Learning to ride your first 2-wheel bike
Learning to ride your first 2-wheel bike
About a month ago I wrote and posted an article about remembering and wishing I could drive again for just a day the first car I ever owned - even asked everyone if they did as well. However there was absolutely no interest in it - I mean "nada", not a comment.
http://thenewstalkers.com/community/discussion/30736/driving-your-first-car-again-for-a-day-a-wish-and-a-dream
Maybe there could be more interest if I wrote an article about the first real bicycle (no training wheels) any one had as a kid, and learning to ride it. As it happens, mine was a Canadian make (which is understood) called CCM. Basic model - no chain guard, no fancy gears or hand brakes, single speed and push a foot pedal backwards to stop. It had one accessory, a manual thumb-operated bell mounted beside the right hand-grip. It looked somewhat like this.
https://momentummag.com/story-of-canada-world-class-bike-company-ccm/
I think I was about 12 or 13 and it was my first bike. My father took me out on the street, put me on the seat, gave me a push, and I fell down (of course). Within about 20 minutes and a few falls I realized that moving fast enough and slightly steering in the direction in which I was falling over prevented me from falling, and I rode all the way down to the end of the block and back again - SUCCESS - I graduated into being a bike-rider.
Does anyone else have a story about their first bike, and the experience thay had learning to ride it. Three-wheelers and training wheels don't qualify for this article.
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Nostalgia seems to be invasive when one reaches the age of 4 score.
The only way an article gets to be even looked at these days is if the headline shouts out: "TRUMP, TRUMP, TRUMP"
Maybe it's just a rare, almost forgotten, sign of intelligence when people have more than a ONE-TRACK mind.
The only way an article gets to be even looked at these days is if the headline shouts out: "TRUMP, TRUMP, TRUMP"
Maybe it's just a rare, almost forgotten, sign of intelligence when people have more than a ONE-TRACK mind.
Are you honking your own horn Buzz? lol
I don't object to your article , but your extra commentary is ridiculous.
"Are you honking your own horn Buzz? lol"
Nope. I'm ringing my bicycle bell.
I remember when I learned to ride. It was on a small red bike that I found in the garbage. My parents were having a tough time financially and so they neither had the money for a bike for me, or the time to teach me. So I taught myself and what I remember is that my legs were black and blue before i taught myself to ride.
Did anyone attach a card or piece of cardboard that would rub against the spokes to make a motor-type noise when you were riding?
I did, but it was a playing card.
baseball card
And how much would that baseball card, probably destroyed by using it that way, be worth in its original condition today?
My son was a baseball card collector - whole annual boxes of the cards for years, besides some special individual ones.
Dear Friend Perrie: Due to modest beginnings, my parents met at a single's bus stop.
Over time Father worked three sales jobs to move us into the middle class.
I made my spending money past allowance at home doing chores for neighbors.
Mowing grass, raking leaves, shoveling snow, cleaning out basements and garages; whatever they needed.
My earning went to three places.
1/3 into an account at a local Savings and Loan for college.
1/3 into Pushkas (charity boxes where you put coins. My two charities were Keren Kayamit for planting trees in Israel, Kupat Bikur Cholim (fund to help the infirm), Kupat Gemilat Chassadim (Fund for acts of loving kindness - general charity distribution) and Kupat Yeshiva Uu Talmud Torah d' Shikun Maplewood (Yeshiva and Talmud Torah of Maplewood NJ. A religious education fund administered by our Rabbi, Reb Oscar Klein (of Sacred Memory).
Charity and education are such a great priorities for us that they starts in early childhood.
The final 1/3 was mine to use as I saw fit.
Topps baseball and football cards, a subscription to Science Digest, Root Beer Freezes at Max Freed's Pharmacy counter, Good Humor orange sherbet covered French vanilla ice cream on a stick, and Wilson athletic equipment saw the bulk of my treasure.
For things beyond what I could earn, if deemed a wise choice my parents would buy for me. Examples are my Bar Mitzvah Set (things Jewish men need for Services), collection of Jewish Holy Books Commentaries on Them, and Theosophy (I was the then version of a religious nerd, I read complex works of theology and religious philosophy in their original languages from a very early age).
I will stop here. Going off topic. Nice to recall good things from bygone times.
Enoch, Riding my Bike Down Memory Lane.
Actually my first bike was a ''one wheeler''. Otherwise known as the Rez Bike.
I didn't have two tires, so I just cut up the frame and made a unicycle out of it. After I became really good on it, I ran away and joined the circus..
I performed under the stage name of ''The Free Wheel'en Indie'', AKA Rez Dawgz
This is a very true story, honest...
Hey, I believe you! Honest!
My Uncle Ron tricked me into learning how to ride a bicycle when I was about 7. He told me just to get on the bike, grab the handle bars and pedal, while he would be behind me push me along. So there I was, pedaling like mad and steering straight ahead and it was quite sometime before I realized that Uncle Ron was no longer pushing me. The bastard! Anyway once I was riding straight like that the rest was sort of easy. Of course I still fell down a few times, but once I realized that I could do it be myself it went OK from then on.
Of course my best bike didn't look anything like the one above. Mine was was stingray. Sort of like the 1967 version of the Schwinn, except the two bars coming forward from the seat to the front were covered with a piece of sheet aluminum, it had front and back fenders and had a tall sissy bar on the back. The whole thing was Candy Apple Green, fading from dark to lighter front to back (with of course the high handle bars and sissy bar being chrome), with a dark Green Metal Flake Banana Seat and handle bar grips. I was quite the young stud muffin about town on it.
My bike wasn't exactly as the one shown either. The bars were straight, not curved, and the fenders were red like the rest of the bike, but I couldn't find an exact picture. I do have a question about yours. How do you swing your leg over the back of the seat when getting on the bike, because of that "sissy bar"? Did you have to tip the bike over to put your leg over it - you can't ride it side-saddle, and it isn't a girl's bike.
You had to tip it toward you and put your leg over it like with a chopper motorcycle and then straighten it up underneath you. Some of them were actually three speed bikes that had a shiftier just behind the handlebars so you could shift it like a car. I never had one of those. My first one was one that I my dad got from a rebuilt bike shop and it needed some work and I customized it by painting it dark blue and buying a sissy bar for it. Then in 7th grade I moved in with my mom and step-father and they gave me my brand new green one for my birthday. The most fun was pulling it up for wheelies and seeing how long and how far you could go just on the back wheel. Of course if you lost your balance there was a good chance you might go over backwards. Sometimes painfully. I also lost a couple rear reflector lights that way.
After a couple of years I graduated to a 3-speed bike with hand brakes. I eventually attached a headlight with a generator that had a little wheel that rubbed against the tire to charge up. The brightness of the light depended on how fast I was going. Except for attaching a wire basket at the front, that was the extent of my customization. However, I got my car driver learner permit when I was 15 and started driving a car by myself at 16, and didn't need my bike much more after that.
I took driver's education in high school before 10th grade. In Michigan driver's education was a required part of the school curriculum and you had to take it before you could get your license. Since I was already 16 in summer when I took it I didn't get a learners permit and just took the test and got my license. I remember being shocked to find out that Michigan was sort of an exception and most states don't require any form of drivers school in high school or at all. If you practice and show up and pass the tests you get a license. In California you can take the written test in 16 different languages. In Arizona if you want to pay a few extra bucks you can get a license that you don't have to renew for 20 years. I had one until I moved here.
In Ontario in 1952 when I got my driver's licence, there was no written test, and driver's education was not taught in the schools. My father was a believer that proper lessons at a driving school were more important than passing on bad habits, so I took driving lessons at Gerrie's Driving School. They used Studebakers with dual controls - guess the teachers didn't trust the learners that much. After taking the course, I went for my test for my regular licence (getting the learner's permit was automatic - but with it I was limited to my family's car or the driving school car), but an adult driver had to sit shotgun in either case. The test was incredibly easy - the guy had me drive around the block and parallel park and that was it.
You don't need no stinkin' license to drive on the Rez.
LOL Kavika. You've already told us about your driving experiences on the Rez, where the trees jump in front of you.
Actually Buzz it was a power pole. The Rez is the only known area that the jumping power pole exist.
My dad tried to teach me to ride a bike by sitting me on it and pushing me down a grass hill. I don't know what he was thinking.
Dear Friend Buzz: My first bicycle was a Schwinn. Painted red with stainless steel spokes and black rubber tires.
It was magnificent.
Having spent lots of time in my childhood scaling mountains and steep hills on the Eagle Rock Reservation; and horse riding at the Montclair Riding Academy I didn't need training wheels.
I was long used to things like balance and steering.
That bike took me every and anywhere I wanted to go.
That and my first car (a two toned 1956 Chevy Bel Aire gave me my first taste of freedom.
Nothing like it.
Super article Buzz.
Brings back great memories from "back in the day".
Thanks.
Enoch.
This is a great thread.
I learned on a friends bike. One day we were visiting a family friend and one of the sons asked me if I wanted to try his new bike. He said something to the effect of "just roll down their hill. So I tried that with my feet extended out to keep from falling over. After a couple times I could balance.
My parents could not afford to buy a bike for me. My father did tree work. He cared for and trimmed trees. If necessary he would take them down. I usually helped him after school and on Saturdays. One day he had a customer who was an older gentleman who had what was called an "English Racer". It was English alright, but it was not a racer. It weighed a ton. But it had baskets already for delivering news papers and it had the generator for that could engage the the front tire to power a headlight and taillight. Also, it was a 3 speed.
The fella said he didn't ride anymore and if I did some extra work around his house I could have.
Deal.
The bike was really too big for me at the time. But hey, that was my first taste of freedom.
It is amazing how little single gear "cruiser" bicycles have changed from then until today. I guess they couldnt reinvent the wheels.
Before I learned to ride my blue bicycle, I travelled on roller skates with my friends. Skate key on a string around your neck .......oh, boy, that was fun.
I'm happy to see that this old article gained hew life - but it's realy about self-powered bikes - memories of being a kid..
The first sense of freedom. These days I have a rigid frame mountain bike with road tires. It is an 18 speed Raleigh half alloy and half molly. I am way too old to be interested in speed these days. I just love to ride.