Originally Posted by
Richard Cranium
Obviously, many people start to ride bicycles at a very young age. I learned how to ride of 20" wheel middle-weight bicycle in the summer of 1958. (BMX bikes didn't exist?)
By 1965-66 I had graduated to a Sturmey-Archer 3spd and completed a metric-century. Just three years later I bought my first lightweight ten-speed and rode my first Century ride in August in 1969….
How about sharing your thoughts about how and when you started to ride - how your cycling-life continues today? I'd like hear from you life-time cyclists......
My cycling lifestyle followed a similar path early on. I learned to ride at about age 6 in the middle 50’s. I have an early vivid memory of riding the sidewalk around the block, and somehow lost control and rode down a side drive into the normally busy boulevard we lived on. I was glad my dad did not see that since he had been watching me do laps around the block.
In grade school a good friend and I did a lot of riding in the neighborhood, and enjoyed just meandering to find our way back. I posted my cycling biography as an Introduction to Bike Forums starting from that point:
Originally Posted by
Jim from Boston
Hello to this Forum,
I stumbled upon this Forum from another totally unrelated Blog and I was quite impressed at the volume of activity and range of interests. Back in the 60’s in the Motor City, I had an “English Racer,’ and longed to tour at about age 14, but then joined the car culture.
In Ann Arbor MI in the 70’s I really realized the utility of bicycles for commuting, and began touring on a five-speed Schwinn Suburban, but soon bought a Mercier as did my girlfriend, later my wife. We toured in Michigan and Ontario.
In 1977 we moved to Boston on our bikes, as a bicycling honeymoon from Los Angeles to Washington, DC and then took the train up to Boston. We have toured in New England and the Maritime Provinces, and one trip to the DelMarVa peninsula.
The Mercier wore out and now I ride a Bridgestone RB-1 purchased in about 1991. After the birth of our son in 1988, I have pretty much been a year–round commuter only, but in the past few years I have done a century or two a year and I follow a ten week training program for centuries published long ago in Bicycling Magazine.
I have a really great commute that belies, IMO, the image of Boston as a city unfriendly to bicycling. I live in Downtown and ride to a suburb 14 miles distant in the reverse traffic commuting pattern...
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