Where is your earliest Bike Memory?

[baiskeli]

Earliest memory with a real bike (not a BigWheel) is when my brother and I got matching bikes for Christmas and promptly crashed into each other. Mine came out fine but his had two broken spokes. I win!

[fuzzy]

Double riding on my brothers BMX with him down eastern ave on the Mount Rainier side. He pedal back on the coaster brake and it broke… After we picked up speed, he put his foot down to try and stop us. That threw us in the air, the bike landed on him on the sidewalk, i landed on the grass. He got stitches, I was fine.

[consularrider]

@creadinger 40048 wrote:

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.

There’s a guy in Alexandria (about my age) who has some vintage Schwinn Stingrays that he rides.

[Vrede]

My memory is of a family friend teaching me how to ride in a local neighborhood, had to be 5 or so years old.

[Jason B]

Trenton, N.J. of all places. I remember being about 4 or 5 and my big brother asking me to go outside for he and his friends had an idea. At 4.5, ideas were terribly intriguing. There sitting in the middle of the street was my Big Wheel tied to his brand new yellow Schwinn Varsity. There was about 10 to fifteen feet of frayed nylon rope between the two. His was a monster of a bike with 10, yes count them, 10 speedy gears. At the end of the street he and his friends set up a ramp made of bricks, a cinderblock and old piece of plywood.The ramp was not for him, but for me and my trusty big wheel. (i would like to interject at this point that i am counting my Big Wheel as my first cycling memory for at that wonderful age of 4.5, he and i went everywhere togther and we were one,,,,besides its a BiG Wheel thing and you wouldn’t understand).All my friends were sitting on the curb in their cut off shorts waiting for me to crash into the curb and go screaming back to mom. My spectator stands would eventually follow the Nascar circuit. My older, wiser brother of say around 13 or so, was pedalling as fast as he could, changing gears at a feverous pace. Despite my best efforts to match his speed, i was tugged with a whiplash that would cause me to have restless sleeps for years to come. I was going so fast I couldn’t even keep my feet on the Big Wheel’s plastic pedals, they just hovered in that danger zone between the wood-chipper pedals and the overly vibrating plastic handle bars. When I got close to the ramp he would quickly veer off, giving that classic backwards glance that simply said, “your gonna die, and i am going to eat the the last pudding”. I braced myself, held on tight, lifted my feet. I swear I flew twenty feet while moving in slow motion as I waved to my paralyzed fans. When I hit……it was spectacular. The Nascar stands erupted in a synchronized jubilation of hooting and hollering. Maybe I eventually crashed, or maybe I was covered in bruises and scraps, heck I may even broke something, but all I could remember for one glorious day in my life I was Evil Kenevil!

[PotomacCyclist]

No, I’d never be riding a Huffy Red Hot, or a Schwinn Stingray, as an adult. That would be pretty embarrassing. Kind of like walking around with Superman underwear as an adult.

I mentioned my first bike memory. One of my other recent bike memories was a few years later, during grade school (not grad school). I was flying down the street, on the Huffy Red Hot, and turned suddenly into the driveway. Then I cranked on the brakes. The front wheel stopped, but I didn’t. I went flying over the handlebars. No serious life-threatening injuries even though I wasn’t wearing a helmet. (No one wore a helmet back then, as far as I recall.) I did get some minor scrapes. I got a cut on the inside of an elbow. Not on the ligaments, just on the skin. I still have a half-inch scar from that mishap. I don’t remember if I cut my lip. For some reason, I don’t recall that part of it.

I went to the hospital where they snipped off the tiny bit of skin from the cut. (It was a major national event for a grade schooler. For an adult onlooker, it was probably “just a flesh wound.”) I do remember being upset that everyone else went out for ice cream while I had to sit at home to let the cut heal.

That was my only bike injury as a kid. (I had a worse injury when I went running out the front door and slammed my hand into the glass storm door. I received a long slice from my wrist down my forearm. I was lucky I didn’t cut any major blood vessels there. I still have that scar too, but it seems to have faded a lot in the past few years. Maybe it’s the magical healing power of cycling and triathlon? Maybe?)

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