Reminiscing.

[gavroche]

When I was 14, my parents bought me my first ever brand new road bike. It was a 10 speed orange colour Peugeot, for passing some school exam. Maybe tyres were made of thicker rubber in those days (1964), but I don't remember ever having a puncture! However, I do remember braking the left pedal on my way to seeing a girl friend and riding about 3 mikes using just my right leg! Things you do when you are in love!

 

[Matthew_T]

It has come for me to get a new road bike.Current one is 5 years old, plenty of paint chips, steel 14spd, downtube shifters, and converted for commuting.
I have a new one on order for Jan (2011 Spesh Sectuer Elite) and I am trying to drop small comments with my parents to just give me some money towards a new one. They already know that I need one but my mum has said that it is a "21st birthday thing" (my bday is in Jan and I will be 19). I would prefer a car for my 21st (if we have come out of the recession by then).

The time has definately come to get a new racer and rebegin the races at Marsh Tracks.

 

[EltonFrog]

When I was 13, I wanted a new bike, but I had to buy it. I wanted a Raliegh Chopper,but my my mum wouldn't let me buy that, said it wasn't practicle. Through advice/persuasion by my mothers longtime boyfriend I ended up biting a Dawes Kinpin shopper bike (like the one in my avatar), I didn't really want that, but I was persuaded to buy it, he would lend me the money, and I had to pay him back 10 bob a week.

When it arrived I loved the bike, it wasnt the bike so much but the freedom it represented, I went everywhere on it, and used it for years, to go to school, to my after school/ Saturday job, to my aunts on holidays 20 miles away around the South Circular road in London, on trips to Hyde Park skiving off school, I even cycled to where we moved house because there was no room in the van for the bike!

This was a time when I met my first girlfreind, I used to cycle to her house as often as her parents allowed, once I went outside leave and my bike had gone! I was devastated! I later discovered her little git brother had hidden it, I was so relieved to get back, because my mother would have gone mad if I had lost it.

I have recently bought another one on eBay to do up, just for old times sake.

 

[Drago]

I wanted a Chopper. Everyone was telling young spotty Drago to get a Grifter, but no way on this Earth were they anywhere near as dangerous, sweet looking and ridiculous, and therefore not as cool, as a Chopper.

About 1981 me Ma bought be my first full size bike, a blue Raleigh built Triumph with standard issue Huret gears. I loved that bike, but about a year later I discovered heavy merely so it grew ape hanger bars and a yank easy rider seat. I should've been poking teenage fadge away with a pointy stick, but the Motörhead patches and all pervading whiff of patchouli undid all the good work of the bike and in an age of Duran Duran I was rebuffed by all but the ugliest and hence most desperate of girls.

 

[Ron-da-Valli]

Me and my brother got Raleigh Choppers for Christmas (1976 ish). We used to ride miles on them. My first prpoer road bike was an Elswick ( Hopper possibly), it had a gold coloured frame. When I started work I bought a ten speed Raleigh Stratos and went touring on it, including LEJOG in 1985. Happy days

 

[Peteaud]

I got a brand new Sunn Racer when i was about 12 (1980) it was orange / bronze colour, 10 speed (i think) and i did many years on it doing my paper round etc. Dont know what happened to it, but if i ever see one on ebay, its min as i would love to have another one.

 

[Mo1959]

Don't think they are in existence now, but I got a very sturdy Rudge bike in a lovely shade of green if I remember correctly. Just 3 gears but seemed to manage up the hills ok, but then I was about 40 odd years younger

 

[robsa]

When I was 11 I wanted a new racer for my birthday. Imagine how desperately upset I was when my dad came home from work 2 week beforehand with a manky old heap of a bike he'd found in a skip.
Two weeks later on birthday,out of the shed came a beautiful gleaming bright yellow sun of Worksop fully refurbed by dad.
My passport to the world till I bought a car.
And the sun?
Still got her

 

[Globalti]

I had several second-hand Raleigh roadsters with rod brakes and chaincases, one of which I hand painted green and purple. I used to ride seven miles each way to work in a family friend's garden for 15 pence an hour. I remember getting one puncture; my Mum came out in the Dormobile and picked me up. I also remember finding a cow's head in a ditch, it had a small hole in its forehead. I used to stop and stare at it for a few minutes most days. On another occasion I got the idea that I'd like to leave a trail from home to our friend's house so I strapped my Dad's garden spray to my rack and set the nozzle to a fine trickle then rode the seven miles leaving a wet line behind me. Gawd knows why.

On one occasion I rode down to the local garage to buy sweets then walked home. Went out to ride the bike the next day and was flummoxed not to be able to find it. Soon after my Dad came home and told me my bike was down at the garage. The garage owner told me: "I knew it was your bike so I had a good look over it and couldn't find anything wrong with it".

Eventually I got a 10-speed racer. I actually broke the rear axle riding it along a chalk track, the Icknield Way. We kids used to push our bikes all the way to the top of Chinnor Hill then ride back down again - the only time I remember my Dad ever taking an interest in us was when he checked the brakes once before we set off.

One day wandering home from school my best pal and I spotted a bike frame lying in the river so we got a piece of string with a hook on the end and fished it out. It was a baker's bike with a big basket on the front, which we hacksawed off. I made a chopper seat for it and swopped my best penknife for some ape hanger bars. We fitted a huge chrome headlamp and a bottle dynamo, a 3 speed rear wheel with a fat tyre and a small front wheel which I stole from my brother's little bike, fitted with a lashed-up cable lever pulling a rod brake. When we moved to Newcastle my home-made chopper was stolen from the cellar while we ate Sunday lunch above.

I also invented the mountain bike when I hacksawed the small chainring off my brother's bike and bolted it to the inside of the two chainrings on my road bike. The chain had to be shifted over by hand. I took it down to Jesmond Dene and was amazed at the ease with which it climbed hills and how quickly I got out of breath. Within a few minutes the bolts broke and the chainring collapsed catastrophically.

My cycling buddy also borrowed a good 10-speed racer, which we used for time trials around the village square. I remember fettling it and a friend of my Dad laughing at us when we told him we were tuning it for a race.

Happy days.

 

[Piemaster]

I got a brand new Sunn Racer when i was about 12 (1980) it was orange / bronze colour, 10 speed (i think) and i did many years on it doing my paper round etc. Dont know what happened to it, but if i ever see one on ebay, its min as i would love to have another one.

I had a yellow one. It was in the days when kids could disappear for hours sans mobile phone without parents worrying about them. Loved that bike.

It was a replacement for a Raleigh Twenty. Bless my parents but what the hell were they thinking buying a 12 year old a Raleigh Twenty? What I actually wanted was THE COOLEST BIKE EVER - a Chopper, but they had deemed it impractical and dangerous, the sensationalist TV reports of kids falling off and impaling themselves on the gearshift or it going over backwards when doing wheelies convinced them I wasn't getting one.

 

[byegad]

During the Chopper craze in the 1970s I taught a class of 'slower' pupils. One of whom rode his Chopper up Lobely Hill to school. One night he came a cropper on the way home. The motorist who stopped and called the Ambulance for him reported that the lad passed him at well over 40mph, got into a catastrophic speed wobble and slid down the road, on his face!

For a 'slower' pupil he certainly went fast enough that evening.

 

[robsa]

Had 5 on my chopper ( ooer missus) must have been late 70s because the grifter was out. Lad down road from me and asked why his brake blocks sqeaked, told him to oil them and the best way to test them was to lug the bike up the steps of the slide in the park and ride down. Think you can guess the rest

 

[numbnuts]

When I was a lad my parents never bought me a new bike I had to second-hand ones and it wasn't until I was 39 I bought my first new bike.

 

[13 rider]

First new bike when I was about 11 was a Raleigh olympus 5 speed racer brought by parents with the aid of coop stamps (remember them) . I loved that bike and the freedom it gave. I completed many many happy miles with only 5 gears how do I manage with 24 now . After many years of not riding I find myself retracing rides from my teenage years and rediscovering the counyside around where I live

 

[mark c]

I had a Raleigh Grifter until i snapped it half jumping a small stream, and then my Grandfather bought me a Raleigh Sliver Jubilee in 1977/8 which i had until 1982. no idea what happened to it.