My Bikes Over The Years

I was watching a TV show this morning and the presenter when to a bicycle museum and it got me thinking about my bikes I owned. A beginning of a memory.

Dad and I reckoned I had five or six different bikes in my life time the first being the standard three-wheeler for a child of four or five it had a blue seat and the rest was red with a guard around the seat to stop you sliding off. It is like the one pictured and giving me great memories thinking about my bikes and me.

My next bike was a favourite but not the number one that comes later. It was a child’s tricycle bike all light blue with a bin mounted on the back it was cool. I remember rattling up and down the street and around the corner if mum was not watching. My next bike was a bit of a non-event coming with stabilisers I was soon off them but I had little memory of the bike as with age I came the ability to wander further from home and tended to want to run and jump about leaving my bike in the passageway most of the time. I did learnt to ride it without stabilisers though.

So that in mind, my next bike was a bit of a wait but it was my favourite, “I loved my Red Raleigh Chopper Bike”. Yes, that chunky cool non-racing bike built like a tank. You were never going to win a race or climb many inclines, slopes or Leckwith Hill without getting off and pushing, but it was fun coming down. It was the ultimate cruiser handy to give a chick a lift with the long seat. The only thing I hated about a chopper was the gear mechanism – it was fiddley and a pain in the backside.

I cannot remember what happen to my chopper I was growing and feeling the need for speed so I upgrade to a racing bike. We as a group of friends we would knock up the miles on our bikes so maybe I was tired of being tail end Charlie.

My final bike was a Claud Butler racer I sold my other bike to a second hand shop and bought an air rifle. How the Claud Butler fell into my hands was I stole it from a certain bike shop not a million miles from where I lived and it turned out to be the longest bike I ever owned. I would ride for miles and miles it helped me get through a serious bout of depression taking me away from the pressures of life. It ended up sold in 1984, sold to help fund a trip to watch Cardiff City play away.