Giving Your Bikes to Your Kids

So even tho I ride most days and always on my days off I never actually mtb any more, I stopped due to a problem foot years ago which needed an op and was just too painful due to the added pressures of hills, drops etc but I found I could ride on the flat, so that’s what I did, I started going off for pootles and days along the river, that sort of thing, a pub here and there, I realised I was happy as long as I was on a bike and so after years of riding off road religiously several days a week I stopped and I never really picked it up again.

I kept my full suss, it’s a bit long in the tooth, a Cannondale Prophet, every part slowly upgraded from new as they broke or wore out, Pikes, Hope, DT Swiss etc etc, I even converted it to 1×11 but only rode it a few times, my son, now sixteen rode it a fairly regularly, always asking if he could borrow it, this week after having the forks serviced I had a moment of clarity and just gave it to him, he’s absolutely chuffed and I’m just happy it’ll actually be used and enjoyed, I may ask him if I can borrow it some time. That’s all really, I feel better about the world, I now no longer have a mountain bike I never use.

That’s great. My son still has the MTB we bought him at 13/14 – he occasionally still uses it (aged 24) as it’s been serviced by me – had it been him, it would not still be rideable as he is a car nut !  It’s a basic Carrera Vengeance, but it’s been trouble free for me to keep going for him. He’s not using any of my bikes nor MrsF’s lightly used BMC FS03 XC bike (XT and SLX and stupid light for an alloy bike)- he would not look after it as it’s not his area of interest. He’s into car mods.

My two have raided both mine and their grandparents’ bikes and general outdoor gear repeatedly. I think between me, Mrs GD and their one set of grandparents they’ve appropriated 7 bikes (one of which now deceased after an altercation with a wall), a boat, a tent, several bits of bike luggage/rucksacks and a bunch of other camping gear etc.

The older one also has an irritating tendency to want to borrow my FS and gravel bike. I need to hold onto something damit!

It’s (mostly) great though 🙂

My eldest has my old 26” Cube for the last number of years and my youngest uses my 27.5 hard tail on the trails as his own bike is too small of him now, leaving me with the full suss. TBH we kind of share the bikes these days and take whatever. I am getting a new commuter’s in the new year that will no doubt be used by all too.

I still have a Prophet hanging up in the shed along with a 26″ wheeled Ragley Mmmbop, I kept them so my kids could MTB but they were more interested in riding horses 🙁

To go and ride along the river and stop at pubs seems to be a great solution to me. Wow it’s good that you let your son have the Cannondale, at least it would not lay useless somewhere and it will be put into good use and probably maximum usage.

I recently bought a new XC/Gravel bike fully intending to sell my Ti hardtail frame to recover some of the layout and swap all the old parts off that onto an old welded up SolarisMax to give to my eldest as a hardtail.

But nobody has bought the Ti frame … so I seem to have given him the Ti hardtail for the moment. You can’t ride it without people stopping you and going “Hey, is that titanium? Is it really light?”