Originally Posted by Darth Lefty

When I was five and first learning to ride, I had a rule that I could only go to the end of the street, except there was one kid I knew two houses past the end of the block and I was allowed to go there. I remember riding to first grade sometimes with what seemed like a ton of other kids.

We lived in Phoenix. When I was six we moved to a "horsey suburb" part of the desert that was not yet built out. At first I was still confined to the block - but the block was much longer, the kids further apart, and we rode our bikes all over the vacant lots. There was some dumped dirt catty-corner from my house that someone had sculpted into a decent launch ramp. As I got older I'd go alone beyond the existing streets into the state trust land over the ridge to the north of Thunderbird Park where there was all kinds of interesting junk for a kid - shell casings, broken beer bottles, ATV parts... someone had dumped dirt in a large semicircle and made it into something like a pump track, but I didn't have any clue about pumping then and just rode around it. I learned to ride off-road alone through the arroyos and sandy patches. Dad got me the thickest inner tubes he could find for the goatheads. After a rain storm there would be huge puddles and tadpoles that grew up into toads and burrowed away in only a few days. As the developers came in, one street at a time would get graded, and that was fun because the edge of each level grading made a nice drop to the next one. There was a decent water park nearby (first called Oasis and then Waterworld, now Hurricaine Harbor). My schools were nearly all too far away to ride a bike, but I tried it a few times. Once in middle school I didn't want to ride home in the heat so I let the air out my own tires and then went to the office to have them summon my mom. The road to Deer Valley high school went through Thunderbird Park and that was a tough climb and terrifying descent for a kid, it's since been re-graded into something much easier to drive. That pass added two miles, but going around Adobe dam added four, too much for a kid commute. At least that way there were some offroad trails to take. There was a pass through the hills on 47th Ave but it was gated off - that would now be blocked at the other end by the 101 as well. Later, visiting home from college, I'd explore the area north of the canal around Pyramid Peak.

Where did you ride when you were a kid? (See if you can keep yourself from any kids-these-days misanthropy or name-dropping your bike in your reply)