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

[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.

[redrhodie]

My first 2 wheeler was a metallic blue stingray-style with a white banana seat and bar end streamers. I learned to ride it after what seemed like an eternity of trying to push myself off, not getting momentum, falling, then throwing the bike to the street in total frustration. I was so bad at first that the neighbors used to gather around and watch, all giving advice and encouragement, which was no help to me at all, and added to the incredible stress I felt.

Finally, my dad ran along side and pushed me, and off I went, the mystery of the whole thing was cracked. I still remember yelling "You can let go now!", looking back, and seeing him already half a block back, laughing. That was a good day! I felt like I won the tour de France.