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Bikes Resources
Do you remember your first bike, favorite bike or your last bike? If you lived anywhere near a sidewalk or a paved road chances are a lot of time was spent peddling and enjoying the freedom a bike offered. Times were different and so were the bikes. Maybe the slower more cumbersome versions represented the pace of things when we were growing up. Pre-boomers, in particular, will enjoy this ride down memory lane.
When we were pre-schoolers, the tricycle was the way to get around. Our little legs pumped hard to make the pedals, attached directly to the front turn wheel, turn in hopes of attaining as much speed as possible. We didn't go very fast but we worked very hard. For boys, most of these runs along the sidewalk ended in a crash, which often resulted in skinned knees and elbows, or we just got tired. That's when we would sit on the curb and watch the big kids speed by on their two-wheelers and dream of having a real bike.
It was about the second grade when my dream came true; I got a two-wheel bicycle. Mine was a used 20 inch size, which my father painted bright red. Dad taught me how to ride, because there were no training wheels back then. I can still remember him walking with me along with the bike to the elementary school, which had an enormous paved playground. There, he walked me around in circles balancing me and correcting my steering so I could get the feel of it. We did this every Sunday afternoon for a few weeks.
One day, without me knowing it, he slowly let go and I was riding all by myself. What a thrill. I can close my eyes now and see me pedaling from one end of the schoolyard to the other. Then I traveled in circles and did figure eights before turning too abruptly and falling off to the side off the bike onto the concrete. The bike and I each had a couple of scratches, but we both survived the first of many such mishaps. Nobody wore helmets, gloves, or arm and knee pads, because there weren't any. Besides, a few bumps and bruises were part of growing up.
Like the other kids, I quickly outgrew the small bike and moved up to a used 24 inch model. Then on Christmas, right after my eleventh birthday, I got a brand new, full-size, deluxe Schwinn. It was loaded and had hand as well as foot brakes. I learned the first day, not to apply both too quickly, or you might fly over the handlebars. Fortunately, neither the bike nor I was hurt in this educational process. The bike was swell and I felt swell riding it.
This Schwinn became my mode of transportation around the community until I was about fifteen, when I thought I was too old to be tooling the streets on a bike and the law said I was not old enough to drive a car. But I pestered my dad for months until he finally took me to the high school parking lot on Sunday afternoons to learn how to drive the family car with a standard shift and no power steering. In many ways the driving experience was easier than learning to keep my balance and steer a bike. Mastering each of these functions were important events in my life, as it was with most pre-boomers.
Don Potter, a Philadelphia native, was born in 1936 and is a 50 year veteran of the advertising agency business. Now living in Los Angeles, he has written two novels in retirement, frequently writes on marketing issues, and has a blog dedicated to pre-boomers (those born between 1930 and 1945).
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