Wheel Stories
We all have a childhood memory of riding our first bicycle. What was it like for you? The readers below share their stories. We hope they inspire you to share yours.
Riding your first real bike is a potent childhood memory. Before you got your first car, before you took off for college, your first two-wheeler was a sweet taste of freedom. Riding was all about breaking away and asserting your independence--it had nothing to do with exercise or staying sane in a world full of bills and obligations. It was pure fun.
"I remember when my dad took me to a grassy field to teach me how to ride my bike without training wheels," says Shaun Kennedy, 28, a teacher in Oakland. "He'd been running back and forth with me all day holding on to the back of the seat, promising not to let go," she says. "When he finally let go, as all parents do, I looked back--then I went flying over the handlebars!" That was the last time she looked back, and riding became one of her favorite activities that summer. "I rode every day."
The same was true for Martha Murdock, 45, a first-grade teacher in Ewing, N.J. "It's how we got around as kids," she recalls. "We rode our bikes everywhere." Every day in the summer in Princeton, N.J., she and her siblings would ride to the local pool for workouts and swim meets. Her first big-girl bike was an old Raleigh three-speed with a basket strapped to the front.
Barbara Besser remembers her mom driving her and her best friend to the top of the steepest hill around Pinecrest Lake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with her blue Schwinn in the trunk. Once there, Besser and her friend would unload the bike and take turns straddling the long banana seat and taking off down the incline. "I loved going downhill fast. The feeling of flying...it was a high," says the 53-year-old consumer marketing director, who now lives in Berkeley, Calif.
Lisa Kelsey, a magazine designer in New York City, got her first two-wheeler at age 7 after winning an art contest sponsored by her local newspaper. "I don't remember the make, but the color was gold and black. I remember going to Northgate Mall to retrieve my prize and have my photo taken. What an exciting day!"
Once she learned to ride, Kelsey says she loved racing down the steep hills in her neighborhood. "It was easy to pick up a lot of speed (no helmet, of course, it was the 70s!), which is to this day one of my favorite things about riding."
Today, Kelsey lives in Pawling, New York, where she rides her mountain bike on the surrounding trails.
Kathleen Litz grew up in Dunnellen, New Jersey, where she remembers learning to ride on a dead-end street in her neighborhood. "My bike was orange with a big black banana seat. I must have been around 8. I remember my Dad holding on to the back of the bike and me saying 'let go, let go' until he finally did and I was off by myself. I can still picture myself riding toward the end of the street with the wind blowing in my hair singing, 'Put Your Head on My Shoulder.'"
Litz, who now lives in Alabama, has no idea why she sang that song, but every time it pops into her head, she is transported to that dead-end street.
In South India, A.R. Sharma learned to ride a bike by accident. Every summer afternoon, she and her cousins would run across the street to rent bicycles from the local shopkeeper. Her cousins would get first dibs on the child-sized bikes, leaving Sharma to make do with a teen-sized bike. Unable to ride the oversized bike on her own, Sharma would enlist the help of Sarasa, the family cook's daughter, who would obligingly keep a hand on the seat and handlebars and wheel Sharma around the dusty streets.
Then one day, the cook's daughter was called away on an errand, and Sharma was left to fend for herself. As usual, her cousins got to the shop first and rented all the desirable children's bikes. "I plunked down my coin with a hang-dog expression, pondering how I would 'practice' without Sarasa's help, when to my absolute delight, the shopkeeper lifted out a new children's bike from behind the counter, complete with training wheels," Sharma recalls.
Overwhelmed with joy, Sharma wheeled the shiny new bike out of the dark shop and noted with some satisfaction the dropped jaws of her cousins' faces. "Heady with euphoria, I forgot I hadn't learned to ride on my own yet," says Sharma. "I just got on and pushed off, happily pedaling down the gully--I didn't even bother to engage the training wheels. And that's how I rode a bike on my own for the first time."
When did you first learn to ride? What did your first bicycle look like? Share your stories as well as advice for other readers about how to get back in the saddle again.
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