Well I got to thinking about how important our bikes where to most of us bitd compared to the kids today.

My nephew, who I love like a son likes his bike but honestly if it gets a flat hes not freaking out. He rides it around town and over to his friends homes. To him its more a mode of transportation than anything.

He prefers baseball and thats fine (I loved ball as a kid too) but really no love or passion for his bike.

Him and I where talking the other day about this and a story popped up from my childhood. I told it to him and he was amazed, baffled actually that we where that crazed with bikes and being able to ride.

My story starts off like this................

I was one of the lucky kids to have a local bmx track literally 1/2 mile from my house. I rode it everyday and knew every nook, cranny, dip, lip, ect on it. It was my home. My friends and I had it so good.

My friend John who also rode landed very hard trying to jump a jump that he shouldnt have been even thinking about. He didnt hurt himself, he didnt even crash, but he managed to completely crack the seat post off. He didnt damage his frame. We went back to his house and got the seat post out of the frame.

Now heres the fun part of the story. We had to ride. No way could we not only ride the track, but we also had people to see and visit, and sites to take in. I mean come on, were 14 the world is ours to see

Soooooo, we found a piece of pipe his dad had in the garage. Wrapped it over and over with electrical tape and got it close to the correct diameter. Put his seat on and he was good to go until he got his new post. He really couldnt sit down on the seat because it kept sliding into the frame but we actually took turns on it. All of our little gang would ride Johns bike to give him a break.

Just got me thinking about how much we all loved to ride and how important it was. Thats all, nothing more.

Anyone else have any stories about how you lived to ride?

Cool story.

My bike, as a kid, was as important as a car was when I turned 16..if not more.

Great story Tone.

I don't think, generally, kids have to work as hard today to get the bike of their dreams. Disposable income is up and real costs of bike are down (thanks to China...) Also, most of us indulge our kids far more than we ever were.

For me my BMX was my hobby, my sport, my transportation and my dreams. Must have been something special to keep us all coming back 25 - 30 years later...

Most Kids bmx Bikes are ugly nowadays, i wouldn't take care of one either, LOL

Really, kids don't seem to have a sense of worth with much of anything anymore,

In the winter I used to hang my Robinson from the ceiling of my bedroom. Before I put it up there I would spend a week cleaning and polishing it to perfection! I treated it like it was (and rightly so) my prized possesion. kids nowadays don't care enough for what they have.

Al.

My bike was my life BITD it was everything. I agree the kids today don't value their bikes like we did. I would have to say not much has changed much for me I would rather mess with my bikes than cut grass, work on the house, work on my truck. I still would rather spend my days riding than doing the normal things like work. I race as much as I can but to me showing up at the track and having someone comment on how clean my bikes are is enough to make my day.

My race bike stayed in my bedroom..as a matter of fact my wife even lived with my mountain bikes inside the house for years...
She thought that was strange, I didn't know any other way.

1. Wife and Kids
2. Bikes
3. Other stuff....

my feet were on the peddals more then on the ground growing up. bmx was my life. I raced 1 or 2 times a week . even in the winter my dad would bring me to indoor tracks. every bike I had I bought myself. bailing hay,stacking wood , mowing lawns ect. my bike was an extention of me. and I took verry good care of it as it was all I had.

I don't see any kids these days taking apart, cleaning, putting their bikes together these days. I always like cleaned my bike after every race. Made sure that it was ready for the next race. Today's bikes are sold like a used news paper, there's no love there. I see kids that don't want there bike if something brakes on it. Just trade them in for something new.

Yaeh I know what you mean about kids today not caring or respecting thier bikes. The other day we (my wife and I) were going somewhere and saw a group of young dudes jumping this ditch. I thought that ditch would make a sweet ramp. Anyway the kid could not land what he was trying to do, so he throws his bike across the street. Junk or not BITD you would never catch me doing this. I wanted to pull over and slap the snot out of that kid/punk but kept rolling down the street. Just a little something from yhe other day.


Rob

Me too.

My bike was my freedom. I raced my GJS, and I pulled a newspaper trailer with it (I had a pretty extensive paper route). When I was 15, I got my first "real" job at a restaurant. The place was about 10 miles from my house, and the bike took me there and back for almost a year. I clearly remember riding regularly in the rain to that job, listening to the Doors LA Woman album. Riders on the Storm was my song at that time.
In the end, I betrayed that bike when I bought a car. I sold it for 50 bucks. In the time I owned it, it saw countless tires. I cracked it after catching 10 feet of air on a hill we used to jump off. My shop teacher welded it back up, and the riding continued. The frame now lives in a collection somewhere out there. The owner and I were in touch a few years ago. I believe it is now blue (it was originally red).

Great stories guys.

My bikes were everything to me starting with the huffy which my dad welded a gusset in and metal tabs in the dropouts to keep it from breaking, all the way up to my race bikes. There were local races that brought hundreds of kids and we couldn't wait to race every weekend.We would stack boards on cement blocks and would grab shovels and dig holes just to build our own jumps and berms and even had somewhat of a track in the back yard in the middle of a subdivision my parents were nice enough to let us kids ride in the dirt and tear up the grass. We even had studded tires for the frozen ponds in the winter. You all are right with the comments on today's kids and the lack of respect for their bike which I started making my kids clean theirs after every race.The good ol days!

My bikes were my life.
I took apart and rebuilt my first bike at age 7(all the way down to the bearings).
I see most kids rear hubs just looking like crap, freewheels sounding horrible, crank noises, number plates rattling and bangin around.....etc...

I try and get my kids to clean their bikes after every time they ride(just like I do, and used to do BITD). Most of the time, I don't have to remind my son...in fact he asks for help with his hubs....My daughter hates her bike dirty, but doesn't want to clean it herself(she has no problems changing her front gears...just doesn't like cleaning).
BITD if I went riding in the trails during the day, then at night before bed, I would clean my bike while watching a little tv...in fact, I cleaned my bike after every time I rode, regardless of where I rode.
My wife probably doesn't like all the bikes in the house...but what she hates more, is all the tools laying around. She wants me to buy one of those $2,000 tool boxes for the living room(with the built-in fridge, and stereo) ...yeah you read that right...she WANTS me too....and putting it in the living room was HER suggestion. (I didn't believe her at first....so I asked her again later, and she was dead-serious)

I saw my 6 year old son do something similar the other day. I had to get on him about that is not how you treat a bike.


BITD my bike was my lifeline to a world outside of my neighborhood. Rode it everyday and used it for my paper route.

I remember when I first saw BMX bikes. There was an older kid that had a DG with anodized alloy parts, I remember the fluted seatpost. He could wheelie down the street and I was impressed.
My first BMX bike was a Mongoose with Tuff Wheel 1s. It replaced a string-ray, and I rode it everywhere. Bikes meant you could actually go into the world, before bikes your Mom could call out the back door and find you, or call your friends house. Now we could enter the trail into the woods or ride to the next subdivision not to be found. I feel the pain of young kids that have to carry a cell phone nowadays, that destroys that freedom and sense of confidentiality mustered by that journey away from the parental lease.
That Mongoose came with a gooseneck stem. I used to carry one of my dad's wrench's to put the bars back in place after every jump off a plywood ramp. I cut grass and did everything I could do to save money for a gold anodized Pro Neck and vinyl snap pad, and a set of V-bars. I kept that stem up until about 3 years ago when I found out how much folks payed for vintage parts, it garnered $80 on eBay, little did I know in 1977 I was investing. It wasn't long after I had to have a Tange TX500 fork, that was the beginning of an obsession that lasted until I was 21. At 13 I moved to St. Louis. The bike was my source for finding new friends and we rode everywhere. I again saved money and bought more parts. I remember going to get bubblegum in the morning before school, it was 20 cents for a pack of bubblelicious and I sold it for 10 cents a piece, making 30 cents profit. My mom freaked once after I talked her into a ride to the bike shop so I could buy a brake, a tire and some other stuff, she couldn't believe it when I pulled out $60 in dimes and nickels. I still remember the guy that owned the shop's facial expression, he loved it, though I didn't realize just how and why at the time.
When I was 16 we moved to Alabama. Though I was old enough to drive, the bike was still my love. It stayed in my room and I polished it every few days. I wound making friends with kids that knew nothing of BMX but rode dirt bikes. We got shovels and built jumps together, I was amazed at how one guy could get 15' of air as living in cities up until then I had never been around motocross. Riding places with them I got in great shape and started racing. Then I was also old enough to drive to cut grass, and one of my friends and rounded up a bunch of yards together. That soon meant I had a Hutch frame and fork and my friend bought the goose from me and got into BMX. Then I stepped up to alloy rims, and kept racing. After high school I started riding with more and different guys, and got another Hutch frame which I setup for freestyle. By this point I had a 1/4 pipe in the backyard and a wedge ramp I made out of an old table. The wedge ramp even had a little lip at the top to bump you and give you a stall when you jumped straight off it, I jumped over my car with it.
That next summer I went on building a huge vert ramp with some other folks. It was there I learned to skate and I drifted away from BMX. I never got rid of any of my bikes, I still rode around.
Then many years later I dated this girl that was real athletic. She wanted a mountain bike and since I had knowledge on bikes I went with her to help pick it out. While she was test riding one the guy at the store asked if I wanted to ride around on one. I had never had an interest, I was still Mr. BMX at 34. But when I got on that thing, I rode to the end of the parking lot and something started happening. I ignored my girl, the bikeshop guy, the world. It was as though every inch I rolled I started to feel things. A week later I had taken all the money I had in the bank out and bought a used Specialized Rockhopper. I was like a kid again. I was lucky, the bike came with two wheelsets. One with trail tires and the other with slick 1.0 tires for riding around town. Then I saw a flyer at the bike shop about the local century. I started riding around to get in shape so I could do the metric option on my mountain bike. That was another epiphany. Within a week I had financed a road bike. I went to the same mom and pop bike shop I got all my BMX stuff at back in the day, the owners still knew me by name after I had not seen them in years, they knew every kid in town that raced. It wasn't long after that I went on solo rides on the road bike, and I rediscovered the freedom that BMX gave me as a child. I found it when I went on 70-80 mile rides alone, when I was too far out in the country to have cell service and 40 miles from my car. Hopefully I'll get some of that this weekend.
I now have a road bike, a mountain bike, a cruiser and a freestyle bike that I ride when I can. The Hutch hangs in my barn, it's clean and polished.

now thats a cool story!

thanks for posting it





n

Sounds to me like you married a good woman there. I suggest you not do anything to [I tried to curse] her off. Go buy the toolbox for the living room. NOW!!

Like most of us my friends and I lived on our bikes. If we weren’t riding somewhere like or favorite riding spot or hangout we were at someone’s house working on our bikes fixing what needed attention or making improvements. But mostly we were at our favorite riding spot. It was there that one day my buddy Mike got a flat on his bike. No big deal in most cases, almost always one of us had a patch kit along and a gas station was close enough that air was not a problem either. But this day Mike happened to shred his inner tube. It was getting late and mike had to get himself home to attend some function with his parents. Our riding spot was about a mile from home but if mike would have walked his bike it would have taken too long to get home and Mike would have been in big trouble.

Fortunately Larry had a bright idea. We removed the front tire from Mike’s sting ray and Larry loosened the axle nuts to his rear wheel. We then spread the blade forks wide enough on mikes sting ray to slide the fork ends onto the rear axle of Larry’s bike. We then tightened up everything Bob’s yer uncle an instant bicycle built for two! After looping the bad wheel over mikes handlebars Larry and Mike rode the rig all the way to Mike’s house in plenty of time for mike to it to make the event with his parents. Thusly Mike avoided a butt whupin’ from his dad.

Sometime you just had to do what it took to reach your goal. You didn’t give up or call an adult to bail you out (unless you absolutely had to.) you took the inititave and sorted things out as best you could on your own. Or in this case as a group.

One thing to keep in mind, regarding today's kids, is that they are not experiencing the genesis of BMX like most of us did.
We were there when it was new and exciting. That added value to the bikes and the experience.

I agree with that. My thread started mostly due to the conversation I had with mhy nephew and thinking about what his bike means to him.

The freshness and the fast paced progression is what attracted most of us to bmx back then. I think thats why its so stale now. I mean how high can they jump. The stuff they pull off is insane. We where to busy worrying about who could do more back wheel hops.

As for racing, I think thats down in numbers with the lack of land for tracks. Seems like anywhere near me for instance is so built up they couldnt possibly put a track up.

Many kids cant-wont compete if they dont get to ride much. I think thats why I had a nice little run at bmx. I had the track down the road.

Ate, drank, slept BMX. Raced on the weekend; Monday stripped and COMPLETELY cleaned and greased my bike; test rode; put up until next race.

Cut lawns and worked my butt off to get the latest and greatest.

Women and cars SUCKED the life out of that.

I married up and discovered this group of "Yah Whooos" and got back into it.

Now, I ride a little and collect a little. I am sure that if we had boys (we have two girls) I would be a little more involved.

The sanctioning body stuff keeps me away from the track.

As I look to my left, my ultimate bike (PK Ripper) that I rode as a kid hangs on the wall and brings back fond memories.

CYa!

Jeff

Great stories guys. Dave's was brilliant.