My First Bicycles
I started cycling as a kid and I remember an early bike of mine being a Raleigh Tomahawk. 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 one ride on the rough stony trails through the local woods where an encounter with a large stone pitched me off!
Following the Tomahawk I had a Raleigh Roadrunner. It had 24″ wheels, 3 speed hub gears, mudguards, chain guard and a luggage rack at the back. The Roadrunner’s colour scheme was green and black (a black frame with green mudguards and chain guard, plus some frame stickers). The hub gears on my secondhand one could have done with some maintenance – I have a memory of it jumping out of gear occasionally which wasn’t great when pedaling hard!
It was the Roadrunner that I used for doing my Cycling Proficiency Test (something offered in the UK to children aged 9-10). The Transport and Road Research Laboratory was situated in Crowthorne and had a small network of test roads (complete with a working test set of traffic lights) – one of the adults organising our training for the test must have managed to arrange access for the group I was in as we were able to do some early practice sessions there. It was great being able to train on entirely traffic-free roads with real junction layouts and traffic lights! As part of the training we got a copy of the highway code to learn and I was a bit obsessed by reading it, although that learning came in handy when I did my driving theory test many years later.
My First Drop Bar Bicycles
After the Tomahawk and Roadrunner I moved on to drop bar bikes (“racers”).
My dad was a little resistant to me getting my first drop bar bike though – he told me some story (probably apocryphal) of having been at a hospital and seeing someone with both wrists in plaster casts and that supposedly having been a consequence of riding into something on a drop-bar bicycle. Nonetheless he did haggle at the local bike shop for a second hand racer for me (I managed not to break anything during my time riding it). Racers back in those days had the peril of non-indexing gear shift levers on the down tube with the risk that if your foot slipped off the pedal (or the chain jumped) you could impale your knee on one.
It was on that first racer that 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 bottom was not ready for being in the saddle for 50 miles (oops!).
The first new bicycle I owned was also a racer – a Raleigh Sensor. Having been into computers since primary school I was drawn to a bicycle which had a built in “computer”. It was 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 by reading a wired wheel speed sensor on the front wheel. I’d been doing a paper round at the time and put some money from that towards it, but it was mostly case of using up my birthday and christmas present allocation from my parents to fund it (having badgered my dad until he gave in). I’ve since become very accustomed to the look of modern road bikes and and so the frame geometry of the Sensor looks seriously weird to my eyes now!
The paper round that helped fund the Sensor was a daily evening one – the “Reading Evening Post”. Most houses had morning papers with rounds that were primarily walking walking door-to-door but few houses took the evening paper meaning a very spread out round with cycling being essential to get between all the houses in a reasonable time. Of course that meant cycling in all weathers and I remember a few winters with some decent snow fall with most pavements untreated and also a handful of unadopted roads that were entirely ungritted (turning into ice rinks as the cars compacted the snow covering the dirt/gravel surface). Fortunately I only had a very small number of slow speed spills during the snowy weather but it was certainly sketchy going and gave me a healthy respect for slippery conditions. The short daylight hours during winter meant bike lights were essential – this was pre-led and pre-Li-Ion of course and I remember having big heavy Ever Ready lights which took size D batteries (I very quickly invested in some NiCad rechargeable batteries).
Mountain Bikes
My switch from racers to mountain bikes was probably strongly influenced by a friend’s bicycle choice but it was a style of bike that made sense anyway with my parent’s house being down unadopted road and Crowthorne generally having a large amount of forestry commission land with great trails a mountain bike (especially as I rarely went for lengthy rides).
I remember being drawn to the neon colours of an MBK mountain bike which the local bike shop had for sale secondhand and so had that for a while. Later, during my A-level years, I had a Saturday/holiday retail job and some money from that went towards me buying a new Diamondback Topanga MTB (in white). When I started going to university I left the bike at home (no easy way to transport it to uni or store it there), but I still made good use of it when back home.
Marin Mountain Bike
Having started my first full-time job post-university I cleared my student overdraft and then started to have some spare money. So I decided to treat myself to a higher end bicycle than those I’d previously had – another mountain bike to keep riding the trails through the local woods – a brand new Marin Bobcat Trail (1996).
That post-university job was actually within walking distance of home so I didn’t get around taking 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). So the Marin got good use during those first few years of ownership with me enjoying going for rides on the trails in the woods.
Cycling Hiatus
When I got that first car I was living somewhere which had a typical 60s-build British narrow garage. Since the Mini Mayfair was a nice and small 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 a combination of the extra faff of getting the bicycle out to ride plus the amount I was actually enjoying driving meant the Marin ended up languishing at the back of the garage and thus my first period of cycling came to an end.
The Marin did then spend a couple of years down in Brighton being used by my partner while they were doing their PhD but after that the bike lived in a spare bike locker at work (stood up on its rear wheel) for quite a few years before coming home and getting put up in the attic. In terms of me cycling again though: that hiatus would last for the next 20 years (except for that one slightly wobbly ride bringing the Marin home from the cycle lockers).