My First Bicycles
I’m pretty sure I started cycling by the age of 8 and although I’m not sure if it was my first bicycle I do remember I had a Raleigh Tomahawk 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. However I don’t think the small front wheel was that well suited to rougher terrain – I recall one occasion when cycling on the rough stony trails through the local woods where an encounter with a large stone pitched me off!
After the Tomahawk 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 on my one could probably have done with some maintenance – I have a memory of them starting to slip out of gear which always risked injury when pushing hard on the pedals.
I think it was the Roadrunner that I used for doing my Cycling Proficiency Test (something offered in the UK to children aged 9-10). One of my memories of the training for the test was we had the Transport and Road Research Laboratory just around the corner from us and it had a small network of test roads (complete with a working test set of traffic lights). One of the adults organising our training must have managed to arrange access for us so we were able to do some early practice sessions on roads which had junctions and traffic lights but no risk of any cars! As part of the training we 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) – that learning actually came in handy years later when I did my driving test as plenty stuck making the theory test a doddle.
My First Drop Bar Bicycles
After the Roadrunner I had some drop bar bikes (“racers”).
My dad was a little resistant to me getting my first drop bar bike – he told me some story of having been at a hospital and seen someone with both wrists in plaster casts and that supposedly having been a consequence of riding into something hand-first on a drop-bar bicycle. Nonetheless he did haggle at the local bike shop for a second hand racer for me and I managed not to break anything during my time riding it! Racers back in those days had the added peril of non-indexed gear shift levers on the down tube with the associated risk that if you slipped off the pedal (or the chain jumped) you could whack your knee on one.
I rode that first racer when I took part in a Three Counties Cycle Ride with a couple of friends one year. It’s a charity cycling event (still going to this day) and my dad helped get me some pledges of donations from a number of his work contacts. The ride was about 50 miles and although I did some training rides ahead of the event I doubt I did any over about 20 miles so my rear was not ready for being in the saddle for 50 miles.
The first new bicycle I owned was a Raleigh Sensor, also a racer. I had been 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 to display speed and distance. 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 mostly case of using up my birthday and christmas present allocation from my parents having badgered my dad until he gave in. Having become very accustomed to the sight of modern road bikes the frame geometry of the Sensor looks seriously weird!
The paper round I was doing that helped fund the Sensor was a daily evening one – the “Reading Evening Post”. Most houses had morning papers and those rounds were primarily walking walking door-to-door. Few houses took the evening paper however so it was rare for there to me more than two houses in the same road who took it which meant a very spread out round and cycling being essential to get between the houses in a reasonable time. Naturally it meant cycling in all weathers and there were a few winters with some decent snow fall with the pavements rarely salted and gritted and a handful of unadopted roads which were entirely ungritted (they turned into ice rinks as the cars compacted the snow covering the dirt/gravel surface). I don’t think I fell off that often during the snowy weather (and they would have been very slow speed falls) but it was certainly sketchy going. The short daylight hours during winter meant 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, although they had a limited lifespan with daily use) – I really appreciate the compactness and convenience that LEDs and Li-Ion batteries give you these days!
Mountain Bikes
The switch from racers to mountain bikes was probably strongly influenced by a friend’s bicycle choice, but with living down an unadopted road and having a large amount of forestry commission land with great trails a mountain bike made a lot of sense, especially as I rarely rode long distance.
I’m not sure if it was my first mountain bike, but I remember being drawn to the neon colours of an MBK mountain bike which the local bike shop had for sale secondhand and owned one of those for a while. During my A-level years I had a Saturday/holiday retail job and some money from that went towards buying a new Diamondback Topanga MTB (in white).
My bicycle didn’t travel with me when I went to university but I still made good use of it when back home.
Marin Mountain Bike
A few months after starting my first full-time job, post-university, I finally cleared my student overdraft and had some spare money with which I decided to treat myself to a higher end bicycle than those I’d previously had. I went for another mountain bike to be able to keep riding the trails through the local woods and went for a brand new Marin Bobcat Trail (1996).
Cycling Hiatus
The Marin got good use during my first few years of ownership, often going for a ride along the trails in the previously mentioned woods. I’d lucked out getting a job which was within walking distance of home so I didn’t take my driving test for another couple of years and then it was still another couple of years after that before I finally got a car (a second hand Mini Mayfair). By that point I was living somewhere which had a typical 60s-build British narrow garage, but the Mini Mayfair was a nice and small so getting the bicycle past it was easy. However my next car (a Mk1 MX-5) was a bit wider and took up more of the garage and I was enjoying driving a lot so the Marin ended up languishing at the back of the garage and there ended of my first period of cycling.
After that the Marin did spend a couple of years down in Brighton being used by my partner while they were doing their PhD. Then the bike 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. But other than one slightly wobbly ride bringing it home from the cycle lockers I didn’t ride the Marin (or any other bike) for another 20 years.