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