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    Do you remember your first bike?

    Do you remember that feeling of getting it, and that first ride?

    #2
    Do you remember your first bike?

    Are we in the land of metaphor here?

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      #3
      Do you remember your first bike?

      Let's say yes, and I'll answer "Yes I do, and it was a bloody quick ride. Happily, I got back on quickly".

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        #4
        Do you remember your first bike?

        I remember both my first rides - actual and metaphorical - as if they happened yesterday.

        My Dad was steadying me and giving me encouragement ... then I looked around and he was 30 yards back ... classic "Dad teaches son how to ride a bike" stuff.

        He wasn't there for my metaphorical first one, except in a kind of DNA way and the fact that his hard-earned dosh was helping to send me through polytechnic where the deed was done. But anyway ... I must admit that it was a disappointing affair for both participating parties.

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          #5
          Do you remember your first bike?

          Fourth birthday present. Yellow. Had supporting wheels for a short time, then ordered them taken off.

          The memory of my first bicycle is a bit hazier.

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            #6
            Do you remember your first bike?

            You know how Raleigh made the Chopper? Everyone knows the Chopper. Motorbike-style seat, groovy U-shaped handlebars, front wheel smaller than the back, gear stick on the crossbar. It's an icon. You can get fucking T-shirts of it.

            You know how they also made the Chipper, a smaller but essentially identical version for smaller kids?

            What most people don't remember, however, is that they made an even smaller version, the Budgie. When I was about 7 years old, my family deemed that I was too young for a Chopper, or even a Chipper, but got me a fucking Budgie instead, in purple.

            It was OK at first, I suppose. I learned to ride on that thing, first with stabilisers, then with them taken off. (My stepdad did the thing of running along behind me holding the seat, then let me go without telling me, and when I looked round and he wasn't there, I fell off. Fortunately on grass.)

            My best memories of that piece-of-shit bike are doing Evel Knievel stunts with it in the back lane behind our house. Me and all the other neighbourhood kids used to gather bits of scrap wood and piles of bricks and build huge, teetering ramps and go bombing down the lane doing jumps. The sort of DIY, dangerous fun that kids don't seem to get up to any more.

            But it wasn't the kind of bike you could grow into, and we weren't the kind of family who could afford a new bike every year. So, as I got older, I very quickly had to start riding it with my knees sticking outwards like a fucking circus clown (a look which is all cool and street and hip hop these days of course, but not in the 1970s), and then abandon it altogether before I became a total fucking laughing stock.

            I didn't get another bike till I was 14, and by that time it was a proper grown-up bike, also a Raleigh, essentially what we would now group under the heading 'mountain bike' (basically a sturdy, racer-shaped bike but with straight handlebars, not the drop ones). Cycled that to school every day, and invariably had to wheel the fucker home by hand because someone had unscrewed and stolen the little link chain off the gears when I left it in the bike sheds. (Did people do that at your school? Absolute cunts.)

            But I always resented not having a Chopper/Chipper. One day I ought to scratch that itch, I suppose, but I do see 30something/40something blokes on Choppers occasionally and I immediately think "You twat", so maybe not.

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              #7
              Do you remember your first bike?

              My first bike was hand built by my sister-in-law's dad. It was blue, with a fixed wheel, and it went like a bastard. It had no back brake, relying on my remembering to kick the pedals hard when I wanted to stop.

              I came off that bike at least once a day for the first month I had it.

              I remember putting a speedometer on it, and getting up to 55 mph going downhill on a road with a huge incline in the Bearsden area. I was shitting myself. I must have been about 13.

              Then my brother ran into a wall on it, and it was goodbye bike.

              I cant remember when I learned to ride a bike. It must have been on a friends, as I already knew how long before I actually got one.

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                #8
                Do you remember your first bike?

                I don't remember much about my first bike, but I do remember the first time I rode it without stabilisers. I went hurtling along the pavement for a few seconds with a very self-satisfied look on my face, before going headlong into a rose bush and emerging like something from a war film.

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                  #9
                  Do you remember your first bike?

                  Wow, I thought this thread would be a ten-pager.

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                    #10
                    Do you remember your first bike?

                    It was called a Kelly Dragonfly. It was blue and I rode it into a rosebush. This happened about the same time as I threw an iron bar into the air and it landed on my head. I assume both experiences were quite painful but I remember very little about either of them.

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                      #11
                      Do you remember your first bike?

                      I've never owned a bicycle. That's southeast London deprivation right there.

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                        #12
                        Do you remember your first bike?

                        I never ever had a bike as a kid.

                        Not one that was mine, anyway. There was a Triang folding bike (sparkly green) that my Mum used for shopping and I could just about ride from about age 10 or 11.

                        Then my brother had a red one with front suspension, that was knackered long before I was officially supposed to have it handed down to me.

                        So on occasions when the gang went out on bikes for the day, up to the woods or whatever, I'd find myself riding my sister's pink one (of course, even in the glam rock era, this caused much mirth/pisstaking), or my brother's red one (at risk of a battering if he came home and required it at any intervening moment), or this rusty triang folder.

                        In my 30s I bought several £99 mountain bikes (one after another, I mean-due to theft) and it was only when musing on what to treat myself to for my 40th that I finally got a bike that was special and actually mine (an electric blue Cinelli Proxima).

                        There's no doubt some childhood trauma, or at least sense of injustice, involved at the root of my adult cycling obsession.

                        Thus, as the OTF peloton know from previous threads in 'sport'-I spent the whole £3000+ insurance cheque after getting hit by a car on a full-carbon, black n tangerine Orbea Orca.

                        I blame the parents.

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                          #13
                          Do you remember your first bike?

                          First one would have been some weedy little thing with stabilisers.

                          The second one I remember a lot more, bright red BMX, with red tires, and various stickers, go-faster stripes and reflective thingybobs out of packs of Frosties. Rode it everywhere. My Grandad gave it to me - happy days.

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                            #14
                            Do you remember your first bike?

                            But I always resented not having a Chopper/Chipper.

                            If I'd known that at the time, I'd have given you mine (it wasn't a Chopper, it was the cheaper "Hi-Riser" made by Vindec, but it looked like a Chopper).

                            Round our way, second gear on Choppers was referred to as "slip gear", i.e. the gear in which you ended pedalling like fuck and going nowhere. I'm sure people who understand these things could have solved the problem in a trice, but I was, and still am, absolutely useless with my hands. And, I thought, having one gear fewer than you should is no big deal anyway.

                            It was during a bike race with a few of my mates that I discovered just how big a deal it was. During a downhill stretch with a gradient of something like 1:3 (it was probably a gentle slope, but to my ten-year-old self it was like riding off a cliff), my knee banged against the gear lever (the Hi-Riser had a handle rather than a knob, which made it seem more "gear lever" than "gear stick"), thus knocking it into "slip".

                            Just like even the best footballer will fall over on his arse when he kicks thin air instead of the ball, most cyclists will come a cropper when they inadvertently put their bike into "slip". I was no exception and finally came to a halt after sliding for about twenty yards on my lower jaw.

                            And so, for the last thirty-odd years I've had a scar the size of a postage stamp on my chin. You can hardly see it, as it's under, rather than on, my jawline. However, if I do a Mussolini impersonation, it rises up out of nowhere, making me look all rugged and dangerous, in a "Stephen Hendry when he had acne scars" sort of way.

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                              #15
                              Do you remember your first bike?

                              My step-brothers, who I used to see on Sundays, had Grifters. I was dead jealous of them, and used to take it in turns to have a go. You could go 'scrambling' round mud-tracks on them cos they looked and felt like moto-cross bikes.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                Do you remember your first bike?

                                I had a Grifter. It was second hand and my birthday present for my 6th or 7th birthday. My Dad took the grip shift off and replaced it with a normal clicker as I kept coming off trying to do wheelies and slipping the gears.

                                my first bike was a blue one. That's all I can tell you. Learned to ride in my mate's back garden at about 4 I suppose.

                                After the Grifter I got all my family to chip in for birthday and Xmas and got an Amaco team Sprint like this one:-



                                I upgraded bits of it over time so it had pegs, a laid-back, kick-tail, whitewall tyres etc. We used to go up the local quarter pipe or over the school in gangs of seemingly hundreds and try to kill ourselves on jumps or play massive games of Roundup (essentially a cross between British Bulldog and Tag but on bikes.)

                                when someone managed to crack my frame for me failing to land a massive ariel on the pipe, I bought the best bike ever - a Haro Freestyler Series 1 - off one of the older BMX'ers for £50. I later realised that the money went on smack, but at the time it seemed like a sound investment of all my savings.
                                I've still got the Haro (whose name was Gertie after Drew Barymore's character in ET) in bits in my Mum's garage somewhere.

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  Do you remember your first bike?

                                  A big metal tricycle, pillar box red. It could go in reverse. And it had a boot (a trunk, for Americans). I loved it. One day I took my teddies for a ride but got ambushed and the bastards on my street raided my boot, chucked my teddies in a puddle. Then mocked me.

                                  By the time I was six I had a proper two wheeler. A Pavemaster, which I used to ride no-handed (admittedly with hands hovering about two inches above the handlebars) and a cigarette voucher attached to the frame by a wooden clothes peg in order to generate an exciting "Motor" sound.

                                  At about the same time my red and blue Pavemaster arrived my tricycle disappeared, though spookily a kid at the end of my road became proud owner of an identical tricycle which had been subject to a really shyte white paint job. Being a sensitive soul I made sure never to raid his boot looking for ways to humiliate him.

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                                    #18
                                    Do you remember your first bike?

                                    hobbes wrote:
                                    ... I bought the best bike ever - a Haro Freestyler Series 1...
                                    I've still got the Haro (whose name was Gertie after Drew Barymore's character in ET) in bits in my Mum's garage somewhere.
                                    I reckon you should drag it back out of the garage:

                                    Look here

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      Do you remember your first bike?

                                      Grifters were like BMXes before BMXes existed.

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                                        #20
                                        Do you remember your first bike?

                                        I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was 12. When I did, it was on the same bike my dad had been trying to get me to ride for about the previous 8 years, which was one of these:



                                        Exactly that colour, too. Oh what memories. As a reward for learning to ride my grandma bought me a DiamondBack Wildwood (1996 model if I remember rightly, I can't find a decent picture) which accumulated some lovely stuff because I upgraded everything on it bar - being a teenager and not having the money to - the frame, forks and headset. At the time it was bought I was small for my age and was meant to grow into it over the next few years. And typically, I promptly had a growth spurt - going from shortest kid in my class to third tallest in the space of 8 months - and it was rendered just slightly too small for me for most of its subsequent use, though not annoyingly so - I just whacked the saddle right up.

                                        I always wanted to replace it with a Kona when I got a gap year job, but when I got said job and had the money to do so, I no longer had the time to ride any more. Nor have I had since. When I return from Argentina (whenever that might be) I've already promised myself I'm getting me a Kona. I'll have plenty of time to ride in Buenos Aires but I'm going nowhere near a bicycle with those motorists. Not to mention the lack of hills.

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                                          #21
                                          Do you remember your first bike?

                                          My first was a Bond. It was orange, and instead of having brakes you had to pedal backwards to stop. So when I upgraded to a Budgie, I tried the same trick, and ended up riding it down some steps. I'm sure my Dad did that on purpose.

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                                            #22
                                            Do you remember your first bike?

                                            My mate had a Raleigh Striker with back-pedal brake.
                                            It was mint for doing skids.

                                            Comment


                                              #23
                                              Do you remember your first bike?

                                              I remember my first bike. Sturdy, strong yet elegant in design. It was also light, perfect for carrying over rugged scapes, lugging over cross-country courses or generally running away from the kid I stole it from.

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                                                #24
                                                Do you remember your first bike?

                                                Twilight Johnny Atom wrote:
                                                hobbes wrote:
                                                ... I bought the best bike ever - a Haro Freestyler Series 1...
                                                I've still got the Haro (whose name was Gertie after Drew Barymore's character in ET) in bits in my Mum's garage somewhere.
                                                I reckon you should drag it back out of the garage:

                                                Look here
                                                Oh god. WANT.

                                                Comment


                                                  #25
                                                  Do you remember your first bike?

                                                  My first proper adult bike was a brand new Carlton Corsa Strada given to me as a Christmas present when I was about 11 or 12.

                                                  I remember two thoughts. Firstly "This is the most astonishingly beautiful thing I have ever seen", and "how the hell can mom and dad afford to buy me that?"

                                                  Mine was Lagoon Blue I remember, which if memory serves was a lighter shade of blue than the one shown on the webpage.

                                                  For some reason I found the hand painted words 'Corsa Strada' on the frame especially thrilling. I mean it was in a foreign language and everything! How exotic was that? This despite the fact that the bike was made in Worksop.

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