What do you keep in mind about your first bicycle?
My first bike was a silver BMX bike that I rode to high school after I was in fifth and sixth grade. My subsequent door neighbor and greatest good friend, Matt Bockal, had an identical bike and we thought we have been fairly darn cool as a result of we might bounce off six inch avenue curbs.
After I entered my teenagers, my mother and father purchased me a Large mountain bicycle, however it by no means actually grew on me. The bike felt humorous and I by no means actually favored to journey it. It simply didn’t really feel like me.
Then, in 2001, after I started planning for my first long-distance bike tour down the California shoreline, I began serious about the bike I’d journey on my journey down the coast. The plain reply would have been to journey my Large, because it was actually the one bike I had… and it was in close to excellent situation.
However I didn’t find yourself utilizing the Large on my bike tour. As an alternative, I rode my fathers previous mountain bike as a substitute – a Sierra Schwinn.
For years my father had had this previous black bicycle within the storage and I not often ever noticed him journey it. It has been simply sitting their, amassing cobwebs for years and years, so I made a decision to repair up the previous clunker and use it for my journey down the Pacific Coast.
The bike was a 1980’s Sierra Schwinn. I’m not precisely certain what yr it’s, however for those who occur to know, please get in touch with me. I’d like to know what yr this bike is definitely from.
Anyway, to make an extended story quick, I fastened the previous factor up, caught a pair racks on it, and efficiently pedaled the beast from Oregon to Mexico.
On the final day of that journey, upon reaching the Mexican border, I loaded the bike onto the entrance rack of my aunt’s VW camper-van and took off again to her residence in Coronado. However when my aunt sped by a big dip in a significant intersection, the entrance wheel of my bike was pushed into the pavement, ripped off of my aunt’s van, and instantly run over! As soon as my aunt had made it although the intersection, she stopped the van and I jumped out, virtually in tears. The bike that I had simply spent the final 30 days using down the coast had been run-over by a two-ton automobile and elements of it have been now scattered about in a big San Diego intersection.
I jumped out of my aunt’s van and ran across the intersection for a couple of minutes, dodging vehicles and choosing up the few items of my bike that I might discover within the street. A day or two later, I made it again residence with my twisted wreck of a motorbike. It wasn’t how I imagined returning residence after my profitable journey down the California Shoreline.
In school now, I began to consider how I’d spend my upcoming summer time. My bike journey down the California shoreline had been so nice that I needed to do it once more… and this time I set my sights on using over the Rocky Mountains – from Kansas to Wyoming. Now with no bike nevertheless, and nonetheless with out a lot funds in my checking account, I made a decision it could be cheaper to easily restore my previous Sierra Schwinn than to purchase a brand new bicycle. So what did I do? I hammered out the body of the Sierra Schwinn as greatest as I might, purchased two new wheels, put in a brand new rear derailleur and off I went!
In the summertime of 2002 I spent a month using my Sierra Schwinn over the Rock Mountains. It squeaked and strained the whole time… and using it made me extraordinarily sore and uncomfortable. After I reached Rawlins, Wyoming, I knew I might go no additional with the bike. It had reached it’s final leg… and so had I. I needed to maintain going, however my bike and my physique have been carried out. We had had sufficient. It was time to go residence. So I boxed up the bike, boarded a Greyhound bus and rode for the subsequent day or so with a tribe of Native American firefighters again to my residence in Southern California.
The subsequent yr I purchased a brand new bike for my touring exploits (a Fuji Touring Bike), however I stored the Schwinn round and have continued to journey it through the years.
As we speak, the Sierra Schwinn is my important commuter bike. I apply it to a close to each day foundation to run errands, choose up groceries, take objects that have to be mailed to the put up workplace… and typically I even journey it to the ski resort with my skis in tow. I’ve fastened the bike up so many occasions, I now name it the “Resurrection 9000” as a result of that’s what number of occasions I’ve introduced it again to life. The bike as we speak remains to be extremely laborious to journey, only some of the gears work and you’ll’t put any strain on the pedals when you find yourself using or the chain will fall off. The bike could also be a chunk of junk as we speak, however it simply retains going… and I can’t cease using it.
The Sierra Schwinn my father gave me ten years in the past might not be the most effective bike on the earth, and though it might not technically be the primary bike I ever owned, I’ll perpetually consider it as my first bike.
The next images present my Sierra Schwinn as it’s as we speak:
What do you keep in mind about your first bike?
Save