Let's hear about your first bike.....

[alpinerabbit]

I had learned how to ride a bike on one of the neighborhood kids' bikes. I think I learned it in an hour or so. I rememer feeling the movement all again before going to sleep (that happens with every new movement I have learned, like swimming in the sea for the first time) - then later on I had a red regular bike (no gears that I can think of). We moved to a house on a hill so it wasn't much fun.

We rode hobby horses with heads made of old socks all over the neighborhood playing cowboys and zorro. How embarrassing thinking back.

Later I used my mom's 5-speed but that was hellish up our hill (couldn't shift under pressure), and what a new dimension when the first mountain bikes came out - 18 speed! Wow!

[wannaduacentury]

I believe mine came from Santa appx age 4 and it was pink w/ a banana seat and training wheels of course. I later broke one of the training wheels and had to learn to ride it right. Later appx age 9 I got my red 3 speed which is at my mom's house now. Needs tires inflated, but ready to go. At my grandma's, my tricycle was purple and I loved riding it all over the old house. Lots of good memories of that Jennifer

[Aggie_Ama]

I probably had a tricycle. The first bike I remember having was a Strawberry Shortcake bike with a banana seat! I was a late bloomer and didn't learn to ride a bike until I was 8. I was convinced I would fall and break my leg! Once I learned to ride a bike my bike was so old, my Pawpaw bought me a new one.

[KnottedYet]

I had a red tricycle, which I rode obsessively everywhere until it was passed down to my brother (who also rode it everywhere). My first bike was a blue Schwinn with a sparkly banana seat and those big tall handlebars, coaster brake single speed. I had saved up for half of it and my parents paid the other half. It had training wheels, but not for long. I remember riding in a cow pasture a lot, and that the dried up cow-pies were smooth to ride on.

[xeney]

I never had a tricycle. My first bike was a red Schwinn Fair Lady Stingray, a single-speed with a banana seat, coaster brakes, and a sissy bar. Very much like this one only mine was red.

I still think all bikes ought to be red.

[Maureen Valley]

My first real bike was a two toned blue J.C. Higgins from Sear's. I think I was nine. My Grandfather had it shipped to me from Chicago.....and it was a beauty. Sadly, it was stolen. That's what I get for leaving my toys in the front yard all night. It was a small town in the upper midwest, and we thought we were safe from such things.

Wrong.

[KayTee]

My 2-years-younger brother got a new Schwinn for his birthday at age 5. That was the first bike in the house. When my parents realized that I was riding the thing more often and better than he did, they got me a big old used, reconditioned, one speed, balloon-tired Roadmaster, metallic blue with a step-through frame, chrome fenders and a wire handlebar basket -- a girlie bike, of course, and it must've weighed 40 lbs. I rode that bike to school and everywhere until I was 12, when my brother got a brand new 3-speed English racer. Then I snuck around riding his bike whenever I could - changing gears was fun! Bike envy, I know, but my well meaning parents were very old school traditional, and girls had to be girlie while boys got to do the fun things (like riding bikes fast). My mother still thinks it's positively outlandish that her 54-yo daughter bombs around on ridiculously expensive "men's bikes" (w/top tubes), grinning like a fool, sweating like a horse and wearing skin-tight britches !

[aicabsolut]

I still think all bikes ought to be red.

Hahaha.. despite my tricycle, I think all bikes should be blue! The fixed gear Schwinn, my 2nd bike, a 3 speed Schwinn (with hand front brake and rear foot brake), and my mom's equally girly 3? or 5? speed cruiser were all blue. My dad's bike is blue-ish too..the old school Bianchi green (darker, more blue-green version of their current color)..I think his bike is from the 60s? So of course my road bike is blue

[uforgot]

The rule in our house was ONE tricycle and ONE bicycle. You could only have a bicycle when you were 12. I desperately wanted a real bicycle, so I began riding my oversized tricycle on two wheels. I just tipped it and balanced it and rode it just like a two wheeler. The only time the third wheel hit the ground was when I stopped. I could turn completely around at the end of the road on two wheels. Did I get my bike early? Are you kidding?!?!?!? Rules are rules....imagine all the kids in the neighborhood having real bicycles and when I'm 10 and 11 I'm still riding a tricycle, but even embarrassed I couldn't give up riding. The Christmas after my twelfth birthday I got a JC Higgins Sears bike. I kept that bike well into my 20s.

We have 8mm movies of my riding the tricycle. Looking at those now, I imagine the neighbors got a real kick out of the weird kid riding like a circus act.

[teawoman]

My dad and I used to go riding on the weekends. I remember he had a Raleigh. I had a green bike from somewhere like Canadian Tire. This was around grade 3 or 4. When I first was learning to ride it without training wheels, he used to run behind holding on to the ends of a belt slung around my waist. It had a piece of tape on the right side handlebar so I could remember which was the right side of the road. (I'm left handed, so I got confused ) We rode on the roads too, all the way to the bike path along a golf course.

I coveted a bike with a banana seat and those upright curved handlebars with tassles on them, but my mother wouldn't let my dad get me one because she read the handling was dangerous.

[OakLeaf]

It was some black thing I kind of got from my mom when I was 7 or 8. It was way too big for me. My uncle taught me to ride. I did have tricycle(s), but I don't remember anything about them particularly.

I remember one day soon after I'd started riding, I rode straight into a bush at the end of our block. My friend told me the bush had "attracted" me, so I came home and related that to my parents.

My dad, always a stickler for language, said, "No, it dis-tracted you." To which I replied, "No, I went into it, so it must have a-ttracted me."

My first bike that was really mine was a green metalflake Stingray. And the first bike I bought for myself was a used Peugeot UO-8 (also green). I loved that bike, rode everywhere on it for 8 or 9 years until it was stolen

[Jolt]

1. Big Wheel
2. Red tricycle (like almost everyone else had as a kid)
3. Kent single-speed girls bike--first two-wheeler, scared the heck out of my dad while I was learning to ride it (had a little problem figuring out how to use the brakes!!)
4. Purple and pink Roadmaster ten-speed (delivered newspapers in my neighborhood on this one--I was nine or ten)
5. Current bike--Giant Nutra hybrid

[Trek420]

1st bike: Blue Schwinn Foot Brake Freewheel
2nd: Red Raleigh 3 speed with Brooks Saddle (if I only knew then)
3rd: Gitane Red 10 speed Road style bike, now we're talkin'
4th: Mercier Blue same as above with a coupla Campy bits
5th: The Trek 420 I'm named for
and so on....

[DebW]

I don't remember a tricycle, but I probably had one. I do remember the first two-wheeler with training wheels. My sister and I had to learn to ride without training wheels in the grassy back yard and do a figure-8 around 2 trees before we could ride on the sidewalk. The next bike I remember was a red coaster-brake Schwinn - mine was a boy's frame, my sister had a girl's frame. I did 20 mile rides on that single-speed bike. The next bike I bought myself at age 16. It was a green 27-lb Manufrance 10-speed for $109 (made in France of course), bought from the shop I would start working at the next year.

5th: The Trek 420 I'm named for

Some people name their bikes, some people get named by them...

[Bikingmomof3]

My first bike was purchased in July. A Giant Sedona. I had it for 3 weeks and sold it for a Trek 1000.