Your Very First Bike

[ShubieGA]

I got a JC Higgins (Sears) blue girls bike when I was 4. Since my b-day is in the winter (in Chicago at the time), I rode it in the basement until there were some warm enough days to ride outside. 1st multi-speed was a Schwinn Varsity (70's green) in junior high - it weighed a ton, but I would ride it everywhere!

[Python]

I got my first bike for my Christmas when I was six years old. It was a Tri-Ang. It had a red frame and yellow mudguards. It had a wicker basket on the front. Curiously it only had a front brake. It also had solid tyres but I loved that bike. Sadly six months later I had an accident with it and my parents being overprotective (to which I rebelled in later years) threw it up in the attic and forbade me to ever go near it again

40 odd years later I'm back enjoying cycling even more than I did the first time

I've got an old photo of me on that bike somewhere. I'll have to dig it out and scan it sometime.

[wolfak]

I really wanted to share!

One Christmas, I got a trike, red, it was awesome and I loved it much. I recently found a picture of me unwrapping it, and now I know it was a second- or third- or eighth-hand trike. But I loved it.

Then there was the red kid's bike that my brother had, with white molded plastic seat.

Later on, the Huffy Street Dance girl's bike

Then the Huffy Mt. Storm that I saved forever for and purchased at my nearest Wal-Mart which in the day was an hour away. A week later, we had a terrible crash, which you could read about if you search my previous posts. I had that from '92 to '02. (6th grade to college! It didn't get ridden much and it started getting more crappy and was eventually impounded.

Now I have an '03 Diamondback Wildwood Deluxe, extremely pimped out for commuting, and a '07 Trek 1600 WSD, which is my weekend exercise.

I also just acquired a '76 Schwinn Varsity of original components and questionable shape. The top tube has a gentle curve, and none of the Schwinn literature shows that. The curve looks natural, but I need to give it more inspection. I'm trying to decide the best way to overhaul it.

[grey]

I got a pink Huffy for Christmas when I was six. The seat wasn't banana, it was this odd puffy sort of thing that was still long and had a handle on the back. I remember my dad running behind me down the sidewalk on the way to the park so I wouldn't fall after taking the training wheels off. I was going faster, faster, faster.... and then I realized I didn't hear Daddy's footsteps behind me anymore, which meant I was riding on my OWN and I started to look behind me to be sure and... crash!

The next one was a blue road bike of some kind, got that when I was 11 - I'm surprised I don't recall the make, because I rode it to death! I'd even retape the handlebars all the time.

When I was 15 I saved and saved and saved while babysitting and mowing lawns to get a Fuji Monterey, a hybrid, which I think was pretty darn new back then. It was silver and light green, 21 speed, I paid $350 for it. That bike got me through college, it was a wonderful commuting bike between classes and from my various living apartments to school. Then I left it at my parent's house for a few years, my dad had a cleaning frenzy, and without asking me, he threw it away. I still miss that bike. (if anyone happens to have one, let me know)

After college my BF (now hubby) bought me a full-suspension Gary Fisher, one of the first full suspension bikes out there. Anybody want it? It's for sale.

And Friday, I got my new 08 Fuji Team! I'm back to a dark blue and white road bike!

[ridenread]

The first bike a remember was purple, with a white banana seat with purple and pink flowers on the seat. It had purple tassels coming out of the handlebars. I thought that it was the most beautiful thing on earth when I was 5 years old.

I remember a 3 speed Schwinn when I was about 9 or 10 years old. It was blue and I thought I could fly on that thing. I remember riding up and down the road for hours at a time experimenting with my 3 speeds.

When I graduated from the eighth grade I got a bright orange ten speed from Sears. Several years ago, my mother rescued it, painted it and hung flower baskets all over it in her garden.

[bmccasland]

First bike was a blue single speed, that we bought in a hardware (drygoods) store in the small college town where my Dad was an ROTC prof. As I recall, the store guys fitted it to me, then my brother got to ride it home, as it was deamed that home was too far away for me, a little girl to ride to on my own. Must have been in 2nd grade. In the summer, the whole gang of us kids would ride our bikes to the city pool for swimming lessons or afternoon swim, admission was 10 cents. Now days, moms would be loath to let their little ones ride that far.

2nd bike was an orange Schwinn 10 speed, got when I was in Jr. High. I was so thrilled! A proper racing bike (in my dreams) with "ram horn" handlebars. Had that into my university days, until it was stolen, along with about 200 other bikes parked in the lot at the dorm.

[sundial]

I vaguely remember a bike with a big banana seat and streamers on the handlebars. Then in jr high mom went to Ace Hardware and bought me and my brother a set of 10 speed bikes. Mine was yellow with those silly friction shifters that never stayed. I rode that thing everywhere and I never got a flat. Stuff was bomb proof back then.

[tennisgirl43]

1972 grass green banana seat bike with sparkly green seat.

A lot like so...but green...

LOL! I had that same bike, only the seat was red, white, and blue. :-) It was very patriotic! Loved that bike!

[kelownagirl]

I can barely remember my first bike but it was a blue single speed and it was too big for me the first year. I wonder if I have a picture somewhere. I do remember my first ten speed - a purple Apollo back in 1974. It was $75 and I had to save up half the money from babysitting.

[GLC1968]

Ha! In the year since this thread first started, I've learned what happened to the white Huffy 12-speed that I loved so much.

My parents could not remember what happened to it.

Then, out of the blue, my brother brought it up. He said that my parents sold both my white huffy and his first 'real' bike (whatever it was) to a couple of guys in the next town when we were in high school. These guys were trying to get a local bike shop started and needed some bikes to work on and sell. That bike shop is still there (20 years later!), so I feel like at least my beloved bike went to a good cause.

Funny how my parents seemed to block out the memory, though!

[snapdragen]

In first or second grade, I got a blue girls Murray bike from Kiddie World. When I got bigger, I think I was riding my sister's old Schwinn, with the big old balloon tires. When I was probably 12 or 13, I got a second hand stingray type - totally stripped. No fenders, chain guard, none 'o that fancy stuff. Not bad for $15, I rode it for years, until I got my license.

//I can remember a friend chiding me "Don't you ever walk? You're always on your bike!"

[MrsB]

I was just going thru some old photos that my sister sent me the other day. This was my very first bike. As you can see I didnt like sharing. (see the right hand gently brushing brothers hand away from handlebars)LOL. We didnt have a lot of money but my dad always made sure that we had something to ride. He used to take us on bike rides just about every weekend. If we wernt biking we were hiking. Its so fun to go and retrace some of the rides that we did with single speed bikes. I cant believe I ever made it up some of those hills. Those hills kill me now even with a 27 speed.

[sfa]

This is a great thread! Reading it, I'm mortified to find out that even though I'm nearly 40 years old, I'm STILL jealous of all of you who had pink and purple and red banana seat bikes. I wanted one of them so bad when I was little.

My first bike of my own (I learned to ride on my sister's old bike, the kind with the hard plastic tires, only when I was riding it the plastic was all cracked and falling apart--she was older than me by many years and the next oldest sister never wanted to learn to ride, so there was nothing much usable in my size when I was wanting to learn) was a HUGE old blue Schwinn. I could barely reach the pedals, but my parents believed in getting things that kids could grow into. Shoes, clothes, bikes, etc. Always get stuff too big in order to get lots of years of use out of it. This bike had to have been 15 years old when I got it, my parents buying it for $10 from some people two streets away. But it got me where I was going and was so big and heavy that I could squish those little shiny banana seat bikes like bugs if I wanted to. I upgraded to a used 10 speed (bought with babysitting money) when I was 13, and finally got my first new bike when I was 21--the same bike I'm riding now.

Sarah