What I can't understand is how you can all REMEMBER the names of your first bikes. Whoa! What I remember is a red single speed bike with coaster brakes that flew like the wind and carried 45 newspapers in bags off the back, went everywhere I did, got treated with very little respect, got ridden in the woods as well as on the street, and was even the vehicle with which I thought I could start a neighborhood circus.

For that little adventure, I was riding shirtless, and decided to try standing, yes STANDING, on my saddle and riding no hands from a standing position. I must have lasted about ten feet before crashing, and doing a belly slam on the side of the road, which was loose gravel. I'm told you could hear me screaming for miles around. I can still remember my mother picking cinders out of my skin.

Later I got something called an English racer with three speeds and that was a blast. But my red bike, probably a Schwinn or a Murray but who knows? will always be my favorite memory.

About 1958-65.