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We did the bike tag also I actually got 16 stitches avoiding a bike tag,and go over the bars

Do it, Children are the future to our hobby!! My son rides every chance he can

My first BMX was a black-framed COLUMBIA with red Lester Mags, coaster brakes and tiny little 155mm cranks.  It was a mega-heavy tank, but I loved it and never even really thought about what the other kids in my area were riding until many years later.

We lived on a culdesac with 100's of acres of forest just off the backyard.  From as early as I can remember, my older brothers were 'building a track' back there - and as soon as I was big enough to wield a shovel, I became part of the crew.  Then, when I got a bit older, I went further out into the woods and built my own track that was twice as big.

Riding on the tracks out back was the motivating force behind my existence from age 6 or so until I hit high school.  Kids from all around the town would make the journey to our hood just to hit up our tracks - which was a bit uncomfortable at times, because our family was always the family that nobody liked in town, so it was more like 'being invaded' than 'having friends over'.  That being said, it was always fun to blow everyone else away on the track, because we knew all the lines and exactly where to hit the jumps - it was made even more fun by the fact that our bikes were 'toystore bikes' while they were all cruising their Redlines and DiamondBacks and Hutches and Haros and on and on.

Sometime during my last couple years of grade-school I got a paper-route which I maintained until I left for college. During those years, I was able to save up and bought a 1988 GT MachOne; it was sort of sad to say goodbye to the Columbia, but riding the M1 imbued me with a confidence that changed my life in more ways than I can really lay out here in this post.  I rode several miles every day, seven days each week, sun/rain/snow/etc, to deliver those papers, connecting the different areas of my route with various jaunts through wooded trails that dotted our town up until a real-estate development boom hit in the mid 90's (by which time I was already off to college and had temporarily moved on to Mountain Bikes).

Without a doubt, I can say that bicycles have been a huge part of making me the person that I am today.

Last edited by Rapscallion (2011-11-28 8:22am)

One of my fondest memories of me on my bike for the entire day is back as a kid in 7th grade back in 1982. I kind of played hookie from school and went home "sick". My parents already went to work so I hopped on my Hutch and rode around all day. I went down to the bike shop, rode through the huge city wide park, cruised around my neighborhood hitting all the cool spots with jumps ect.

I got home early before school would normally end for the day and my dad ended up coming home early that day! So, not wanting to get busted for ditching school, I hid under my bed in my room for about 45 minutes until he left to go pick up my mom.

Last edited by Coco (2011-11-28 8:32am)

I'll keep this brief---
I lived on a dead end street.  They started clearing out the woods at the end in order to put up a new section of houses, but the builder ran out of money, the the hilly lot was ours.  It was at least 500x500 yards.  Tons of giant dirt piles.  We'd spend all day over there racing our bikes, bringing them to the top of one of the hills and riding down fullspeed and jumping a dirt mound and getting mad air.  Why are we fearless at the age of 10?  It's like wrecking isn't even a possibility.  My Team Murray X20R held up nicely.  Those were good times...

I lived in West Chicago IL until 1980 when I moved with my family to Orlando Florida. Those early years in Illinois were adventurous years when whole packs of kids from my neighborhood would get together and just ride all over. Some days we would ride the dirtbike trails on Rt 59 or Roosevelt rd, some days we'd ride the old railroad trails to St. Charles or Wheaton. I had a Schwinn Scrambler, and my best friend Neil who had a Huffy thunder road. Other friends in the area included Eric who had a Redline, Bernie who had a Motomag, Scott who had a Roger DeCoster, Timmy had a Webco, and some other guys who had Sting-Rays. During the summer, we would ride from sun up to sun down with no parental supervision, with the exception of some parents yelling at us, and scrounge change to buy pop-ice at the Jel-Sert plant near the railroad tracks. Other days if we had money we'd go to one of the bowling alleys and play video games (Tempest was my favorite) till we were broke, or, if we were loaded (meaning having a few bucks), we might splurge on Mc Donalds. Most of us had older brothers, so once in a while a car would scream up to us and we'd be hustled off to be scared silly by a group of either drunk or stoned older teens, or berated because someone's mom was in a snit and our brothers were told to go find us. Once in a while we'd find a cigarette or a magazine (you know the type) and we'd hang out trying to smoke or pass the mag around telling each other lies about things we didn't know anything about. Other times one or another of us would sneak a beer out of the house and we'd share it around thinking we were cool, especially if it was a Colt 45 or a Coors.

Last edited by boersma31p (2011-11-28 11:43am)

I don't even remember my first BMX bike... it was something like the old, round Scramblers.  It was just a bike, though; I didn't get into BMX until much later when my parents got me a Torker 280X after I saw how awesome BMX racing was through my brother and his Powerlite.

Me and my buddy Jason would take off and ride to "the pit" (the near legendary jump spot at First and Leffingwell in Whittier), the track at La Mirada Regional Park, or the track at Parks Jr. High in Fullerton.  We were down at Parks one day when BMXA and Pete Loncarevich showed up to test a new CW.  We'd be gone all day as long as, like an earlier poster said, we respected our curfews.  (No water bottles, no spare tubes, no micro-tool kits... makes me giggle when I go out on my road bike and spend a half  hour checking all that stuff.  But I digress.)

Man, those were the days. 

I get the ol lady zombied out on painkillers then its"hey babe guess what wont hurt now"

The title of this thread suggests that you shouldn't be allowed near children

From the time I was 8 until I was 12 Saturdays consisted of watching RAD in the morning and then pedalling the town in the afternoon. There was this place on the edge of town called the "Honda Jumps" which had been used for dirtbike racing back in the 70's. It wasn't maintained but the old trails were still there. We also had a public half pipe in town, but that usually where the "cool older kids" hung out, mostly to smoke cigarettes and listen to music. We'd show up at the pipe later to watch but never rode it that much. At 13 mountian biking took over.

Last edited by Kurt_Rad (2011-11-28 3:03pm)

Here are some pics of the hanging out at the halfpipe part. This was June 1987 at the "grand opening" of the pipe. Sadly in 1990 it got ripped in half in a huge wind storm and never was re-built

Me circled in green:

cool pics kurt. notice the santa cruz slaher / jim phillips art on the wall of the halfpipe.