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

Here is mine.

Good old SE2

Think this must have been around 78, still got stabilisers on my ride, at the back... But it was around that time i got them taken off as they were that bent and did nothing.
My Dad took me to the car park down the road and i rode solo.

I was another one on a bronze Budgie. My dad took me down to the park in Sydenham to learn. For some reason, he thought taking one stabiliser off at a time was a good idea. I ended up cycling leaning over to one side. When the stabiliser finally came off, I was terrified.

After crashing my Budgie attempting to go up the steep side of a skateboard ramp (that Chopper-style seat was quite unforgiving and prone to unexpected wheelies), I moved onto my brother's Striker with the fake suspension and coaster brake. I pinched his Raleigh Arena after that (which I also crashed) and then moved into the big league with a Raleigh Bomber which got nicked.

Great thread.

I learnt here. I was 4 and 'borrowed' my big sister's bike whilst she was inside with my parents having lunch. According to my parents I shot around the corner, rode past the window, rode right across the front garden then crashed into the fence because I hadn't learnt how the brakes worked. I've been cycling ever since.

aww how cute is little delphina!!! i swear you're the same height :p

:( I know I haven't changed that much hehe.

I learnt to ride my bike here

to be honest it wasn't that long ago, but i remember my parents said "you're gonna learn to ride your bike" so we went to the park at the bottom of the road, they took the stabilisers off and i had the classic thing of my dad running behind me holding on to the seat and trying to keep up, he didn't like it that much

funny story about my dad is that he only learnt to ride a bike at 18, before he went to uni, so he lived in newcastle which has alleys at the back of all the main roads, so he said he had to learn before he went off to uni and all he other younger) kids were laughing at him

Colchester, on our driveway. My Dad was also in the school of "I let go ages ago".

I also remember as an early teenager wanting a mountain bike with 28 gears and him saying "Why do you need all those gears?". Now I'm on a fixed gear he's ribbing me for riding a bike from the turn of the century. S'pose you can never please your parents. He thinks Sturney Archer geared hub is all you need.

scott not scot wow...i've never seen a 28 gear mountain bike....:)

3 x 9.33. Course. Where have you been, man? :-P

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

Delphina where abouts was this? I remember going to watch this go through Tunbridge Wells in kent i must have been about 9!

It was at Etchinghill Near Folkestone :), ahh the happy memories, :D.

pj (pj) er... i rode a bike on an oil tanker once, if that counts. to be honest, i learnt to ride a bike at such a precociously young age i practically rode out of my mum's gaping womb.

edit - loving the red.

it's on ascension island, if anyone gives a shit.

Lol, PJ you are the origional hipster!!! even down to your 'ironic' fake addidas ;)

Am I too late to chime in? I also taught myself - in Edmonton, Alberta as a wee lad (before kindergarten). It was over one day, after taking the training-wheels off. If I remember correctly, I got two bloody-noses (how do you get a bloody-nose riding a bike without really hurting yourself?), but as soon as the blood had stopped, I ran back to my bike. I have no idea what the bike was, but I think it was red. But that could have been rust.

y'all are too cute. p.s. tomiskinky-- could've just saddled up that dog!

totally all nostalgic now, and wishing i could dig through the boxes of slides at my parents' house.
i do have this one-- okay, so it's a trike, but it was a step up from the Big Wheel (i was not quite three years old):

my first two-wheeler was a christmas gift a few years later, after we'd moved house. i guess i must've been around 7 or 8 years old. it was blue, and way too big for me (my dad stupidly bought it larger than i was, so that i could grow into it). i remember him teaching me how to ride it -- we were on the flat area of our street to the left of our house. i remember hating the training wheels (they made the whole enterprise feel rickety, and it was less scary without them). i also remember taking it out one afternoon, speeding down the steep hill that ran to the right of our house, and the terrible crash at the bottom when i flew into a curb in front of my friend carrie's house. i never rode that bike again. instead, i'd regularly borrow the little red bike owned by another neighbor (megan), until finally my mother took me (without my dad), to get a new bike of my own choosing: a yellow and blue schwinn bmx just like this one: http://genesbmx.bmxair.com/schwinn/catalogs/86pg9.jpg.
it was great for cruising the neighborhood. there was one occasion where i used only the front brake to stop on a hill, went over the bars, and bloodied my chin so that i had a scab goatee for a couple of weeks. we'd play "dirt bikes" in the red clay out by the "power lines", the path through which i'd regularly use to get to my cousin's house, and to the library when it was built the following year.
bicycle + library card= freedom. this was my preferred route: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1731130

nb: sort of wish there were archival google maps, cos the area i grew up in has changed a lot since i was a kid...

I can remember standing my big sisters bike in the gap between the crazy paving and the lawn and sitting on it pretending to ride, it must have been summer of '69. No recollection of my first solo flight, though I do recall my first confident fixed moment, and I'm looking forward to mastering that blasted unicycle from Lidl soon.

Whatever happened to cow-horns?

scott not scot Whatever happened to white dog poo?....i used to see loads of it in the late seventies/early eighties...:)

It never stays on the ground long enough to calcify. That's my theory anyway.

Cajeta
i do have this one-- okay, so it's a trike, but it was a step up from the Big Wheel (i was not quite three years old):

Aww! too cute!!

scott not scot Whatever happened to white dog poo?....i used to see loads of it in the late seventies/early eighties...:)

I heard it was something they used to put into the food but don't do any more.

Bones. When I get another dog I'm going to give it calcium tablets so it can poo white. Old skool dog(g)

.

Ant 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

My brother had a secondhand baby-blue-ish budgie, almost lilac colour. Not sure if it had been resprayed, but it had also had white tyres - it was great for throwing around, as was his striker which I bent the stem on from overuse as a dirt jump bike.

My own transition to two wheels was aboard my red 'Hornet' that had solid rubber tyres - man, that thing was a bone shaker!
That was followed by a Tomahawk (small version of the Chopper) that I rode to destruction - it was great for wheelies.

Ant Bones. When I get another dog I'm going to give it calcium tablets so it can poo white. Old skool dog(g)

I once convinced my younger brother to drink a small bottle of blue food colouring. He got upset about the way it dyed his tongue and teeth blue for a few days, but even more upset that he was doing blue poos for a week :D

Before we head too far in dog scatology, here's a follow-on question. When did you take your cycling proficiency test?

1979 for me. On one of these;

It was another of my Dad's salvage jobs. All my mates had Choppers. He might as well have beaten me up himself.

willski - very cool bike - I love the rack, looks quite modern*. Is it a folder?

• meant seriously, not like the pre-beating sarcastic taunt of childhood.
  

willski Before we head too far in dog scatology, here's a follow-on question. When did you take your cycling proficiency test?

Erm, I think I was 9? But I failed... I passed the written exam, but once I was on the road I didn't stop at the red light because I wanted to go faster and nearly got hit by a car. :(
Oh... I guess I REALLY haven't changed... :(

It was called a "public danger" by alot of people after that...