We've had some great resurrection threads lately.
This one ran while I was on my hiatus from the hobby.
None of this would have come close to happening if not for the fact that my uncle owned a bike shop.
1. At about age 5, I got a used (probably a trade-in) red, 20" coaster brake bike with cruiser-ish bars. Training wheels lasted about an hour.
2. I think it was for my 8th birthday, I got a new single-speed, coaster brake, Raleigh Fireball. It was gold, and I used to hold my own against neighborhood kids on their 3 and 5 speed Schwinns.
3. That got stolen out of my back yard when I was 12, so I replaced it with a unicycle.
4. About 2 years later, I got my first 10-speed. I used to ride it to the public golf course nearly every day during summers, towing my golf cart to play 50 cent rounds of golf, and to track meets at RIT once a week. I forget the make and model - it was a low end, bike boom machine. Remember riding it 50 miles one day in summer of '76 to go camping. It got stolen while I was riding near a friend's house. That was replaced with another, which was stolen from me while competing in an all-day track meet right out of the bike rack at RIT.
(end of the free-bike era)
5. Summer job money went towards a Raleigh Super Course, which I was able to get for cost + tax. What a revelation! It was so much better than anything I had ridden before. I owner it all through college, and rode an impromptu double-century on it returning to college to start my senior year. That bike got stolen about 2 weeks before I joined the Navy following college. Was living in a shared rental next door to the bike shop and saw two brand-new bikes on the screened porch, and thought they had been stolen (there had been a rash of thefts from the storage garage). Made the mistake of locking my bike to them while I went to ask if the bikes I saw were ones that had been stolen. 10 minutes later when I returned, all three were gone. I knew who stole them, but police said I didn't have proof. grrr
25 year break from nearly all things bicycle
Son became old enough to be in Boy Scouts and his Troop's big adventure was riding the C&O Canal. Got two Magnas from Target for it. I was wondering why bicycling was so much less fun, and so much harder than I remembered. Almost gave it up again. One day, I found a bike set out for trash. It was a low-end Follis, too large for me, but I picked it up and started researching - which led me to Bike Forums. Found a Raleigh Grand Prix the same way, fixed it, rode it, noted that it rode quite differently than I remembered the Super Course of old riding, so I found one online and bought it. Fixed it, rode it, got curious when I got to reading how that Super Course wasn't regarded as being anywhere near the best, and decided to keep looking. Found a Fuji Finest on eBay about 150 miles away and drove to pick it up. After I got it put together, I started to understand. I've been hooked pretty much ever since.