operator

What a story! Brings a tear to my eye.

Marge

this is a great story. thanks.

KirkeIsWaiting

Every year I asked, but every year I got new pajamas. Christmas meant writing the Santa letter asking for a bike. I realize now that would have never been possible. Who knew we were poor? We were just like everyone else. Our bikes were found parts and pieces but we loved them. They got us there. We couldn't wait to leave the house in the morning to explore. The neighborhood gang, the best bunch of friends. We went everywhere and no one worried about us being abducted. I bought my first real bike at 13 after spending the summer picking crops for about $3.50 a day. That's when I met the guys at the bike store that RACED.

Jump to Christmas 2005. I'm so excited to give my kid something I never had. A brand new Specialized bike and gear. I can't wait to see the look on his face. Enter the in-laws with a gameboy. The bike never had a chance. I went into my room and cried, probably like I did as kid so many Christmas' ago. Only this time it was for him. My own kid will never know what it's like to "want" and to finally grow up an realize you had all, afterall.

Marge

third of six kids growing up in New Jersey. dirt poor. Never owned a bike. learned to ride
from borrowing friends bikes. Joined Army when I was 18. Bought first bike when I was 20. Bike, heavy,clunky, ridiculous 3 speed from Western Auto. Loved it. Still have it. Don't ride it. Now big supporter of Bike Works (https://www.bikeworks.org/). Cause there's nothing as special as
getting your first bike.

ollo_ollo

1. When I was a little guy my friend John & I always had to walk our bikes up this big (relative term) hill on the way home from school. We always rode at it hard but ran out of steam really fast. One day just as I was almost at a standstill I swerved left & picked up speed! We had discovered zig zagging. Not much traffic back then (late 40s) but I remember being honked at & yelled at by drivers as we angled our way back & forth up that hill. Get outta the way kid. 2. When I was 12 or so, riding "double" out to the store for a coke with CarolAnn sitting crossways on the top tube of my Schwinn. 3. The time John & I made a tandem by removing his front wheel then bolting the fork onto the back axel of my little brother's bike. You really had to hang on when you rode stoker. It was pretty unstable & we crashed a lot. 4. Tire patches that you sealed by lighting them up with a match (bikes and fire, woo hoo!) Thanks for the memories.

DCCommuter

We had neighbors who were a cycling family before that was popular. My first bike was one of their cast-offs that I bought. I still remember the price: 35 cents.

One time, some friends goaded me into riding my bike off the end of a dock into about 4 ft of water. I had this vision of sailing like Evil Kneivel. My technique was not quite polished though, and my front wheel went down as soon as it went over the edge and I ended up flipping over and landing on my head on the bottom. I was picking sand out of my scalp for a long time. Lucky I didn't break my neck.

kid charlemagne

Man, I completely forgot about that movie. Radical dude!

Doctor Morbius

Mine are very similar to yours. I had a second hand Sky Blue Fastback Sting-Ray. I abused the living bejeezus out of that bike as did the previous owner and it still held up. Most kid's bikes today are junk in comparison.

I remember doing wheelies. Lots and lots of wheelies. Used to practice out in front of the house. Once I did a wheelie that was right at a quarter mile long. Seriously. It was my best ever. All the planets must have been in alignment or something becuase I was never able to duplicate that again. Made it a couple of blocks several times but never that long.

Personally, I think it's troubling that kids aren't riding like they used to. It's just a sign of the times I guess but I don't think they interact socially like we did when we were kids. There's a grade school about 1/2 mile from my house and it's shocking how many kids get shuttled back and forth. Too many young kids getting abducted these days I suppose.

Cyclist0383

When I was no older than 10 I had a Fuli Allegro. It was a black 10 or 12 speed. We had a very steep, long, hill in the neighborhood which I lived at the bottom of. One day the neighbor kid and I were racing each other down the hill, time after time, as we liked to do. It was the way kids had fun in the days before cable and video games. I was speeding down the hill, big chainring in front and small cog in back, just flying, when I lost it. I hit the pavement really hard, scooped myself up and relizied I could only see a tiny sliver of light! I could see my feet if I tiped my head the right way. I scooped up my bike and with the help of my friend made my way home.

My Father was home, Mom out for the day. Good ol' Dad asked my if I had all my teeth, which I did and sent me to bed! Blind and all. I think I also fractured my wrist that day, it still hurts from time to time to this day. Do you have all your teeth? Geez...

Grasschopper

I remember it all. First bike was black and had solid tires and training wheels. When that was no longer suitable I jumped on some nameless blue bike that was my sister's and was WAY too big for me, I could barely touch the pedals and couldn't touch the ground...also had stopping issues and ran into a telephone pole. That day my mom and dad took me to Pedals a LBS that no longer exists and bought me my first "real" bike which was a Ross BMX bike. It was red and had all of the BMX pad and everything. I rode that bike for several years and it was great. After that I got a Daimond Back BMX bike for my 9th birthday if I remember right (this was from John's Derailuers another LBS now called Eddy's) with was a racing bike and I did local BMX races. I remember it being chrome and it had blue checkered pads and blue mag wheels. We rode everywhere, school, downtown, friend's houses, parks, etc. Our neighborhood was pretty cool in that there was a series of alleys so we could ride a lot and not have to ride on the rodes. In these alleys we would build jumps with cinder blocks and boards we found around. I can't tell you how many times I fell and scraped up my hands and legs. Oh and in the 70s and 80s kids didn't wear helmets (other than BMX racing they made you there), none of us died. For my 12th or 13th birthday I got a Schwinn World Sport which was 12 SPEED This bike allowed me to ride farther than any before and I remember riding to soccer practice all the time. When I was 15 or 16 I bought a Specialized Hardrock Comp and started MTB racking. That bike got stolen out of a friend's car port one a sleep over one weekend when it was only 2 or 3 months old. Man that ticked me off. With the insurance money and some help from my mom to make up the difference I got a Giant ATX 760 but it was too large (the thought was that I was going to keep growing but I didn't) and I traded it in 6 months later for a KHS Montana Comp which I had converted from rapid fire back to XTR thumb shifters. I raced this bike for years and it was all tricked out with Ti this and Ringle hubs and on and on. Loved that bike and never should have sold it but did after about 4 or 5 years. Then I was off bikes for a while which brings us to about 4 years ago when I bought a Giant XTC SE2 which I never rode and traded last year for a bike for my wife, and then started to assemble my current stable.

clausen

I first learnt ride on the court we lived on. First day with training wheels on I went around and around the court. I start leaning into the corner when all of a sudden one of the training wheel get caught in sewer great. Well I go like super man over the handle bars. Pick my blody self up, look at dad as he's running over and say "Those training wheel don't work"

Travelinguyrt

6 or 7 yrs old, first bike for my 3 bros and I; orange, 2nd hand cost my father 5$ only one pedal.None of us could ride My father would lift us each on to the seat for our turn and push us down the lawn in front of our house. we would aim for a tree at the end of the lawn before the street started.
grab hold of the tree and get off instead of falling to the grass
Years later bought my first OWN bike, a red and white Monarch horn with batteries in the tank, knuckleuards, fox tails,lites front and rear. Paid 55$ for it with profits from my paper route.Rode it summer and winter, and pretended I was riding in Europe. Used to ride it to a small country airport, did odd jobs, one day the owner gave me my first ride in a Piper J-3, and I was hooked. Every 5$ I saved went for an hour flying lesson, then rode the bike back home. Rode that bike till I went off to boarding school. Have never forgotten that bike, nor my father helping us to learn to ride

MikeR

When I got into cycling as an adult, 40 year old memories came flooding back to me. I remembered that all my life I have had (and ignored) dreams that were reliving childhood bike routes to school, the ball park and around the old neighborhood. These long forgotten memories and ignored dreams became so vivid that one summer I took the most memorable bike ride of my adult life.

I went back to my old childhood town, in the old neighborhood that I had not seen in years. I parked my car in the shade of a fifty foot tree in front of the house I had grown up in. Then it dawned on me – I had helped my mom plant that seedling!

I unloaded my bike, road to the school, parked the bike in the schoolyard rack. Rode to the ball park and down the old woods trails (now a town park). Lastly I found the old “mom & pop” store that we used to ride to. It was still open so I went inside, bought an ice cream cone, sat outside on the steps next to my bike, and ate the cone – just like I was 10 again!

I’ll never have a ride like that one again – no matter where in the world I might go!

greenbreezer

When I was about 6 or 7 we lived in a brand new housing development (for you Bay Area folks, my parents paid a whopping $24,000 for their house, and they still live in it, too!). There was a big park still being constructed and I used to take my K-Mart bike out on the dirt mounds. Even after the park was done, I tried to ride everwhere except the pavement.

Then I graduated to those cool 10-speeds when I was in 6th grade or so. I remember my dad in the garage trying to straighten out the wheels cuz I kept taco-ing them. He'd say things like, "Whoever builds wheels strong enough to withstand your rides will be a rich man." About 15 years later mountain bikes became all the rage and I've never had to have a wheel straightened out again. My dad wishes he'd acted on his instinct and somehow came up with extra wide wheels. hahaha!

However my best memory is just riding everywhere. My mom would send me to the store about 4 miles away to buy some butter or dinner rolls. They'd be mushed by the time I got home, but what the hey, they still tasted the same. I would ride across town to visit my pals. Or ride to the library. Or just rode in areas where there were no cars. I loved exploring.

Sadly kids these days don't ride like we did. They're chauferred everywhere. And another thing: whenever we made a bonehead maneuver and ended up with road rash, fractured bones or whatever, our parents would declare that it was our fault for doing something stupid (which is sorta true). These days, parents blame the bike manufacturer, the city's street engineering committee, the mayor, police department, and anyone/anything that had the bad luck of being within 50 yards of the kid at the time of the accident.

KirkeIsWaiting

Great thread. I'm still laughing. Any one of these stories could have been my own.
Thanks Kid.

bikinglawyer

riding my father's old Raleigh 3 speed with the bell, fenders and whitewalls. Rode it eevrywhere--to school, to the store. I'd go entire days on that thing. Too bad he ran over it with the car.

bcspain

I was about 14 at the time (45 now). Had an old bike that had no brand name on it, single gear coaster brake thing, 26" wheels and tires about 2 inches wide. Someone had painted it with a brush. Mom bought it for $15 from a local junk shop, and I was delighted. Didn't have to walk everywhere anymore. Well, at the time, I had developed an interest in ham radio, and the only radio supply store was 20 miles away. Rode that old bike there several times, but one day on the way back I was coming down a particularly steep hill. This hill had a railroad track at the bottom with a little incline up to the track that made a great launch ramp. I decided that day that I was going to claim the all time record for jumping the tracks, so I hauled ass down that hill as hard as I could go. Hit the ramp, got probably 8 or 10 feet in the air, some great hang time, sailed all the way across the road, over the ditch and landed in the middle of a wild rose bush that was being supported by a barbed wire fence. Blew both tires, destroyed the front rim, bent the fork. Tore my clothes to shreds, was bleeding from tiny cuts from head to toe. Had to walk the 7 or 8 miles back home, took mom 3 hours to dig all the thorns out of my body, arms and legs. Took 2 bottles of mecurochrome (remember that stuff?) to dab all the spots. Guess what? I survived, and mom made me fix the bike myself. Asked me if I learned anything from the experience. Mean old trout...taught me that if I break something, I should fix it and try not to do stupid stuff. Today's mom's would have sued everyone from the bike manufacturer to the maker of the barbed wire, to the farmer that owned the fence (which I also had to help fix).

Yup, sure miss that old black bike.

my58vw

I did not like bikes when I was a kid...

When I was in middle school I used to ride my orange huffy MTB 10 speed to school in 7th and 8th grade. At least one a week someone would let the air out of my tires or pop the tube. I would cry then walk my bike 3 miles home. One day someone broke into our garage and stole the bike... I never owned a bike since then...

I now wish I still had that bike...

christie133

My grandma taught me how to ride a bike in the alley behind her house in Baltimore, where I grew up. It was a strawberry shortcake bike. Little did she know what a monster she was creating! She's dying now in a nursing home. I think I'm going to call her tomorrow to say thanks.

monogodo

My first bike was a yellow Schwinn 20" wheel bike. It had a diamond frame, but wasn't a BMX bike. I got it the same time my brother got his green 5-speed CCM road bike. I don't remember what happened to either of them.

My second bike was a 20" sting-ray type frame beater bike. I also bought a candy apple blue Team Mongoose BMX frame with the intention of building it up into a race bike, but my beater bike got stolen, ending that dream. I traded the Mongoose frame to my older brother for my next bike...

A Zebrakenko. I actually thought it was a good bike, until I went to work at a bike shop and learned otherwise. I think I threw it into the dumpster when I bought my first 'real' bike...

A Bianchi SLX frame I built up with Ultegra. It was a touch too small for me, but I got a great deal on it.


I then bought a used Colnago SL that I built up with random Campy & Campy compatible parts (Stronglight cranks, Dia Compe Super Record knock off brakes, Super Record FD, C-Record RD, Mavic hubs, Campy Ypsilon rims).


My first MTB was a 1990 Bianchi Grizzly. The main reason I bought it was because it didn't have any Shimano parts. It came with SunTour XC Pro w/ Grease Guard. It was a touch too big for me, but again, I got a great deal on it. I ended up selling it to my younger brother after his bike got stolen and I'd gotten a new MTB.

I then traded the Bianchi frame for my Vitus Futural and swapped all the parts over to it.

My brother bought one of Tommy Matush's old 7-Eleven Eddy Merckx TSX frames for $300 and gave it to me. I built it up with a blend of Campy (Croce d'Aune cranks, C-Record FD, Record Titanium RD, Chorus BB, C-Record Delta calipers, Record Titanium ErgoPower levers, Onza Mongo UFO headset, Cronometro wheels).

My last bike purchase was a Catamount MFS with Shimano LX. This is the only bike I ever paid retail for. All the others I either got employee discount on, or I got sweet deals on.


I still wish I had the Grizzly. That XC Pro drive train was the sweetest shifting setup I've ever run across. It probably helped that I had Cronometro wheels with a Shimano cassette with SunTour spacers.

HaagenDas

The sun is just going down here and I went for a walk out the front and watched some kid screaming up and down the footpath. He'd race down as fast as his little legs would pump, then hit his brakes.. the type you put the weight on backwards. He'd skid his little arse about one metre and look pretty happy with the results. Then he'd go and do it all again.

I guess one small difference between him and I as a child is, this kid didn't have his dad say "That would be at least another ten cents of rubber".

Gangrel

I remember going on (what i thought were LOOONG) 5 mileish rides with my mom.

I also remember going down a particularly steep hill, losing control, flipping over the handlebars (no helmet, i was lucky) sliding on my butt, then rolling on to my front as i stopped

still have scars on my shoulder and knuckles from it

khuon

I remember my first bike maintenance. I removed the training wheels off my blue Columbia single-speed cruiser myself after I got confident enough with riding a bike.

ElPresidente408

I remember a long time ago, I must of been around 10 years old or less. I had been riding with training wheels, but I wanted to ride without them. My dad took them off my bike and tried teaching me, but I just couldn't get it.

My next door neighbors had a sloped driveway. So I rolled my bike up to the top and tried to coast down. I fell a few times, but finally I was able to coast down to the street. It wasn't long before I started peadling and going on my own.

I remember being little (not allowed off the block), and going up and down the same street for litterally an hour or two in the summer. That's where my obsession started haha

Marge

And another thing: whenever we made a bonehead maneuver and ended up with road rash, fractured bones or whatever, our parents would declare that it was our fault for doing something stupid (which is sorta true). These days, parents blame the bike manufacturer, the city's street engineering committee, the mayor, police department, and anyone/anything that had the bad luck of being within 50 yards of the kid at the time of the accident.
isn't that the truth? what the heck happened?