Remember the stabilisers coming off - will have been 4 living in Luton circa 1975
Rode bikes all through my youth and learned to maintain them to a certain degree with the help of a book - can't remember the name of it
Remember my first road bike - 2nd hand off a mate and passing my cycling proficiency on it
Remember my first 'off road' ride down farm tracks on my Raleigh Bomber and realising it was more fun than riding on the road
Remember my first go on a proper MTB - a Dawes with 18 gears owned by a family friend and being desperate to own one
Remember buying my first new bike that I'd saved up for - Raleigh Pulsar road bike. Wanted an MTB, but a family friend (Aiden Leheup - google him) worked in a bike shop in Matlock Bath at the time and told me that any MTB I could afford at that time would be rubbish - good advice! Did a family cycling holiday camping with panniers and a tent strapped to the back around Whitby and Scarborough
Remember buying my first MTB from a mate - an old Scott, must have been around 1992
The rest as they say, is history
I think my first 'no stabilizers' ride was round the corner from my house. A mates dad removed my stabilizers for me as everyone else could ride a bike and I was nearly 7, so it was about time.
turns out I could ride a bike without stabilizers. or rather, not that well.
cue a BMX, lots of gravel in the knees and lots of beartrap pedal strikes on the shins. The same summer we were building ramps from scrap wood and house bricks, using a nearby steep driveway for a run in and jumping over our mates. That was progression.
first MTB ride, on an MTB (of sorts) was after my BMX was written off in a RTA, and I could walk again, and the insurance had paid up (18 months later). being 6ft at 12 years old, BMX were very small. so onto an ATB I went. It was quite a revelation not to be riding on the tracks of the Malverns on a BMX, with one quite difficult gear, but with a whole 15 gears to play with.
I broke 3 of those bikes, eventually being told, after an upgrade from the supplier, that this was my last one, and they weren't proper mountain bikes, but mountain bike-like bikes, so don't do anything silly on it.
the remainder of the 1980's was spent on a blue and white bike, adorned with cosmic fluoro yellow frame bag, with a padded strap for shouldering the bike, and a similarly coloured disc wheel cover and Mt Zefal pump. rumble rumble...
My first proper ride was on a Raleigh Record (black with gold detail) in 1976 around the lanes of Partington and Dunham.
The first MTB was a 1991 Dimondback Sorrento (gloss black and white "spangle") up and down the grand union canal at the back of Hounslow. Oh the joy
my brother bought a marin MTB bike back from uni or somewhere. I borrowed it for a razz about the towpaths and footpath around radley gravel pits. loads of fun. Then i bought my own MTB at uni many years later as my mate was keen to do a few XC rides on teh south downs.
when i leant to ride i remember it as i rode straight off the patio, across the gravel drive and into teh privet hedge opposite, much to my dad and brothers amusement. i can still hear my dad shouting 'turn! turn!' but that was advanced biking i`d not been taught haha! A week later he was shouting at me for doing skids on teh gravel drive.
I was a late starter, my first rides were my mate's deathtrap castoffs. I was never allowed a bike of my own (my mum said I was dangerous enough on foot) so obviously I was far better off on a rotten Raleigh Boxer with no brakes.
The first bike I actually owned was a Diamondback Outlook, probably around 1993 giver or take a year. I replaced it with a Spesh Hardrock in 2009, so it owed me nowt.
And in fact, said Hardrock:
That one did owe me something, it was stolen less than a year after I bought it.
Learnt to ride a bike when i was 4, and was always around the village on a variety of BMXs and 90s MTBs. I remember rides around "the block" with my dad, and the odd jaunt up the long mynd or haughmound hill,
but "first ride" i would put as the freshers ride at uni.
a 5 or 6 year old 200 quid giant boulder, that was hanging out its ass on a good day. Bald tyres (with an orange tread), balder brakes blocks
Got absoloutely destroyed by bigger boys on bigger bikes around Nant yr Arian.
I think we rode out on the first ride. (12 miles of uphill before you even get there)
The best of times.
My first MTB ride? I sure do. I remember sprinting to the top of a fairly serious climb going past all these other blokes in this group and thinking, what a bunch of pussies! I threw up at the top; they just nodded, sagely.
Remember my first road bike – 2nd hand off a mate and passing my cycling proficiency on it
The cycling proficiency test! Is there anything more British? Reminiscing on this is defiantly 😉 worth its own thread.