your first bicycle

On 24 Feb 2004 18:59:22 -0800, [email hidden] (Tanya)

Quoted message said:

Hi, Just wondering what people's fond memories of their first childhood bicycle are. I remember
mine was shiny and red, and braking was by pedalling backwards. It screwed me up when I got a later
bike with handbrakes. I have a pic of it on my blog at crazybikerchick.blogspot.comcrazybikerchick.blogspot.comOpen ↗

Blue, with blue tires (!), BMX style, with handbrake front and coaster back.

-Luigi

24 Feb 2004 18:59:22 -0800,
<[email hidden]>,

(Tanya) said:

Hi, Just wondering what people's fond memories of their first childhood bicycle are. I remember
mine was shiny and red, and braking was by pedalling backwards. It screwed me up when I got a later
bike with handbrakes. I have a pic of it on my blog at crazybikerchick.blogspot.comcrazybikerchick.blogspot.comOpen ↗

Tanya

I've always figured a collection of "first bike" stories would be cool to read. I save them when
they appear here.

A good thread from Oct. 2000 (my favourite is the one about the bell) tinyurl.comyqovaOpen ↗
--
zk

"Tanya" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hi, Just wondering what people's fond memories of their first childhood bicycle are. I remember
mine was shiny and red, and braking was by pedalling backwards. It screwed me up when I got a
later bike with handbrakes. I have a pic of it on my blog at crazybikerchick.blogspot.comcrazybikerchick.blogspot.comOpen ↗

I learned to ride on a rusty red garage sale reject, but I don't consider that one to really be my
bike. The first bike that claimed my soul was an apple green three speed Huffy, which I got when I
hit third grade and, based on the school's policies, was old enough to ride to school. It looked
something like this: fredhaj.tripod.comhuffybaypointepage.htmlOpen ↗.

I rode that bike throughout my elementary and through much of my junior high school years. I rode to
the 7-11, the local shopping center, the library, the local pool, the community center for fencing
lessons, my piano lessons, my friends' houses -- just about anywhere of interest within a four or so
mile radius.

If I ever get a custom bike and my own choice of paint jobs, I think I might pick apple green.

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was you."

In article <a1V_b.53656$Xp.254926@attbi_s54>,

Claire Petersky said:

I learned to ride on a rusty red garage sale reject,

Same here. An old CCM gaspipe coaster-brake thingie. And y'know what? I just realized that paint job
was auto primer! Oh well. I do remember really riding it on the third go in the back yard, with my
oldest brother supporting me by the saddle until he, unbeknownst by me, let go. After that, nothing
was safe from me. Training wheels be damned.

...

Quoted message said:

If I ever get a custom bike and my own choice of paint jobs, I think I might pick apple green.

I'm subject to the allurements of the Trek 520, too (although they call it "rainforest" green, and
it ain't so custom). Marinoni does (did?) a nice yellow/green fade.

cheers, Tom

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[point] bc [point] ca

A girls' Schwinn bike, vintage 1940-1945 with a "tank" and rust spots. My dad painted it blue. My
folks wouldn't let me have a bike until we moved to the suburbs when I was 10, and the bike was
used. I had wanted a real two-wheeler for years, but it wasn't safe to ride a bike where we lived
before. I rode it for maybe two years, but then I found out that riding a bike in junior high wasn't
cool. Didn't ride again for 30 years or so.

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Directors of the Great Western Railway

"Zoot Katz" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

24 Feb 2004 18:59:22 -0800, <[email hidden]>,

(Tanya) said:

Hi, Just wondering what people's fond memories of their first

childhood

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

bicycle are. I remember mine was shiny and red, and braking was by pedalling backwards. It
screwed me up when I got a later bike with handbrakes. I have a pic of it on my blog at
crazybikerchick.blogspot.comcrazybikerchick.blogspot.comOpen ↗

Tanya

I've always figured a collection of "first bike" stories would be

cool

Quoted message said:

to read. I save them when they appear here.

A good thread from Oct. 2000 (my favourite is the one about the

bell)

Quoted message said:

tinyurl.comyqovaOpen ↗
--
zk

I learned on a hand-me-down Schwinn Typhoon circa 1964, but the first bike that was really mine was
an orange 1967 or '68 Schwinn Stingray Deluxe with a silver seat and a two speed kickback hub. 9
years old, cruising around Seal Beach CA. I loved that bike.

What almost all the kids rode back then. I was eight, it was 1965, and it was what they would
probably now call a cruiser bike. Red, coaster brakes, wide tires.

I rode it to school, and, not yet knowing how much evil lurks in the world, left it unlocked in the
bike rack. One day, it was gone when I came out. I'd probably had it less than a year. My parents
eventually bought me another one, but I'm not sure how long it took. Maybe another year.

It wasn't my parents who taught me to ride, but the kid next door, who was one year older than me. I
loved riding around with my friends.

(Tanya) said:

Hi, Just wondering what people's fond memories of their first childhood bicycle are. I remember
mine was shiny and red, and braking was by pedalling backwards. It screwed me up when I got a later
bike with handbrakes. I have a pic of it on my blog at crazybikerchick.blogspot.comcrazybikerchick.blogspot.comOpen ↗

Tanya

Red and white Murray with coaster brake in maybe 1963.

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the Texas Elvis"------------------
__________306.350.357.38>>[email hidden]__________

On 24 Feb 2004 18:59:22 -0800, [email hidden] (Tanya)

Quoted message said:

Just wondering what people's fond memories of their first childhood bicycle are.

Warning: Rambling post. Ineffective memory. Bike-un-saavy dad.

I can't remember my first bike. The first bike I can remember, which I think was my second bike, was
a [murray? kent? huffy?] with knobby tires, ten speeds, coaster brake, _and_ hand brakes. Wait, no,
I'm confused...I think the ten-speed (which otherwise fits that description) did not have the
coaster brake -- unless my dad disconnected the coaster-brake arm for me. I seem to remember him
doing that on the bike that had both hand brakes and coaster brake.

Nevermind, not only can I not tell you what my first bike was, but also my second and third. Any one
or two of those three could be imaginary. I can remember seeing the ten-speed off-road bike, and I
can remember being impressed with (and riding) the bike with the coaster brake AND the hand brakes.
I think that may have been the same bike, or maybe not.

Thinking about it more, I now remember it (they?) was (were) preceded by one or more 'bmx'
huffy/murray/kent bikes that I rode very fast, did lots of jumps with, got a permanent scar on my
knee with, crashed a lot, destroyed quickly, and so on.

Ooh, now I can remember the final two bikes of my youth. One was a Huffy mountain bike, black, with
a black plastic cover on the chainrings; shortly after I got it, somebody else who lives nearby got
the same one, and I was called a poser. Then, when that was sufficiently destroyed, I bought (with
my own money, IIRC) a Royce Union "hybrid"; flat bars, thumb shifters, narrow knobby tires with a
very narrow smooth centerline, weighed about as much as me. That lasted me until I was 16 and bent
the fork playing with the front brake in a parking lot. I waited nearly a year and got a car.

I was, er, pretty tough on bikes. My dad was inept at fixing them, which was okay, because I got a
new department-store bike nearly every two years (sometimes one year).

Come to think of it, I was pretty tough on my first two cars too. Nowadays I'm a little less rough,
which is too bad, since I now have a mountain bike and a pickup truck that can handle the rough
life... but it's good that I don't destroy my nice road bike.
--
Rick Onanian

Tanya said:

Hi, Just wondering what people's fond memories of their first childhood bicycle are. I remember
mine was shiny and red, and braking was by pedalling backwards. It screwed me up when I got a
later bike with handbrakes. I have a pic of it on my blog at crazybikerchick.blogspot.comcrazybikerchick.blogspot.comOpen ↗

Got no pic but it was a swell bike!

Black and white, fixed gearing (I was ahead of my time at age 6) with no coasting, no brakes AFAIR,
hard rubber tires (no tubes), and fringed saddle bags and *rife case*. Slid a Winchester '98 cap
rifle in there. As macho as a bike could possibly get!

Motorists gave me a wide berth.

SMH

On 24 Feb 2004 18:59:22 -0800, [email hidden] (Tanya)

Quoted message said:

Just wondering what people's fond memories of their first childhood bicycle are.

A Schwinn, 24" wheels, red, single speed. Learned to ride it in the hills over Ziegelhausen,
Germany in 1958. A few weeks later I found out that roads in Germany sometimes turn into stairs
without warning.

Curtis L. Russell Odenton, MD (USA) Just someone on two wheels...

my first bicycle was a rusty clunky bike that my oldest brother bought for me with his own money in
1951. it was hard as hell to pedal.. but $5 was a lot of money for a 17 year old in those days and i
will always honor my brother for taking care of his lil brother.. i delivered papers with it.. had
to push it up every hill because gearing was so bad.. but i still have fond memories of it 'cause of
my brother; who turns 70 in June and is still going strong.. as i am with a new Giant aluminum frame
hybrid which I enjoy a lot.

Cheers

Don

"Tanya" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hi, Just wondering what people's fond memories of their first childhood bicycle are. I remember
mine was shiny and red, and braking was by pedalling backwards. It screwed me up when I got a
later bike with handbrakes. I have a pic of it on my blog at crazybikerchick.blogspot.comcrazybikerchick.blogspot.comOpen ↗

Tanya

=v= A black Schwinn cruiser (I'm the guy on the right):

things.orgschwinns.jpgOpen ↗

I was expected to grow into it, so I had some difficulty getting away from the training wheels.
Eventually a kid down the street let me try out his much smaller bike (we called them "minibikes"
then), and once I got the hang of it, well, I never stopped. <_Jym_

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

Hi, Just wondering what people's fond memories of their first childhood bicycle are. I remember
mine was shiny and red, and braking was by pedalling backwards. It screwed me up when I got a
later bike with handbrakes. I have a pic of it on my blog at crazybikerchick.blogspot.comcrazybikerchick.blogspot.comOpen ↗

Started around age 5 with (like many others here) a red 1-speed with a coaster brake, from
Sears IIRC.

2nd bike, received at around age 9 or so was a blue 5-speed "Spider", with 4 tubes for the top tube
and hand brakes. I put a ton of miles on that one around town.

3rd bike was a yellow Montgomery Ward (are they still around?) 10-speed which I got sometime during
junior high, and rode through about my senior year in college. Put lots of miles on that one, and
it's the one I learned bicycle wrenching on, as I took it apart down to the last bearing) and then
put it back together several times.

4th bike, which I still have on my trainer, was a too-big Schwinn LeTour III which I got during my
senior year in college, in exchange for an HP- 67 programmable calculator.

5th bike, and my current main ride is a 2003 Fuji Touring, about which I've posted lots of info
here. Pictures of it are at users.ids.netcycling.htmOpen ↗. Note that the pix are
fairly big.

--
Remove the ns_ from if replying by e-mail (but keep posts in the newsgroups if possible).

In article said:

my first bicycle was a rusty clunky bike that my oldest brother bought for me with his own money
in 1951. it was hard as hell to pedal.. but $5 was a lot of money for a 17 year old in those days
and i will always honor my brother for taking care of his lil brother.. i delivered papers with
it.. had to push it up every hill because gearing was so bad.. but i still have fond memories of
it 'cause of my brother; who turns 70 in June and is still going strong.. as i am with a new Giant
aluminum frame hybrid which I enjoy a lot.

Cheers

Don

"Tanya" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hi, Just wondering what people's fond memories of their first childhood bicycle are. I remember
mine was shiny and red, and braking was by pedalling backwards. It screwed me up when I got a
later bike with handbrakes. I have a pic of it on my blog at crazybikerchick.blogspot.comcrazybikerchick.blogspot.comOpen ↗

Tanya

Same here, my first bike was a second hand bike from a friend of ours. I guess it makes sense in a
way, kids grow really fast, but of course I wanted a new bike. IT was kind of old and clunky as
well. The next one I got was also second hand, from a cousin. Finally, I got a cool new banana-seat
one when I was about ten.

Well, there was my first bike as a kid, and that is what you asked about, but I don't know that my
story would be interestingly different from anyone else.

I have more memories of the bike that got me started again as an adult, about fifteen years ago. I
was in my early thirties, and hadn't ridden since I was about twenty. Badly needed to lose weight,
and needed some kind of exercise. I went to a bike shop and got the cheapest thing they had, a
Schwinn "Neu-Citi". Ten speed friction shifting, rubber block pedals, one piece "Ashtabula"
crankset, 26 x
1.5 inch tires that were not really knobby and not really slick. Raised handlebars, of course.

Because I didn't have any bicycling friends then, I didn't know that you couldn't do any serious
riding on a bike like that, so I went ahead and did it anyway. Did rides of up to 70 miles in hilly
terrain, commuted 22 miles round trip almost every work day, even through much of the winter. I
loved that bike, but I eventually learned enough to want something a bit better. Two years later I
bought a mid-range hybrid, a couple of years after that I got my first road bike.

The old Schwinn has a home with a friend who doesn't ride much, but sometimes uses it to go out
riding with his kids.

[email hidden] (Tanya) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Hi, Just wondering what people's fond memories of their first childhood bicycle are. I remember
mine was shiny and red, and braking was by pedalling backwards. It screwed me up when I got a
later bike with handbrakes. I have a pic of it on my blog at crazybikerchick.blogspot.comcrazybikerchick.blogspot.comOpen ↗

Tanya

My first vehicle was a red go cart, about age 4!

My first bike was a red cruiser-style with coaster brake. I got it for Christmas one year. My dad
had a general store then, and hid it in the back, except I found it one day! Of course, he denied it
was my bike, but it showed up under the tree anyway!

I remember learning to ride it without the training wheels, falling into a huge pampas grass
bush over and over again. I got cut really badly from that bush, but managed to finally balance
on my own!

I also remember riding an old green ladies' cruiser with balloon tires, which belonged to my
grandfather.

Probably my favorite kid bike was a purple Huffy five-speed with a banana-seat! I got it in the
third grade. The shifter was mounted on the top tube, and had a huge black plastic handle. (Looking
back I see it was probably a knock-off of the Schwinn Orange Krate). Got my first road rash racing
that bike, and the scar is still there.

Horatio

Quoted post said:

Originally posted by Tanya
Hi,
Just wondering what people's fond memories of their first childhood bicycle are.

Tanya

Mine was a Schwinn StingRay Fastback with a 5 speed stick shift on the top tube, and a banana seat...

Okay, I'll play.

My first new bike (not a hand-me-down) was one of the first production Raleigh Choppers. My parents
were big Raleigh dealers at the time, so they got one of the first ones off the line. Here's an
example (except mine was Road Runner orage):

rnlawrence.btinternet.co.ukbluemk1chopper.jpgOpen ↗

The saddle springs, the high bars, the small front tire, and the *indexed* shifter on the top tubes
made it stand out. But it was not very rugged. The saddle would separate from the seatpost, the
chain would drop and get hopelessly jammed, and the handlebars would rotate freely in the stem with
little provocation.

After about a year, it was trashed, and I got a Bertin 10-speed with 24" wheels. I never looked
back. Raleigh, in its wisdom, is re-releasing the Chopper to torture another generation of kids:

cnn.combritain.chopper.reutOpen ↗

--
terry morse Palo Alto, CA terrymorse.combikeOpen ↗