My First Bicycles
I’m not sure what age I started cycling at, but I’m pretty sure it was before the age of 8. Nor am I sure what my first bicycle was, but I do have a memory of a Raleigh Tomahawk being one I had fairly early on. The Tomahawk was designed as a smaller and more accessible version of the more well-known Chopper, making it more suited to younger riders. I don’t think the small front wheel was that well suited to rougher terrain though – I recall on one occasion cycling on the rough stony trails through the local woods when an encounter with a large stone pitched me off!
After the Tomahawk, perhaps directly after, I remember having a Raleigh Roadrunner. It had 24″ wheels, 3 speed hub gears, mudguards, chain guard and a luggage rack at the back. The colour scheme was green and black (black frame with green mudguards and chain guard, plus some frame stickers). The hub gears could probably have done with some maintenance – I have a memory of them starting to slip out of gear which wasn’t fun when pushing hard on the pedals.
I think it was the Roadrunner that I used for doing my Cycling Proficiency Test (something offered to children aged 9-10) – I have some memories of the training for it (which was probably organised by the school). We had the Transport and Road Research Laboratory just around the corner from us which had a small network of test roads (complete with a working test set of traffic lights) and someone must have arranged some access to it for our training so we were able to do some early practice sessions on roads with junctions and traffic lights but no cars! As part of the training got a copy of the highway code to learn and I seem to remember being a bit obsessed by it (I was an obsessive reader as a kid) – in fact that learning came in handy years later when I did my driving test as plenty stuck which made the theory test a doddle.
My First Drop Bar Bicycles
After the Roadrunner I had a few drop bar bikes (“racers”). Some of the bikes were second-hand with my dad negotiating part-exchange of my previous bike for my next one at the local bike shop.
I recall my dad being a bit resistant to me getting my first drop bar bike. He told some story of having been at a hospital and seen someone with both wrists in plaster casts which was apparently a consequence of going into something hand-first on a drop-bar bicycle. But I did get one (a secondhand one) and managed not to break anything. I do remember the fun of non-indexed gear shift levers on the down tube. And the risk that if you slipped off the pedal (or the chain jumped) you could whack your kneecap on one.
I believe it was using my first racer that I took part in the Three Counties Cycle Ride with a couple of friends. It’s a charity cycling event (still going to this day) and I remember my dad helped get me some pledges of donations from a number of work contacts. The ride was about 50 miles and although I did some distance rides ahead of the event I doubt I did any over about 20 miles – my bottom was not ready for being in the saddle that long!
The first new bicycle I had during this time was a Raleigh Sensor. I was very much into computers since primary school and so was drawn to a bicycle which had a “built in” computer. The Sensor had a speed sensor on the front wheel and a small “5 function integrated computer” mounted on plastic housing that covered the end of the top tube and the top of the head tube. I think I’d been doing a paper round at the time and put some money from that towards it, but then it was then probably a case of using up my birthday and christmas present allocation from my parents having badgered my dad until he gave in.
The paper round I was doing was a daily evening one – the “Reading Evening Post”. While most houses had morning papers, meaning morning rounds mostly involved walking door-to-door, few houses took the evening paper so it was rare for there to me more than two houses in the same road who took the paper so the round was fairly spread out. That meant it very much needed cycling to get between the houses to finish the round in a reasonable time and having to cycle in all weathers. There were a few winters with some decent snow fall, the pavements rarely salted and gritted, plus some of the roads were unadopted (those turned into ice rinks as the cars compacted the snow over the dirt/gravel surface) – I don’t think I fell off that often, but it was sketchy going. Cycling in the rain was no fun at all. And of course with short daylight hours during winter it also meant cycling in the dark so bike lights were essential – I remember having Ever Ready lights with clip-in holders which took size D batteries (I very quickly got NiCad rechargeable batteries).
Mountain Bikes
I’m not sure what prompted the move to mountain bikes. I was probably mainly influenced by a friend’s bicycle choice, but living down an unadopted road and having a large amount of forestry commission land with great trails through it meant a mountain bike was ideal as I rarely rode long distance (there was also Circle Hill with its little valley popular amongst kids for getting air on BMXs and mountain bikes).
I do remember being drawn to the neon colours of an MBK mountain bike which the local bike shop had for sale secondhand and having one of those for a while. During my A-level years I had a Saturday/holiday retail job and although I’m not sure of the timing I think it could have been money from that which went towards buying a Diamondback Topanga (in white) which had a reasonable specification (I think I bought that one new).
My bicycle didn’t travel with me when I went to university in Leeds but I still made use of it when back home.
Marin Mountain Bike
A few months after starting my first full-time job, post-university, I actually had some spare money in my bank account and decided to treat myself to a slightly higher end bicycle than those I’d previously had. I stuck with a mountain bike as I enjoyed riding the trails through the woods and went for a brand new 1996 Marin Bobcat Trail.
Hiatus
The Marin got good use for its first few years. I didn’t take my driving test for another couple of years after buying it and then it was another couple of years after that before I finally got a car (a Mini Mayfair). I’d moved out from home by this point and lived somewhere which had a typical british narrow garage, but the Mini Mayfair was a nice and small so getting the bicycle past it was easy. My next car (a Mk1 MX-5) was a bit wider and I was enjoying driving it so the Marin ended up languishing at the back of the garage and stopped getting ridden by me. So that was pretty much the end of my first period of cycling.
The bike did then spend a couple of years down in Brighton being used by my partner while they were doing their PhD. After that it came home and and lived in a spare bike locker at work (stood up on its rear wheel) for quite a few years until the cycle lockers were due to be removed when it came home and got put up in the attic.
I then wouldn’t return to cycling again for 20 years…