Originally Posted by
Hot Potato
I remember listening to the 69 world series with a small (for the time) handheld FM radio. I could strap it to the sissy bar (remember those things as a kid???) but the small speakers distorted terribly when you turned up the volume. I ended up holding the radio to my ear riding with one hand. I didn't have an ear plug, and I am not sure ear jacks were even standard then. But I bought a car when I was 16, so that the bike got very little use during the early years of portable music developement, I was too busy wiring up my 8 track.
I forget when the headset FM things came out. The first personal music player I had was a sony wlakman in cassette, mid 80's? Never used the walkman on the bike or, ahem, even walking around, it was for studying at the library. I guess locomotion, music, and I never was a winning combination.
I used to listen to ballgames all the time on my old AM/FM transistor radio...mostly on AM, on the bike or under my pillow for night games.
When the walkmans came out, it didn't take them long to come out with the 'sport' headphones (ear buds)...but the only walkman that was suitable for riding were the am/fm only jobs. Cassettes were too bulky and went through batteries too fast - and fogetaboud CDs...even bulkier and they skipped with every bump.
I remember wiring up the old 8-track to my first cars...thing is, driving didn't get me away from biking for long...I was always getting in trouble for drag racing, smoking, drinking, drugs, etc. and Dad would take the car keys from me...so my bike was still important to me!
Listening to music while riding really isn't any different that doing so while driving. Indeed, as a teen, the music in my car was much louder and impaired my hearing (and the hearing of anyone near me) much more than anything ever did riding a bike. I wonder how all these folks that consider hearing overtaking traffic as so important to safety manage to drive a car, where you can hear overtaking traffic even less than you can listening to music?