Your cycling gap years

[Hill Wimp]

Cannot remember never not having a bike.Grew up cycling everywhere with my friends. Finished my A levels and biked around Europe with more friends for a year. Then returned home, began my career but used to bike to my place of work. I learnt to drive but still cycled then my work life balance changed dramatically for 6 years from 1997 and the bike grew cobwebs.

2003 saw the return of bike commuting and touring abroad for pleasure then 2013 saw the purchase of my first road bike which kicked off the stable that i have today.

To be fair i am only just coming out of my cycling winter slumber unless you count my Saturday morning cycle trips into town so it could be said that November to April i have annual gaps as i no longer commute on the bike either.

 

[midlife]

Typical story again here, like everybody born in the 50's and 60's as kids we were never off our bikes (hand me downs).

First real bike was a Carlton Cobra and got into racing that, then worked in a bike shop still buying and racing.

Then went to Uni so stopped competitive cycling but tooled around London on my fixed bike with everything else art home in the garage.

Got a proper job and it basically all cycling stopped 1983 but kept an eye in what was going on.

Fast forward 25 plus years of not cycling and I bought a Basso and started tinkering with the 40 year old kit I have.

Shaun

 

[NorthernDave]

A similar story to many others...
Cycled everywhere as a kid, on a selection of bikes from a second hand no name purple bike with white tyres (bought to see if i really was interested in getting a bike) to a Chopper to Claude Butler 'racer'.
Had a couple of years off cycling after leaving school, then getting sick of taking two buses and an absolute age to work I bought a Raleigh MTB for the commute. With no prep the first week was bloody hard work, but I soon got into the habit & was was able to do the 7 miles each way faster than the bus, plus I was getting fit - to the point where I got a puncture 3 miles from work with no spare inner tube and ran the rest of the way there with the bike on my shoulder!!!!
Then I passed my driving test and the bike started gathering dust, even though the commute was now taking longer in the car...
Fast forward twenty odd years to this February and faced with middle age spread and a pretty poor man MOT I took the plunge and bought a bike. Loving every minute of it and wish I'd done it years ago.

 

[howard2107]

I had bikes as a kid, and right up until i was 16 and went in the RAF. Me and my mates had a whole host of different machines and between us we would collect scrap ones and build some fantastic concoctions. My pride and joy was my Raleigh Chopper, mk1 in mustard colour. i got it for my 9th birthday, and i can still remember my dad wheeling it around the side of the house when he came home from work. It cost him £33 and was more than a weeks wage back then, and he had a good job. I rode that bike till it eventually dropped to bits, then when i was about 13 my mates uncle sold me a 10 speed racer for a fiver payed for out of my paper round money, which was far too big for me, but didn't stop me riding that to the death either. I cycled everywhere as a kid, and only ever went to school on the bus cos i didn't want the bike to get nicked.

Once i joined the RAF i learned to drive, and took up other sports, so never really considered cycling, and none of my mates did it anyway. On leaving the RAF i went to work for a major holiday airline, and i was never on the ground or in one place long enough to do anything other then to work, eat crap meals and sleep now and again.

So fast forward to 2011 as i approached my fifties, and got a proper job with proper time off i decided that i would like to live long enough to see my grandkids grow up, and my lifestyle of drinking, smoking, bad diet, bad back and going everywhere in the car had to change. I started swimming to ease my back, and eventually after 35 years i finally kicked the fags last July, although i do use a e-cig now and again. Then last year cycling exploded in Yorkshire, and after the initial outlay i worked out that cycling is free, so i decided that i am going to have some of that. So i am now firmly back in the saddle and enjoying it. I now ride a Claud Butler Voyager Hybrid, with front suspension, it is a used model that was used once, and i got it for a song, less than 2 weeks cigarette money, a lot less.

So there you have my life story............enjoy.

Cheers................Howard

 

[LarryDuff]

I had a Dawes road bike as a teen. Green with 5 gears, I liked cycling around the countryside. Then I discovered alcohol and women and apart from hiring the odd bike on holidays I didn't start cycling again until the start of 2012. I had been playing golf on Saturday forming before then but was getting increasingly frustrated by it so I resigned from the golf club and bought a bike instead.
I wish I had done years ago.

 

[TheJDog]

I think I rode fairly constantly from the age of 6-31 (nothing terribly serious, though, a 60 miler probably my longest ride). I broke my arm in 2001, and the bike was stolen while I was considering whether I'd be able to ride pain free again. I eventually got fed up getting the tube or the bus everywhere, so I bought a Brompton in 2006 or 2007, found my arm was ok (ish), then bought a hybrid, then a flat bar roadie, subsequently converted that to drops and I have since been doing more miles than I ever did as a 20 year old riding around Bristol when I should have been revising for my exams

 

[simon.r]

Another 60's child who rode everywhere until the age of 17, then gave it up in favour of motorbikes followed by cars.

My Dad suffered a heart attack in 1993 when I was 30 (he was 60) and I realised I was heading the same way - desperately unfit and a few stone overweight.

A secondhand Trek 850 MTB was purchased for £50 and was ridden round the local bridle ways, my fitness improved and the excess weight dropped off. Numerous bikes gave come and gone since that Trek, I've had periods of a few months off the bike due to other commitments, but I've considered myself a cyclist since 1993.

Incidentally, Dad also took up cycling again a while after his heart attack and is still riding at the age of 82.

 

[Stonechat]

I am now 63.

Yes cycled as a child. a variable amount. I remember doing the 10 mile to Oxshott in 30 minutes - at about 17 - which I could not do now. Also at a similar age I cycled round Cornwall, staying at youth hostels. I had ridiculously overloaded bike, and off course only 5 gears.

Then came gap number 1. About 1971-1980.

After some years in 1980, aged 29, I started working for Siemens. Didn't want to walk, bus was overcrowded or late so got a bike. It was a Peugeot. I started doing occasional outings. I remember going up Box Hill in this period. Later had a Claud Butler.
I did a cycling tour of Worcestershire. After a few yearts I started bird watching. I would go everywhere with my bird watching equipment. Took the bike around the country, especially Norfolk, Suffolk, Dorset, and Anglesey. When Siemens moved to Bracknell I got a car, and cycling died away.

Gap number 2 was longer, about 1991-2012.

Oct 2012 I took the offer of voluntary redundancy. I did think I might still work a little but family isdsues etc mean it didn't happend. Anyway started cycling again, first a hybrid, Mistake, then a road bike.
Did 100 mile New Forest Sportive last year, and doing Sportives.

Interesting in cycling throughout, Followed Tomy Simpson, and remember some of Robert Millar's audacious attacks in mountain stages.

In mid 2012, my weight had balloned to 80kg - ok I know it's not a lot for some. It is now 64kg and I feel healthier.

Cycling has helped me cope with pressure in ife over the last two years - dad getting ill, Mum needing help when Dad was in hospital, then Dad died, then our house flooded, and when we eventually got home, Mrs S got ill and was in hospital.

Cycling has kept me sane

 

[ScotiaLass]

Due to balance issues I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was about 11.
I then got a lovely gold coloured Raleigh for Christmas that year, and spent many happy hours out and about on it.
I bought my first adult bike when I was 19 and a student nurse, and commuted to work for 2 years or so.
I moved away to work (down south) when I was 21, and the bike got left behind.
The kids came along, as did a motorbike for commuting, then more kids, and a car....
I got back on a bike 28 years later!

 

[nobbyp]

Rode everywhere as a kid including places you probably shouldn't - owned and wrecked a catalogue of bikes - incl Raleigh boxer, grifter, chopper. Built worlds heaviest "racer" as a teenager from a sturdy peugot frame (kitted out in the derigeur red white and blue fade paint job) promptly wedged it into the back of a ford Capri as the suicide brake levers lived up to their name.

Had a Trek mountain bike at Uni - which got nicked - I wisely spent the insurance money on beer instead of replacing my trusty steed. That was Gap Nr1

10 years on I bought the worlds heaviest full suspension MTB from Halfords - rode it until it fell apart - 18 months later. That was Gap Nr 2

Bought an EBC revolution MTB and pootled about for couple of years but not a right lot in last 3/4 years really.

Went on holiday to Majorca last year - hired a CF Kuota for 10 days and fell in love with "racers" again.

Bought a Focus for Xmas and now planning first 100 miler in the summer.

 

[gavroche]

I cycled to work in the late seventies and early eighties but wasn't interested in cycling then. It was just a means to get to work. My real interest in proper cycling didn't start till 2011 at the age of 61 although I always followed the TdF since 1960. I learned to ride a bike when I was 5.

 

[sannesley]

Now I have an eight month old and no free time to use the bike!

On the plus side I can now think about trailers, balance bikes and the possibility that the young one will enjoy cycling too.

There's still the commute though. Without that I'd do no cycling at all.

I know that scenario too well. Now you pass on your love of cycling to your child when as they grow up and someone to go out on a ride with in the future

 

[Globalti]

I learned to balance a bike aged very young when the daughter of a family friend pushed me off at the top of a grassy slope with a pond at the bottom. I can still remember the feeling of elation. Rode and fettled bikes from then until I was old enought to ride a moped, which progressed into bigger and bigger bikes and 12 years of motorcyciing. Then I moved to Paris and despite living 2 kms from my office down quiet leafy flat boulevards I drove to work and back every day, wasting hours of my life and getting very unfit. Back to England and in 1987 I spotted a Raleigh Maverik in the window of a bike shop in Harrogate; fell in love and bought it on my Barcalycard then set off to ride the seven miles back to Summerbridge with no setup at all, tyres under-inflated and seat too low. After three miles I was shattered so I put it away and didn't touch it for six months. Then I thought: "Hang on - people ride bikes for hundreds of miles! I should be able to ride seven!".

Soon after I moved to my new permanent home in Lancashire I tried somebody's Specialized Rockhopper and that was when the love affair was re-kindled. Five years ago I was growing tired of the mud and filth of mountain biking and I found a stolen and abandoned Roubaix in a river; took it to the Police who gave it back to me a month later - and that's how the road obsession began. I have't biked off road since then.

 

[Col5632]

Cycled as a kid but never any far distances, got a paper round in my teens so used the bike to do that every day which was prob around 3 miles a day.

Passed my driving test at 17 and cars become my whole life, member of various clubs and drove everywhere even just to sit in car parks.

Done no cycling until my other half at the time bought me a Apollo mountain bike at the age of 21, done a few cycles in my jeans and jumper and entered a 25 mile charity cycle, done that and then a 50 mile event.

Decided I could commute to my work a few times a month, then every day going the direct way and now I try to atleast commute every day then extra at night and weekends if i get time and I only use the car at the weekends for my second job and don't even care about cars anymore

 

[Toshiba Boy]

Dad was a keen amateur racing cyclist in late 1950's early 1960's, so I was plonked on a bike at about age 4 and have always had a bike(s) since.

So here I am 47 years later with 9 bikes, ranging in age from 30+ years to last year's N+1 purchase.

Nowadays, it's very much Sportives and commuting, but hey, it's out on the bike.