Do You Remember When You First Learnt to Ride Your Bike?

scott not scot That one isn't mine...but mine was the same...i went for the bmx next too....it was a 'little savage'....red n yellow....wayne has the photos to prove it..:)

Scott are you like my bike doppelganger? I had a red n yellow bmx too! Although i didnt have mag wheels (which were way cooler than arrospok) or trick nuts. I went through phases of taking the pads off and just having shiny chrome

I also used to cycle up Norwood hill on it with my dad (on his 15 gear mountain bike back in the 80's I dont think many people had mountain bikes then) to Dulwich park to feed the ducks every sunday before roast dinner. Thats a bitch of a hill, man I was hardcore when I was 8, sadly my hill climbing ability has rapidly declined with age..

can't believe nobody's dug any of these up yet:

delphina - it was your dad that reminded me of calvin and hobbes!

but calvin's dad is way cool - if i ever have a kid then he's going to be my role model..

four years old, bright red trike, hospital for stitches cos i went too fast into a wire fence.

Grifter that was my pride and joy

have a really vivid memory of getting my first racer, i'd seen pictures of the tour de france and absolutely knew that if i had a white saddle i'd go faster and look cool.Into me dads shed bit of gloss paint, lovely job until it transferred onto the arse of my fave jeans on it's maiden voyage -there was always a whiff of white spirit on that bike until i outgrew it

oddsock delphina - it was your dad that reminded me of calvin and hobbes!
but calvin's dad is way cool - if i ever have a kid then he's going to be my role model..

My dad IS way cool :D he's the one who got me into biking! :D Aw bless him!!

delphina [quote]oddsock delphina - it was your dad that reminded me of calvin and hobbes!
but calvin's dad is way cool - if i ever have a kid then he's going to be my role model..

My dad IS way cool :D he's the one who got me into biking! :D Aw bless him!![/quote]
sorry - I didn't mean to imply your dad isn't cool :)
the 'but' was a connective rather than a contrastive, if that makes any sense.

Tour de France passing through England for the first time, hehe! (Me very excited).

oddsock [quote]delphina [quote]oddsock delphina - it was your dad that reminded me of calvin and hobbes!
but calvin's dad is way cool - if i ever have a kid then he's going to be my role model..

My dad IS way cool :D he's the one who got me into biking! :D Aw bless him!![/quote]
sorry - I didn't mean to imply your dad isn't cool :)
the 'but' was a connective rather than a contrastive, if that makes any sense.[/quote]
I was just aproving your comment, hehe ^^ I love those cartoons :D

scott not scot hehe....mine had fat chrome rims...no plastic wheels for me....:)
Oh and i had a mountain bike in the 80's too....raleigh mustang...my dad had a first gen muddy fox courier...then came the marins...konas....s-bikes...orange....custom websters....etc

Yeh i think my dad's was a Raleigh, blue it was, I always remember him stacking it outside a very full pub garden in the summer, big gash in his leg, claret everywhere me shouting very worriedly asking if he was ok, him very embarassed shouting 'Yes I'm fine come on!' whilst scrambling back onto the bike and trying to get away from the 30 people in the pub staring/laughing at him.

I also remember my older brother getting a racer for his 17/18th birthday then getting it nicked from the bike shed a week later, police actually came round! he was gutted never saw it again.

oh and shouting the combination of my lock at the top of my voice to my best mate downstairs so he could borrow my bike, in the middle of the rather dodgy council estate I lived in, not even thinking that someone could think about stealing it.my mum in the distance with her head in her hands..

big daddy wayne f

I hope that wasn't the assembly instructions..

my dad had a massive raleigh equipe, or royale, i can't remember which, i kind of adopted it when i got to about 14. just about reached the pedals.

My dad had a great Bob Jackson tourer he picked up in the late 70's when he briefly lived in england. It's still sitting in my mum's garage in melbourne. Reynolds 531, white paint with red decals, well worn brooks saddle. It rides like a couch, and has covered most of britain, big parts of france, all of victoria several times over, big parts of new south wales and south australia. Not the coolest bike ever, but reliable as fuck.
My first geared bike was a tiny 10-speed mountain bike, followed by a Malvern Star racer with fluoro yellow paint (very early 90's), then an Apollo Cheetah mountain bike, a second hand peugeot road bike and a giant alu mountain bike which is still at home at mum's. Good times.

I still haven't learnt to ride a bike.. woe is me..

yeah i remember it vividly. the day the stabilisers came off. it was a summers evening oop north. god it was nerve wracking.

but not for long. then just a sense of freedom. yes down the end of the avenue and i turned the corner into the back lane. it was a left turn (and across unmade up ground). but i stayed on. it was brilliant.

and i still wonder whether it might turn out to be the best day of my life. ahh simple things ....

I think I was about 4 and had a little red and blue bike like delphinas first, but it had white tyres! Check me out.

My dad was holding the seat and I was shouting "don't let go" with him shouting "I won't", untill the "I won't"s got further and further away.

It was here....

What a nice thread this is: awash with nostalgia and happy memories. :-)

Garrioch Road red blaes pitches, Glasgow. I suppose I was about seven or eight. I'd had bikes before, but this was my first one without stabilisers.

Edit: I learned on Christmas Day, which - despite the total lack of snow and reindeers - is when the photo was taken.

hehe, that's not a bad idea with the google map thing, here's mine ^^

"Here!" is where I was in the picture :)

I was about seven, I taught myself to ride in the back garden during the school holidays. The bike was a red single speed that my dad bought for £5 and refurbished.

I'm also sufficiently old that I have taught my own kid to ride a bike. It was pretty straightforward really. We went up to Tooting Common, I held the bike up to get her going and off she went shouting "look at me, look at me".

I have to go now, there's a bit of a lump in my throat.

i remember riding a trike around the living room, looking back and seeing the floor all scraped up. I had a BMX it was blue (black?) with yellow mag wheels. I don't remember learning to ride, but i do remember come out the next day and it was gone, stolen off the front porch. didn't get a new bike for ages.

all that happened here, the house with all the big trees across from the arrow. Had an amazing tree house in that tree in the back yard but a tornado blew it away. also remember being well scared of the old man who lived in the house on the corner.

p.s. Delph your dad looks like my supper trendy mate.

My budgie was baby blue I seem to remember. Ho0wever I can't find any evidence of that being true. The next bike was a red Strika. A girl over the road had a super strika with yellow tyres and pedal back brakes. It looked like a mini burner.

My mates brother was sponsored and had a PK ripper pink and baby blue candy stripes.

sigh

This is an awesome thread... good idea delphina!

I was 5 or 6 and had just moved into the house my parents live in now (where I come home to during uni holidays). My first bike was blue, nothing fancy, thumbshifter gears, got it for Christmas.

Lots of pain involved in learning to ride it! I had no balance at all :( My Dad was running around holding the back of the saddle for weeks! Eventually he'd let go and I'd realise then crash into something - a parked red car and a huge bush stick out vividly for some reason.

When I outgrew it I was desperate for some ridiculous dual suspension mountain bike because all my friends had them, and then for my birthday my parents bought me one. I can't remember how old I was exactly, maybe 10 or 11. Used to have so much fun building jumps by digging up the ground in this woodland area with my mate and exploring everywhere. If you rode west for about 1 mile offroad (it was awesome - singletrack path through a huge field, down this masssive hill, into a bluebell forest!) you'd get to this village. It was great ride.

I was 5 and on my Raleigh Tempest (which was a bit of a girl's bike, dad wouldn't let me get a Chipper which was the Raleigh between a Budgie and a Tomahawk), dad had been gradually raising the stabilisers off the ground to get me used to the idea. It took a coupla hours of him holding onto the back then letting go and me wobbling all over the place before he'd grab hold of the bike again... Finally got the hang of it and I remember very vividly it feeling like I could fly or something... There was no stopping me after that!
That was Claverton Street in Pimlico in 1972...
This is a nice thread... :)

Sadly the Interwibble seems to not contain any pics of my first bike - a Huffy Dill Pickle - it even had "The Dill Pickle" painted along the TT. It was that 70's avacado/lime-esque green colour, black banana seat, chromed chopper handle bars that felt as tall as me, 'pedal backwards' brakes. Brilliant for emulating Evil Knievel over jumps made out of breeze block and spare planks.

I was about 5 and insisted on having the stabilizers removed as soon as. I do remember the wonder of bicycle mechanics in play watching my dad undo the rear wheel bolts. I was all over the road at first (balance left - steer left, vice versa) but eventually got the hang of it. It was cool being able to ditch the bike and have it lay flat rather than stand up on it's own.

EDIT - Since everyone is showing off geographic locations....I learned here

that's me on the right...(with back-pedal brake - sooo good for skids!)

and this is where..

Germany 1986

Londoner Strasse :D

yep - where they shove the foreigners!

It was 1989 and I was 5 and a half in Sacremento, CA. My dad told me that I was going to learn to ride that day. So we hit the street and did the classic 'pedal whilst he holds on' method. After a few meters he let's go without telling me and I pedal off on my own; a few seconds later I realise that he's no longer attached and I look back and start yelling because I was so stoked! And then i rode right into the back of a parked car and went flying. Good times!

My old street!I think my house is two up on the left of the arrow thingy