Where is your earliest Bike Memory?

[TwoWheelsDC]

Doh, missed the “where”. My childhood home, where my dad still lives. I spent hours and hours and hours riding laps through my neighborhood on my BMX.

https://maps.google.com/?source=friendlink&q=47.819269,-116.855463(16197+N+Fowler+Rd)

[PeteD]

It was the day my father took off my training wheels. My first ride without them was down our driveway, up the driveway across the street, turn around, and back up our driveway…

[Rootchopper]

It was back in the day in Albany. My father took off my training wheels and launched me down our dead end street away from the dead end. As I got to the T intersection at the end of the street, a late 50s Chevy driven by a family friend drove across the top of the T. I panicked, forgot how to brake, and t-boned the back fender of the Chevy.

This past year my brother Jim who is one year older claims it was he who t-boned the Chevy.

It was a long time ago. It’s hard to argue over an event that confirms one’s innate stupidity.

[ShawnoftheDread]

I don’t remember learning to ride a bike, but I remember my first attempt at hand brakes. I was six years old and I hit this wall in the alley behind our house:
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Long+Beach,+CA&hl=en&ll=33.869691,-118.157847&spn=0.000463,0.000431&sll=38.971544,-77.134098&sspn=0.001226,0.001725&oq=long+beach+&t=h&gl=us&hnear=Long+Beach,+Los+Angeles,+California&z=21&layer=c&cbll=33.869691,-118.157847&panoid=xgeF5X80lEhQUC4A3H_bVQ&cbp=12,287.44,,0,0

[Subby]

Bon Air, Virginia – probably 5 or 6 years-old, peddling along and somehow running into an OPEN CAN OF PAINT on someone’s paved driveway and knocking it over, spilling paint everywhere. I also remember BOOKING out of there before I got caught. We rode our bikes everywhere – so much freedom at such a young age back then. So different now.

[Vicegrip]

Was thinking about this last spring when I first got back on a bike. Somehow I have come full circle hopping on a bike last spring and again finding some of the same freedom of heart.

Homested FL Sept 1965 I just turned 5. My dad bringing home a red bike and not installing the training wheels. He said I was big enough to learn without them. He held me and the bike up and pushed me down the side walk until I got the idea. I fell right over a couple of times right off the line and a few more while learning to turn but remember being happy and motoring around just fine by my self later that day. Many years later my mother reminded me that I ended up with a couple skinned knees and one skinned thumb knuckel. Seems she let my dad have it for scuffing up her little boy but did so quietly as I was happy. Funny that I remember the day well and falling a bunch at first but not the road rash. That bike opened up my day to day world tenfold. The gang of boys on my street would come home from school and explore all over the place getting into all kinds of stuff until we came home dirty and hungry.

[consularrider]

@acl 39925 wrote:

… Oh, and we were living out in the boonies in these fields http://goo.gl/maps/tfaFZ maybe 40 miles or so south [as the crow flies ] (and 20 years later) than consularrider.

It always seemed that Jefferson City was so far from Columbia in those days. Not much longer than my monthly ride to Purcellville from Arlington these days, and you can use the Katy Trail for a large part of it (49.2 miles per Google Maps).

I also remember family camping at Painted Rock (at least I think that was it) not too far from you’re pinned map location.

[vvill]

Outside the place I (mostly) grew up in Sydney, Australia where my parents still live. It was a metallic green steel Japanese kids bike given to us from a family friend whose kids outgrew it. The rear rack was welded as part of the frame and doubled as a second seat. Wish I had a picture of that bike. My mum was teaching us to ride. She held onto the bike and ran alongside to keep us balanced, and then released her grip (unbeknownst to me). I still remember the first moment I realised I’d actually been riding on my own and became thrilled instead of scared.

[JustinW]

Summer of 196?, when I all of a sudden rode training-wheels free, making endless sorta wobbly circles in the driveway at my parent’s house in DC. I felt like the king of the driveway, which I was since there was no one else around….

Sometime reasonably soon thereafter, flying down the sidewalk, hitting the coaster brake and leaving a lovely fishtail skidmark on the sidewalk.

[Greenbelt]

Home leave 1971 or 1972 (summer vacation back in the U.S.), staying with my grandparents in upstate NY, riding an old (even at the time) banana seat bike through puddles, one of which hid an enormous pothole. Major road rash.

[Amalitza]

@consularrider 39958 wrote:

It always seemed that Jefferson City was so far from Columbia in those days. Not much longer than my monthly ride to Purcellville from Arlington these days, and you can use the Katy Trail for a large part of it (49.2 miles per Google Maps).

I also remember family camping at Painted Rock (at least I think that was it) not too far from you’re pinned map location.

Yep, the Katy trail’s a nice amenity. They even built a protected BIKE LANE across the river alongside the JC bridge a year or so ago that I got to try out over Christmas. http://app.strava.com/activities/34224591#

[PotomacCyclist]

I had a rockin’ red Huffy with a banana seat, motorcycle-style handlebars and flame logos on the chain cover. It was a “Red Hot” model:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2235[/ATTACH]

That’s not my bike. Just a picture of the same model that I found online.

I used to ride it around the parking lot of the complex where I lived back in kindergarten, outside of Buffalo. Then I rode it in grade school. I later got a blue Schwinn road bike, but I only ended up using that for a couple months before I stopped riding completely until many years later, when I got a triathlon bike in 2009.

I had a tricycle at some point, but I don’t remember it. I’ve seen it in old family photos.

P.S. I heard that the raised handlebars are now prohibited in modern bikes for safety reasons.

[DSalovesh]

I remember doing loops around the block with training wheels, leaning so far into curves that the tire would go off the ground – that was the secret to winning the races in those days. Then the training wheels came off, and I clearly remember riding down this driveway to get speed, then making the curve into the street. And then falling over once my momentum wore off.

That’s also the house where I lived when we landed on the moon, and those are the steps where we observed the total eclipse – but over the summer we moved to the town I think of as “where I grew up“.

[JimF22003]

I got my first bike for Christmas. In Northern Minnesota. D’oh!

I actually rode circles in the basement with training wheels on. It wasn’t until months later that the snow had cleared off enough to take the bike outside.

[creadinger]

@PotomacCyclist 40023 wrote:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2235[/ATTACH]

Then I rode it in grade school.

I first read that as GRAD school. I was thinking wow, it must have been interesting riding that across a college campus at ~23 years old.

[Author]

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