Originally Posted by canklecat

Stingray, around 1969 when I was about 12 years old. Even then it quickly felt dated and tiresome.

Right about that time a kid from the neighborhood who looked and acted like a pre-teen Fonz had a really tricked out Stingray that he'd customized over the course of a year or so. Finally ended up with a steering wheel type riser bar. He seemed really proud of that thing.

Then one day he just trashed it, right there in the street in front of everybody. He didn't seem angry. It wasn't a tantrum. He was very methodical about trashing it, like the getaway driver played by Ryan O'Neal in The Driver, the parking garage scene where he methodically bashes and scrapes an orange Mercedes sedan into pieces.

It seemed like a rite of passage. And I understood completely. He'd tricked it out. He'd developed a sort of reputation through that bike. Then he'd outgrown it. He couldn't have another kid riding his hand-me-down bike, reminding him of his passing tween youth. So he rubbed it out, the way some little kids suddenly grow up overnight and wipe out their imaginary friends. "Oh, Mary-Margaret Rumbletummy? She died. Run over by a carriage pulled by dragons."

The conventional English style 3-speed I got a year or so later felt like a real bike. I actually enjoyed riding then.