how old were you?
- Thread starter masterpoop63
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I started riding tricycles at about 2 and taught myself to ride a 26" bike at 5.
I had two older brothers, so I had to built my first bike at 8 and about 2 months later somebody stole it,
built it out of spare parts from the neighborhood kids spare parts. This was about 1965 so I had the first banana seat and high rise handlebars on the block.
Built a bunch more before I stoped when I got my first car 1975 and strated again when I lost my license at 22. I learned to keep a bike around after that, going on pub crawls are a lot more fun now.
I had two older brothers, so I had to built my first bike at 8 and about 2 months later somebody stole it,
built it out of spare parts from the neighborhood kids spare parts. This was about 1965 so I had the first banana seat and high rise handlebars on the block.
Built a bunch more before I stoped when I got my first car 1975 and strated again when I lost my license at 22. I learned to keep a bike around after that, going on pub crawls are a lot more fun now.
My first ride was a Murray tricycle, my dad made me a trailer for it out of a metal milk crate and another trike axle! My first 2 wheeler was ripped off after a day or two. We soon moved, and I picked out a Columbia All American, a 20" banana seat bike, non-canti, white with red fenders and red & blue decals. That was spring of '77, so I was 6. It wasn't very long before I took the fenders off, and the decals. I don't recall when I first noticed bikes out on the curb for bulk item pickup, but soon started dragging them home. And in the summer of 1980, I fell in love with a very rusty 1956 Schwinn Corvette, bought at a neighborhood garage sale, for $2.50! And I still have that bike! -Adam :mrgreen:
my first bike at 5 yrs. old was an old green sting ray that was pieced together. it had the apes, but an old saddle that was missing the cover, just a pan left. it was stolen around 1981 or 82. my dad dragged a mongoose motomag home from a police auction that was completely covered in blue house paint. we repainted it and put it all back together. one of my favorite bikes, until it was also stolen. after that i started bulding my own for myself and my brothers. so i guess i started bulding around 8-9 yrs old.(still build mongooses too)
probaly about 13 or so when i really tried anything more than just riding whatever bike i had. i had only had like 2 bikes up to that time so it was as often as not that i didn't have a bike at all. at 12 my father got me one of those iversons that had the split handlebars that i messed up, so i found a frame to put the parts on and it kinda went from there.
It all started on a Big Wheel for me. I tore through so many of them that my parents told me I was getting to big for them. I think they got tired of replacing them.
My grandparents got me a Huffy when I was 4 or 5 and I rode around on the training wheels. I begged to get them things off and it worked. My dad pushed me down a small hill and I never went down. I pedeled all around the neighbourhood like a natural.
After this he said I wasn't going to ride a Huffy. I was hurt. The next thing I know we were going to the bike shops and ended up with a Hutch Pro Street. The only thing I have left of it is the wheel covers.
Over the years I have had too many bikes. Most of them are gone, but I still have one from when I was 12. I am in the process of cleaning it up for use again.
Nowadays, I can't ride anything with a small frame because my knee clicks with every revolution (from a previous wipe out on a bike). I am happy with larger bikes, but it makes me feel older for sure. I am 27 in a few weeks.
My grandparents got me a Huffy when I was 4 or 5 and I rode around on the training wheels. I begged to get them things off and it worked. My dad pushed me down a small hill and I never went down. I pedeled all around the neighbourhood like a natural.
After this he said I wasn't going to ride a Huffy. I was hurt. The next thing I know we were going to the bike shops and ended up with a Hutch Pro Street. The only thing I have left of it is the wheel covers.
Over the years I have had too many bikes. Most of them are gone, but I still have one from when I was 12. I am in the process of cleaning it up for use again.
Nowadays, I can't ride anything with a small frame because my knee clicks with every revolution (from a previous wipe out on a bike). I am happy with larger bikes, but it makes me feel older for sure. I am 27 in a few weeks.
About 7 I got my first bmx. At 12 (1987) my dad got me a gt performer that I still have. At 16 got a license and forgot about bikes completely. This past may pulled a 1984 se henderson out of the trash sold it and it's all over. Probaly have about 20 bikes now from yardsales ads etc. Keep the good stuff flip the others for a few bikes. All in all alot cheaper then my other interests of motorcycles and cars :lol:
Riding since 1993ish and tinkering since the summer of 2007 when I was 14.
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I've had a few stolen in my early days, but I started going overkill to keep them safe, I started using log chain and big master magnum locks. Never had a problem with it, now I just have a small tin shed with a cheap lock and neighbor has dogs .........makes enough noise to let me know to load the .45 or the 12 gauge. :mrgreen: Only had one thief try to steal and I put an arrow out of my compound bow through the side of the shed (and into my tire :x) scaring the tar out of him and I haven't seen anyone go near my shed since. And if they ever got inside the shed the avalanche of bikes would probably take them out anyway. :mrgreen:
When I was about 13, I got a used coppertone sting-ray back in the ealry '70s. I'd take apart the front hub for no apparent reason other than boredom and whilst putting it back together the bearings would fall out. I couldn't find them on the floor, so i just left them out. I remember riding without a chain guard and those wide bell bottoms getting stuck on the chain and looping half way round the sprocket.:roll:
Spin
Spin
The Death Machine: A True Story
Man, good times, good times. My first and only bike for a long time, my parents bought at a tag sale when I was 2 1/2... I started riding it when I was 4, 1973 when we moved to a house on a much safer dead-end road with a long driveway. Before that I had an AMF tricycle, the kind with the large (16"?) front tire, solid rubber- also a yard sale find. My little brother got a new but much smaller Radio Flyer trike a little later.
The first bike was a black 20" Ross, with dual top-tubes and dual canti tubes in the frame, 4 small tubes, a frame they used later for Stingray type models, predecessors to the Barracuda. It had full chrome fenders, a coaster brake, some white graphics that were illegible on the frame. Inexplicably it had 10-spd type drop-bars turned upside down- weird and I never did get an explanation for why it was like that.
In about 1976, the other kids on the street started getting cool BMX and bicentennial bikes. I remember one kid at the end of the road having a coppertone Stingray, fenderless, but he never let anyone near it, so I'm not sure that it was actually a Schwinn. Another older kid had a 2-speed Typhoon, red, and I never believed him until much more recently that it had a 2-speed rear wheel... it did and I would love to find that one today. We beat on it in the fields behind their house.
Pretty much anything became a BMX bike and got ridden plenty in the woods. Fenders came off, chainguards came off, we found any kind of tall bars, especially with a crossbar to put pads on, and knobby tires. Preferably not gumwalls but somewhere along this time, my ugly Ross gained a whitewall front tire. I think it had an S-7 wheel because I remember struggling mightily to get a tire on it. Probably my cheap dad bought a wheel at a yard sale.
I never had a new bmx bike. The Ross became one though- stripped down, a Carlisle Thorn-Proof diamond-tread knobby on the rear, and a tall seat post and skinny seat borrowed from a 10speed. I rode as fast as the other kids on their fake-shock, plastic-fendered Huffys and jumped off a lot of home-made plywood ramps.
I also built a lot of model cars, and had plenty of paints around in small jars... one day the Ross gained some silver tiger stripes and the words "The Death Machine" on the down tube! Another time, given lots of after-school time and my dad's well-stocked shop, I build a bracket out of angle aluminum and old lamp tubes, with 4 barrels for launching bottle rockets. Note to self: do not wear shorts or flammable clothing when trying to do this. Also note that the handlebars are rarely at the right angle or elevation for bottle rockets to go anywhere near where you planned. Also note that they are darned hard to light when moving. Also tell me you were not shooting them at the school bus. But I didn't hit it, Mom! A mechanically skilled 11 yr old is a dangerous thing.
Well in spite of getting a BRAND NEW Kia (yep, Kia) 3-speed "English lightweight" when I was 12, and then a maroon Columbia mountain bike at 14, I still rode the Ross. Especially when it was cold out, that Carlisle tire could scream when skidding- for a really long time downhill if you lean forward and sway the rear end back and forth.
The bike survived a lot of abuse, riding in foot-deep water, sand pits, jumping, rock-strewn trail riding. Never broke it, though I broke that Columbia MTB frame twice under warranty. It even endured ghost riding and horrific crashes.
At last though, it met its end, in the late summer when I was 15: A friend's father backed over it with his electrical contracting Dodge panel-van. The frame was twisted, the fork bent over, a crank arm bent into the frame, the wheels were mangled. We tossed it down over the edge of the gravel pit and threw firecrackers in after it.
Fast forward to 2004. My dad is cleaning out the house, getting things in order to move to a new place in Florida. Under the steps from the garage into the kitchen, there are the fenders from my old Ross, stashed just like the day in about 1978 when I took them off... decent chrome still even though they were on a concrete floor. One big bend in the front end of the front fender where I ran into a cedar fence post. I grabbed the fenders and brought em home. They ended up on my Ross "Downtown Rat", my first attempt at a Build-Off bike for RRBBO2.
Thanks for reading and have fun!
--Rob
Man, good times, good times. My first and only bike for a long time, my parents bought at a tag sale when I was 2 1/2... I started riding it when I was 4, 1973 when we moved to a house on a much safer dead-end road with a long driveway. Before that I had an AMF tricycle, the kind with the large (16"?) front tire, solid rubber- also a yard sale find. My little brother got a new but much smaller Radio Flyer trike a little later.
The first bike was a black 20" Ross, with dual top-tubes and dual canti tubes in the frame, 4 small tubes, a frame they used later for Stingray type models, predecessors to the Barracuda. It had full chrome fenders, a coaster brake, some white graphics that were illegible on the frame. Inexplicably it had 10-spd type drop-bars turned upside down- weird and I never did get an explanation for why it was like that.
In about 1976, the other kids on the street started getting cool BMX and bicentennial bikes. I remember one kid at the end of the road having a coppertone Stingray, fenderless, but he never let anyone near it, so I'm not sure that it was actually a Schwinn. Another older kid had a 2-speed Typhoon, red, and I never believed him until much more recently that it had a 2-speed rear wheel... it did and I would love to find that one today. We beat on it in the fields behind their house.
Pretty much anything became a BMX bike and got ridden plenty in the woods. Fenders came off, chainguards came off, we found any kind of tall bars, especially with a crossbar to put pads on, and knobby tires. Preferably not gumwalls but somewhere along this time, my ugly Ross gained a whitewall front tire. I think it had an S-7 wheel because I remember struggling mightily to get a tire on it. Probably my cheap dad bought a wheel at a yard sale.
I never had a new bmx bike. The Ross became one though- stripped down, a Carlisle Thorn-Proof diamond-tread knobby on the rear, and a tall seat post and skinny seat borrowed from a 10speed. I rode as fast as the other kids on their fake-shock, plastic-fendered Huffys and jumped off a lot of home-made plywood ramps.
I also built a lot of model cars, and had plenty of paints around in small jars... one day the Ross gained some silver tiger stripes and the words "The Death Machine" on the down tube! Another time, given lots of after-school time and my dad's well-stocked shop, I build a bracket out of angle aluminum and old lamp tubes, with 4 barrels for launching bottle rockets. Note to self: do not wear shorts or flammable clothing when trying to do this. Also note that the handlebars are rarely at the right angle or elevation for bottle rockets to go anywhere near where you planned. Also note that they are darned hard to light when moving. Also tell me you were not shooting them at the school bus. But I didn't hit it, Mom! A mechanically skilled 11 yr old is a dangerous thing.
Well in spite of getting a BRAND NEW Kia (yep, Kia) 3-speed "English lightweight" when I was 12, and then a maroon Columbia mountain bike at 14, I still rode the Ross. Especially when it was cold out, that Carlisle tire could scream when skidding- for a really long time downhill if you lean forward and sway the rear end back and forth.
The bike survived a lot of abuse, riding in foot-deep water, sand pits, jumping, rock-strewn trail riding. Never broke it, though I broke that Columbia MTB frame twice under warranty. It even endured ghost riding and horrific crashes.
At last though, it met its end, in the late summer when I was 15: A friend's father backed over it with his electrical contracting Dodge panel-van. The frame was twisted, the fork bent over, a crank arm bent into the frame, the wheels were mangled. We tossed it down over the edge of the gravel pit and threw firecrackers in after it.
Fast forward to 2004. My dad is cleaning out the house, getting things in order to move to a new place in Florida. Under the steps from the garage into the kitchen, there are the fenders from my old Ross, stashed just like the day in about 1978 when I took them off... decent chrome still even though they were on a concrete floor. One big bend in the front end of the front fender where I ran into a cedar fence post. I grabbed the fenders and brought em home. They ended up on my Ross "Downtown Rat", my first attempt at a Build-Off bike for RRBBO2.
Thanks for reading and have fun!
--Rob
I learned to ride when I was 5, don't really remember learning to ride, but I do remember my first challenge. While visiting my dad, in the city, one of my step-brother's older friends said he didn't think I could ride and challenged me to push my bike to the top of the alley and ride it back down. While pushing the bike up the alley, he was placing bricks, end to end, across the alley with one missing in the middle. On my way back down, I notice the bricks. Now I'm not sure if it was the speed from the downhill ride, the panic from seeing the bricks, or what, but the front wheel started the rapid back and forth motion(the kind that ALWAYS leads to road rash)and I CRASHED , HARD ON MY FACE! Needless to say, I never really liked that guy, after that. It's kinda hard to believe that that was 40 years ago. I rode bikes, everywhere, in any kind of weather, until the Army made me get a drivers license. Bikes took a back seat, until about a year ago, and now it's almost became an addiction.The summer started with me owning 2 bikes, and my wife had 1. I've gathered 30+ bikes, not to mention the ones that have sold, and there's no sign of stopping.
