser-style bike, 16" wheels, been brush-painted baby blue; no training wheels, took me 2 seconds to fall off. I still have the memory of Dad riding it perfectly straight down Grandma's front sidewalk, to show me the bike was fine, no problems.... He got training wheels for it, I rode it, eventually they came back off, and the REAL riding started...with the next bike, a Schwinn Stingray.

I taught myself to ride a bike at age 5 1/2, inspired by reading Curious George Rides A Bike. I figured if he could do it, I could learn. I went to the house of a girl I knew and borrowed her bike (no training wheels) and practiced in her driveway for a couple of hours till I knew how to start, stop and steer. I picked a girls bike because I figured it would be easier than dealing with the top tube of a boys bike.


Then for my 6th birthday, my Dad got me this. It was way too large;

http://www.pointhappy.com/gcf/Gordons1stBikeSm.jpg

and I had to learn all over again. Start by standing on a stool and stop by crashing; and that kind of thing.

I think I was five when I got my first bike.

I was 6 and my grandparents got me and my 5 year old brother 20 inch wheeled bikes from Sears. We quickly mastered sideways power skids in the gravel. :D

A couple years later Stingrays were all the rage, so Dad brought home ape hanger bars and banana seats to convert our bikes. Best Dad Ever. :love:

When he brought home Wammo wheelie bars Mom put her foot down and said no way. No problem, we quickly mastered proper wheelies. :thumb:

Curious George? Did your girl freind wear a yellow dress?

I was 6, rode the first day like I'd been doing it forever. Or at least 6 years.

Big wheel until age 4 and then Dad brought home a used Schwinn Stingray that was a groovy green color. The shifter was awesome but it was clunky and pretty rough to shift. When you would go through the gears it made a loud "CLACK! CLACK! CLACK!" sound. I remember tryin to shift on the move like my big brother on his 10 speed and dumped it right there in the driveway. (Ahhhhhh! Pfffffffffft Ahhhhhhh! Pfffffffft Ahhhhhhh!)

On my 8th Birthday I got a brand new Huffy BMX dirt bike from the K-mart store. I recall being totally stoked by the knobby tires, pads and whole "dirt bike" feel about it.

Good times man.. good times.

I got a tricycle at 3 or 4 and a two-wheeler at 6. I'm not sure they had stationary bicycles back then!! :lol:

Curious George? Did your girl friend wear a yellow dress?

What five year old boy notices the color of a dress a girl is wearing? I was just lucky there weren't too many cooties on the bike. ;)

6. Started riding the mile to school 6 months later.

Probably around 6, before then I'd ride up and down the street on my Big Wheel pulling on the brake to slide to a stop. I think my first bike with training wheels had solid tires.

I remember my dad did the final assembly himself on my first tiny BMX type bike without training wheels but forgot to tighten the handlebars and they popped right off causing me to wipeout on our gravel driveway. I thought it was pretty funny. No one wore helmets back then, and we had real lawn darts, ah the good old days.

I got my first big wheel when I was 2 or 3.

I got an even more b!tching big wheel when I was 4.

When I was 5 my older sister taught me to ride her old schwinn two-wheeler.

I rode her old schwinn until I was 7 and got a Columbia dirt bike from sears. Getting my own bike instead of riding my sister's old hand me down bike was easily one of the best days of my entire childhood.

Hmm... I think it was maybe 5 or 6?

Five or six, learned to ride by coasting down the hill and crashing into the neighbor's carport...good thing the car wasn't there.

First bike was a "curb special" that my dad will have picked out of the trash and rebuilt and repainted for me. IIRC it was white frame with gold accents, 20" wheels no fenders. Have to see if there is a picture somewhere.

Then went a couple of years without a decent bike. First new bike was when I was 10 and it was a red Western Flyer base model. Wore that puppy out!

Aaron :)

Ya know, pretty much 5 like everybody else. I got serious about road riding for a period in high school, then again for a time in graduate school after I got my license suspended for speeding on my motorcycle and I inherited a road bike from my GF's roomate :-** Then again much later in life, ~14 years ago till now...

I don't remember exactly, but I was about 5 when I recall taking the training wheels off and going face down into the mud and water. For some reason I remember feeling awesome and happy that I rode as long as I did.

Five or six, learned to ride by coasting down the hill and crashing into the neighbor's carport...good thing the car wasn't there.

First bike was a "curb special" that my day will have picked out of the trash and rebuilt and repainted for me. IIRC it was white frame with gold accents, 20" wheels no fenders. Have to see if there is a picture somewhere.

Then went a couple of years without a decent bike. First new bike was when I was 10 and it was a red Western Flyer base model. Wore that puppy out!

Aaron :)

lucky you. my dad never rebuilt the bikes he gave me as long as they worked fine. i think i got my first brand new bike when i was 7 or 8 and i still drive it when i go and visit my grandparents.

I started riding so young I don't remember it. First a tricycle, then a bike with training wheels. I do remember the first time I rode down my grandparents driveway without training wheels. I was very excited. I quit riding when I turned 18 and didn't start again for nearly 20 years.

My daughter didn't start riding until she was 7, but that's because she had an over-protective mother. She's an adult now, and rides occasionally for transportation. She doesn't have a car.

I moved from a tricycle to a bicycle around age 3. The training wheels came off at age 4.

Bicycles have stuck with me throughout my entire life. To this day, I have never had a drivers license.

4 - which means if I live another 2 1/2 years (and planet X and the mayans don't take us all out next year) I'll have been doing it for half a century!

Seven.

lucky you. my dad never rebuilt the bikes he gave me as long as they worked fine. i think i got my first brand new bike when i was 7 or 8 and i still drive it when i go and visit my grandparents.

I have a feeling it if hadn't been rebuilt it wouldn't have been rideable...

I returned the favor by disassembling the power lawnmower when I was 8...had to put that back together, been tearing stuff apart and rebuilding it every since.

Aaron :)

6.

I was a late bloomer. There was no money for a bike for me, as a kid.

By age 8, my friends were all riding. A friend, who decided it was just wrong that I didn't have a bike, gave me his old curved-tube cruiser. He was going to help me learn to ride it. I had it for just a few minutes before my father saw it and made me give it back. He wouldn't accept charity.

By age 10 my father had a steady job and I got a new single-speed coaster-brake bike for my birthday. I tried to ride it several times but couldn't get the hang of it until a year later. Something in my brain just clicked one day and I was finally riding a bike, just like the other kiddies.

I cant remember exactly 6 or 7yrs old. I started out on a used 16 wheel bike my dad got from somewhere with training wheels and our cat would follow me up and down the road . I got my first new bike when I was about 7 .It was a 20" shiny candy apple red CCM with white fenders and wide whitewall tires I rode it until my knees were hitting the handle bars. 40+ years latter is hanging in my basement not the least bit shiny,someday I will restore it, since I cant bring myself to throw it out.

About seven years old for me and learned on a 26" girls bike before a 24" from Sears (Grey JC Higgins) became an affordable luxery in my home. I'm still amazed that I can balance on two wheels and at times less.

Brad

I was an adult; actually learned to ride a motorcycle first.
I was a kid in the 50s. Long about the time I was maybe 8 or 9, my dad came up with two old balloon-tired cruisers, one for me and one for my sister. He tweaked them into rideable shape and expected us to hop on and ride.
My sister pretty much did. I was a skinny little non-athletic kid and was convinced I couldn't do it. Never mind that my friends all rode; that was fine for them but not me. Also, my dad was a dreadful instructor.... He couldn't understand why you just couldn't "do it".
Anyway, the bike sat in the garage, forgotten.
I was about 25 when I got a wild hair to buy a motorcycle to ride off-road. I bought a little used Honda 90 and lost a lot of skin learning to flog the thing around the dirt roads we had "down in the country".
But, I did it. So much so that I eventually took up AMA "amateur" motocross. I read somewhere that riding a bicycle would be good training for motocross.... So I went out and bought a Schwinn 5- speed "Varsity" about 1974.
The motocross racing was short lived, but I kept riding bikes from that point.

I was seven when I got my first bike. Red AMF Roadmaster, with gray fenders, ape hanger bars with white grip tape, and a flame yellow & red banana seat. Didn't really learn how to ride it until my dad took off the training wheels, either.

I turned it into a sort of BMX bike with BMX bars, shorter saddle, and fat plastic pedals. My niece rode it when she visited back home a year or so ago. Still kickin'.

Age 5; a schwinn, can't remember the kid model through.

Started on a tricycle at 2 or 3, then at 5 or 6 got a brand-new metallic burgundy red Schwinn Hollywood with training wheels. According to my parents those came off rather quickly (I don't remember how long I had them on). Then somewhere between age 8 and 11 my mother told me she wanted to show me something in my room. When I came downstairs there was a brand-new metallic lime green Schwinn Caliente in the middle of the living room. That model was similar to the Varsity, but it had the front freewheel. Like the Hollywood, it had full-length chrome fenders because we lived in Portland, OR, home of excessive rain.

I think I wore out every part on that bike at one time or another:D

How old were you or what was your age when you started bicycling?
By this, I mean riding a bicycle...and not a stationary exercise bicycle.
I just thought I'd ask. I was seven when I started. How about anyone else?

Being Dutch born,I think I must have been 2 or 3. And, no training wheels!

Late bloomer for me also. Didnt get my first bike until I was eleven, when we came back stateside. Me and my brother both got new Murray 'buzz bikes from Western Auto and that was Christmas '67. The 'buzz-bikes' were the coolest, most radical departure from bikes of the norm, and I took to it like a duck takes to water. I remember that bike. It was utterly beautiful, with shiny red paint, big knobbie tires, white banana seat and ape hanger bars. Had a lot of fun on that bike.

We had a little 16" convertible--the top "tube" could be shifted up or down to make it into a "boy's" or a "girl's" bike. I learned to stay upright on that one, which was also repainted in "gender-appropriate" colors for each kid it passed down to. I must have been about 7 when I graduated from that to my first "real" big kid's bike, a J C Higgins. Basket for the school books (it must be all of 1/4 mile from my childhood home to my grade school), and a long-shackle Master bike lock. The Sav-On Drug Store even had an aisle where they sold the locks, baskets, tubes, and the replacements for the always-coming-off pedals.

5 or 6 yo. I don't remember training wheels , but I do remember my dad running along telling me to keep pedaling or I'd fall. Now some 56 yrs later I'm still pedaling :)

I was nine. My parents had bought me Schwinn something-or-other, off of some guy that rebuilt old bikes, a few years earlier. But, it was just too large for me to learn on. They finally bought a BMX style bike with 16" wheels. (and solid tires, as I recall) I learned by pushing it up to the top of the hill behind our house, and coasting down. The coaster brake on it was kind of flaky, so sometimes it would stop me, and sometimes it would decide to go fixed gear. Continuing straight would have meant slamming into the neighbor's garage door, so I learned how to turn.

After that, I could finally handle the Schwinn.

I was seven, because my parents had no money.

But as a side note, I had started running at age 4, because Jack LaLanne said it was good for you. Jack LaLanne passed away recently, at the age of 96:
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-01-24/entertainment/27096592_1_jack-lalanne-elaine-lalanne-fitness-icon
I had a field behind my home where I could run.

Once I got a bike, though, I rode that instead.

I remember that first run though, it cleared out my chest, I sweated, I remember feeling my heart pounding.

eight. Columbia with metal mag wheels. Late bloomer. By 12 I was riding in MS 150s. :)

Another late bloomer here, in my 30's. As far as I know, never had a bike as a kid, and I don't remember learning to ride one. The first 2 wheeler that I can remember is a moped at 16.

All my life.

I was too young to remember. Probably around 3 or 4 when I first had a tricycle, then around 5 a bicycle with training wheels for starters which quickly came off. The first bike I begged for was a Schwinn Apple Crate with the 5 speed. The next bike I had to have was a Raleigh Record, but I really wanted my older brother's Raleigh Grand Prix.

Best pic i too had at 6th but i missed take pic..



I taught myself to ride a bike at age 5 1/2, inspired by reading Curious George Rides A Bike. I figured if he could do it, I could learn. I went to the house of a girl I knew and borrowed her bike (no training wheels) and practiced in her driveway for a couple of hours till I knew how to start, stop and steer. I picked a girls bike because I figured it would be easier than dealing with the top tube of a boys bike.


Then for my 6th birthday, my Dad got me this. It was way too large;

http://www.pointhappy.com/gcf/Gordons1stBikeSm.jpg

and I had to learn all over again. Start by standing on a stool and stop by crashing; and that kind of thing.

HandsomeRyan circa 1989

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h170/HandsomeRyan/RyanBike1.jpg

About age 6 or thereabouts. Every kid in the neighbourhood learned to ride on the same little red bike.

If tricycles count,4.If not 6

Rode my first bike round 7 or 8 years old, stopped around 12-13. Didn't take up cycling until I was 32. Damn that's a lot of lost years.

HandsomeRyan circa 1989

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h170/HandsomeRyan/RyanBike1.jpg

1989? That's when I stopped riding. I was 18. Now I feel old.