Personal Bike History Part 1 - Childhood

Like most people, my experiences with bicycles started in childhood.

My earliest bike memories are from around five years old. I lived in Virginia at the time and I remember my parents’ bikes rusting in the backyard of our apartment. My father was in the military and we had been stationed in Berlin, Germany before Virginia. My parents used these bikes for transportation in Berlin. They were a matching shade of gold. My Mom’s bike had a step-through frame and a child seat that attached to the top tube. It looked kind of like a horizontal hubcap. I have no memories of riding on this seat nor do I recall ever seeing my parents riding these bikes. When we moved to Virginia, my Dad bought a car, so the bikes weren’t needed anymore.

My parents’ marriage fell apart in Virginia. Each of them would say now that their best time together was in Berlin when they rode those bikes everywhere.

I also remember learning to ride a bike in Virginia. My bike was red and it had training wheels. I suppose my Dad taught me how to ride, but I really don’t remember. I do remember riding with one training wheel for a time and I recall the feeling of evading danger by successfully riding. I don’t have a lot of positive memories of this time in my life, but learning to ride a bike is one of them.

When I was in second grade, my parents divorced and my Mom, brother and I moved to another state. The twin gold bikes and my little red bike were left behind.

After we got to our new state, my Grandfather and Uncle found a used bike for me. I think they saw an ad in the newspaper and I remember going with them to a huge garage filled with bikes. The one we picked out had a dark purple frame and a black banana seat with two yellow stripes. It had ape hanger handlebars and a big, fat, slick rear tire. It was an amazing example of 1970s kids’ bike technology. I loved it.

Then it was stolen. I think I used to park it in the yard near the garage (to which we didn’t have access) and one day it was gone. I didn’t have it for long.

Later on, my Mom bought bikes for my brother and me for Christmas. I got a yellow and blue Huffy BMX bike and my brother got a Huffy Santa Fe – a banana seat bike a little like the one I had that was stolen. We have pictures of us riding these bikes in the snow on Christmas day with huge smiles on our faces.

We pretty soon began to modify these bikes. I wanted to be a BMX racer, so I scraped all of the Huffy stickers off of my bike and replaced them with Kuwahara stickers purchased at the local bike shop. This was around the time of the movie “E.T.” so Kuwaharas were popular. My friends teased me by calling my bike a “Kuwahuffy.” I bought a chrome handlebar and stem from someone at school and replaced my stock blue anodized originals.

My brother’s bike got my old handlebars and stem. We removed the chain guard and banana seat. His Huffy stickers got replaced by Redline decals. I bought him a Haro number plate for his birthday, customized with a number 4 and cobra stickers. Someone stole it off of his bike when he left it outside of a convenience store.

One summer I went to summer camp and left my Huffy chained to our apartment’s back stairwell. I came home to find that someone had taken my wheels. My Mom bought a replacement wheel set for me and I continued to ride that bike for a little while.

Then, when I was in 6th grade, some older kids built a BMX track in my neighborhood on an abandoned lot. I was more than a little intimidated by the older kids, but when they weren’t around I would take some laps on the course. It was fun. The track didn’t last long, of course. The owners or the cops had someone bulldoze it.

I also have a pair of bike memories from summer camp. I remember a group of campers setting out on bikes with camping gear and stuff lashed to racks. They were going on a “bike hike” and I thought that was a great idea. I also remember a boy that had a drop-bar road bike that he rode around the lake on. Of course, it’s a trip of only a few miles, but I was impressed that he could perform such a feat.