Childhood freedom your bike gave you. Your stories....

[gbb]

I dont have any memory of my first bike, where, how old etc..but I do remember my young teens in Nottinghamshire.
Dad was away a lot and the RAF didnt pay him well back then so no new bikes for me as a kid...so you made do and mended.
Stuff like having your front forks extended at the local blacksmiths, stuffing a small wheel in it, chopper seat...all of a sudden you're a Hells Angel .
Upside down drops, monkeyhangers, cowhorns, the ability to strip a freewheel with the freewheel inner body still screwed on the hub (pin punch and hammer )..stripping, servicing and adjusting hubs as a teenager,, and how did those bikes survive when you built a ramp, sped up for all you're worth and launched yourself into huge privet hedges...just for the hell of it .
Fishing rods taped to crossbars, mate hanging over the handlebars on summers days to a local brook, fishing hopefully for chub...but only ever catching dace .

And ive never changed....get me on a bike, i HAVE to hammer it, always did, going hell for leather . Shame my body wont have that anymore I still try, bit the bodys not willing

 

[shouldbeinbed]

I dont have any memory of my first bike, where, how old etc..but I do remember my young teens in Nottinghamshire.
Dad was away a lot and the RAF didnt pay him well back then so no new bikes for me as a kid...so you made do and mended.
Stuff like having your front forks extended at the local blacksmiths, stuffing a small wheel in it, chopper seat...all of a sudden you're a Hells Angel .
Upside down drops, monkeyhangers, cowhorns, the ability to strip a freewheel with the freewheel inner body still screwed on the hub (pin punch and hammer )..stripping, servicing and adjusting hubs as a teenager,, and how did those bikes survive when you built a ramp, sped up for all you're worth and launched yourself into huge privet hedges...just for the hell of it .
Fishing rods taped to crossbars, mate hanging over the handlebars on summers days to a local brook, fishing hopefully for chub...but only ever catching dace .

And ive never changed....get me on a bike, i HAVE to hammer it, always did, going hell for leather . Shame my body wont have that anymore I still try, bit the bodys not willing

Jumpers for goalposts

PS this is meant nicely, I think yours is a lovely & evocative post of happy halcyon days.

 

[contadino]

I was a 'runner' as a kid. Every time I had access to a bike I'd disappear - sometimes for days or weeks. From school in the term or from home in holidays. The furthest I got by bike alone was from Sevenoaks to Hereford. I was once told that I was on a national police watch list of some sort.

When I hit 14 I got my own passport and saved the British taxpayer a lot of wasted police time.

To this day I don't think there is a bigger adventure for a boy than avoiding the authorities.

 

[RichardB]

I was about 6 years old, with my first two-wheeler (I seem to recall it was branded Halfords) and got into a row at home. It was all too much so I said I was leaving. I looked from the dog to the bike, and the bike back to the dog, and chose the bike. As I rode off down the road, my Mum shouted something about being back in time for tea, which made me even more annoyed. We lived in Darlington, and I rode out of town as far as the A1 and then turned South and crossed the bridge over the River Tees. It was only when I saw a sign saying I was in Yorkshire that I realised that I had probably bitten off more than I could chew. I waited a bit, and then turned round and rode home. My Mum never knew where I had been, and would have half-killed me if she did. It seemed like an epic journey at the time, like Scott crossing the Antarctic, or Marco Polo reaching the end of the Silk Road. I've just checked it on Google Maps, and it was just 3.2 miles each way. It seemed further.

The quiet stretch of the Great North Road that I went down is now the A1(M).

 

[Levo-Lon]

My bike was my life as a kid..the chopper bike was and still is my greatest cycling memory..xmas morning and there it was..we spent hrs over Eye clay pits and bike tiggy with about 12 kids was awsome and caused many injuries and No helmets either..how things have changed..
after school it was motorcycles..then got back into bikes a few yrs ago.
how things have changed from that Raleigh Chopper to the mtb and road bikes of today.