My parents had some interesting notions about sports equipment. The basic principle was that they were only going to get you one good set of what-ever. So when I wanted skis at twelve (Penny Pitou was expected to do great things at the winter Olympics that year) I got 6 foot, bear trap equipped, edgeless skiis. I was expected to grow into them. Unfortunately, that was the year I stopped growing, at 5 feet tall. I never really learned to ski.

There was a small exception for bicycles. My parents refused to get us a new bike until we had already learned to ride, so we wouldn't scratch it up learning. So I learned to ride on an old, full sized bike, with out a seat. My Dad said that since I wouldn't be able to sit and pedal at the same time that a seat wasn't necessary. I tried for 3 summers to learn to ride. Finally, I admitted defeat, but since I was getting quite chubby then my mother asked my brother (the future engineering student) to rig up a way to hang the bike between the clothesline posts so I could at least get some exercise on it. I rode it that way for about a week, digging a rut in the yard as the rope stretched. At the end of the week, my brother took it down to re-adjust the ropes, but suggested that I try coasting down a hill before he hung it again. I tried, expecting nothing to be different, but this time I was able to stay upright long enough to start to pedal, and much to my surprise I pedalled away. The next spring I got a new bike for my birthday. It was from the "Coast to Coast" hardware store, a German bike with 26 inch wheels,15 to 18 years before MTBs were invented. I still took a lot of falls on that bike riding it down our limestone gravel road. In the summer it would get washboards that made it very hard to stay upright on the steeper sections. I have the scars left on my right elbow where a piece of gravel got completely buried and my Dad had to cut off the overlying skin to get it out. It took 3 years, but I did learn to ride my bike.