what daft antics did you do as a kid on a bike

[Fnaar]

Jumps, ramps, knackered bikes Oh, and trying to bike jump from a ramp over a river (and not quite making it)

 

[Globalti]

I fished an old baker's bike frame out of a river, cut off the basket, stole the small front wheel off my brother's bike and built a really good chopper out of it. The ape hanger bars cost me my best pen knife. It got stolen when we moved to Newcastle on Tyne.

I had a rim dynamo on my regular bike (rod brakes, leather saddle, steel mudguards) and attached it to an old radio loudspeaker, which made a whining sound not unlike an American Police siren.

 

[alecstilleyedye]

apart from the usual ramps and using a local common as what these days would be called a bmx track (on very ordinary bikes), my daftest thing was riding on the frozen lake at said common.

the health and safety brigade obviously have woken up and these days the lake is completely fenced off…

 

[Twenty Inch]

Night Train that's pretty cool.

I once cycled down hill with no hands, trying to take a packet of polo mints out of my pocket. Failed to make the sharp right at the bottom of the hill, and hit the small bridge. Front wheel was crisp-shaped and I was knocked out. My poor brother was traumatised by the blood and by seeing it happen, and had to carry my bike while I wheeled his 3 miles to the nearest neighbour who could patch me up and bring me home. Spent 2 days in hospital under observation. Apparently I kept looking at bro's bike as I wheeled it along and saying "Well, at least I didn't damage my bike". Still don't remember the day.

 

[meenaghman]

Ramps, Jumps, Wheelies, how many on a Bike, no brake dares.. Yes a very practical introduction to Newton's laws of physics .. irresistible force.. immovable objects.. equal and opposite reactions. Learned a lot of rudimentary first aid.. eventually the doctor said he couldn't re-stitch the cut on the back of my head I'd re-opened for the 6th time.

 

[Browser]

Daft or damn-near fatal? Once turned right into the path of an accellerating motorbike, this being the early eighties it was probably something like a Z750 (remember it being a big four, all shiny chrome exhaust headers as it skated & sparked down the road). Fetched me off good 'n proper, biker was OK apart from scrapes & bruises, shocked him more than me.
Plain daft, apart from clothes-pegging playing cards into spokes (come on, we all did it!), jumping my mess-about bike off a homemade three-brick-high ramp. Said bike had a very worn pair of the old rubber diamond-tread pedals, combined with worn & shiny-soled trainers meant virtually no grip so my left foot came down before the rest of me and took all of my descending mass plus the bikes. Trip to casualty and a week in polaster for a badly sprained ankle.
Once disgusted my mother by takign my bike through the outdoor lido in the village where I now live. Said 'lido' was a swimming pool in the broadest sense of the word, no admission fee, no changing rooms, just a concrete pool with water and that was it. You even got free frogs in late summer, so I didn;t feel bad about what I did. Mother, on the other hand, did.........!

 

[BSRU]

I tried to impress some girls by jumping on my mates chopper and speeding off. Unfortunately, I was on wet grass and managed to just spin the rear wheel and fall off.

 

[HLaB]

apart from the usual ramps and using a local common as what these days would be called a bmx track (on very ordinary bikes), my daftest thing was riding on the frozen lake at said common.

the health and safety brigade obviously have woken up and these days the lake is completely fenced off…

This wasn't kids and it wasn't a bike

 

[Ranger]

Daft or damn-near fatal?
Once disgusted my mother by takign my bike through the outdoor lido in the village where I now live. Said 'lido' was a swimming pool in the broadest sense of the word, no admission fee, no changing rooms, just a concrete pool with water and that was it. You even got free frogs in late summer, so I didn;t feel bad about what I did. Mother, on the other hand, did.........!

Oooh, was that in Crowland? We used to go to the Lido there quite regular as kids!!!

 

[Fnaar]

I tried to impress some girls by jumping on my mates chopper and speeding off. Unfortunately, I was on wet grass and managed to just spin the rear wheel and fall off.

Ker-snik ker-snik

 

[Browser]

Oooh, was that in Crowland? We used to go to the Lido there quite regular as kids!!!

Yes!! Blimey, someone else remembers Crowland Lido

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Thing is, I'd waited 2 years for that bike... and the mudguards, being metal, were colour-matched to the frame and liable to denting too!

Ah right!

I got other kid's battered old hand downs or ones bought from jumble sales, etc. I didn't get a brand new bike until I was 14!

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

i remember an elswic hopper i had, it had handlebars that bend back round towards you, would that be cowhorns, anyway i rose up off the saddle to inject a bit of pace into proceedings, and both grips came off in my hands and i ploughed into a lamp post...!!

That reminds me of once when I was on a friend's bike. I was going along the street where we lived (actually it was an avenue) and there was a car coming the other way, so I stood up to speed past the car, leaving them more room. As I did this, one of the pedals came off, leaving me to quite literally topple over into the middle of the road at speed. Luckily it was the opposite side of where the car was, and they weren't driving too fast anyway, but still, it could have been a whole lot worse!!

It was a promotional bike from 7Up if I remember correctly and I never quite trusted that bike ever again after that!

 

[4F]

When I was eight, I tried to see if I could jump over a flowerbed using a ramp made out of planks and wobbly piles of bricks.
Turned out I couldn't. Splat.

I think we have all been there