I remember not having a bike. I must have been maybe 5 years old. My dad picked a frame from one pile of rusty junk (as we had in various places about the ranch) and some parts from another and put together a whole bike. It was a simple, single speed, steel kid's bike. He painted it green. It was kind of amazing to see, for a young kid. I don't know if that one had training wheels or not. I do remember having training wheels at one point, but soon gave them up. We had a huge yard on the ranch, with enough room for farm equipment to turn around between barns, corrals, sheds and houses. But it was all gravel. There was a small sidewalk around two sides of our house and a fairly large pad under my grandma's (next door) clothesline. But those weren't enough room for a bike. You had to learn to ride on gravel. We could also ride on gravel out around the corrals and behind the big hay barn, which was known as "out in front of the cows." We all got skinned knees at some point, but I think my brother Mark was bloodied the worst.
My worst bike accident ever happened when I wasn't even riding. My brother Mike came down the street to pick me up. I rode on the back of his seat as he pedaled home. Right about when we got in front of our house my left foot went into the rear wheel, and the spokes attempted to grind off my big toe. I watched my Dad go over the fence up to his inseam (which I'd never seen before) as he came to get me. A trip to the hospital resulted in stitches around the big toe and some bandages for road rash. I missed a couple of weeks of first grade. I remember that the Creedence song "Susie Q" was on the radio a lot then. It still reminds me of that time.
At one point, my handlebars became loose in the stem, and no amount of tightening would help. My Dad took an aluminum soda can, cut a square out of it and put that between the handlebar and the stem. It tightened up just fine with that shim. I've used that trick a few times myself.
Another time, my Dad pulled a fork off the junk pile, a seat post and the front wheel of a tricycle and welded them up to make me a unicycle! I did learn to ride it with considerable persistence.
One summer day--I must have been around 10--I went with my Mom and Dad to Antioch in Dad's truck. We picked up a big box from a big store (JC Penney?). It said "Bike" on it, but I was clueless about it and they weren't talking. I thought this was just another routine trip to town. When we got back, my Dad assembled my new 3-speed, a birthday present. It was a banana-seat type of bike with the gearing in the rear hub. The gears didn't work all the time, but there was an extra-low gear you could get sometimes if you pulled the lever down and to the left. I rode the heck out of that bike. I rode it on a lot of our country roads one summer, picking up aluminum cans. At the end of the summer, I cashed in the cans and with the money I'd saved up bought a motocross (BMX) bike.
I had looked at a lot of models beforehand. Most of the stores had the crappy Huffy bike, but this Royce Union had frame gussets for withstanding abuse. It also had that heavy double handlebar stem and various pads for protection. I had no helmet at that age, but no one did. It was about 1976. I rode the heck out of that bike too, and was especially proud of jumping small irrigation ditches. The bottom bracket stripped out, and Dad put some allen screws in to hold it together. When I was 16 I sold the 3-speed to a waitress at the restaurant where I worked. I had used some silver paint to cover the rust on the handlebars. She seemed happy to get it for her kid.
I used to go fishing for catfish on the Delta, which involved that BMX bike and some trespassing. I could pick up the bike and put it over the fence into the irrigation district's property, then ride it down to the river. I never caught many catfish, in part because I had a crappy reel with no drag.
When I went off to college I left the motocross bike behind, where everybody and their kids rode the hell out of it. Years later I collected its remains and tried to restore it. I replaced the wheels and some other bits, but I still haven't solved the problem of the bottom bracket. It remains a work in progress.
When I went off to college I had decided not to take my car, a sweet 1971 Camaro. This was an absolutely pivotal decision, affecting the rest of my life and then my daughter's life. Instead, I bought the cheapest 10-speed, a steel-framed Kia. Let's face it, it was crap. Nonetheless, I felt that since I had a new bike I should join the bike club at UC Riverside on their weekly rides. I was terrible at first. It was a couple of months before I could keep up with the others, even though my roommate Carl and I often took short rides by ourselves. At Christmas break I sold the Kia and bought a real bike, the Univega Gran Turismo. It was so nice. By early in the spring semester I was able to keep up with others in the club, and sometimes join the lead group. Those were fun times. By the way, I brought my car down too. Years later, Carl gave me a newspaper clipping reporting that the Kia had been stolen.
I rode that Univega on many memorable rides in Southern California, and a few in Northern California when I went home. I think I'll write another blog to summarize those rides because they were too many.
During my senior year, I got the bug to buy a mountain bike. They had only been available for a few years, but I could see how useful they would be. I sold my Gran Turismo to a graduate student and bought a new Univega Alpina Pro. It was a good bike in its day, but fairly basic by today's standards. I still took plenty of road rides, but I could go offroad on some of the trails near campus. There was a double set of hills that I could get lots of air from if I jumped them. Except that one time I did not stick the landing, went down and scraped the heck out of my arm. FYI, the graduate student told me the old Univega Gran Turismo was stolen from the hallway where he parked it.
I had that mountain bike all through graduate school, almost. I left my outside light on at my apartment one night so that a friend could pick up my staff for a karate demonstration. In the morning, the staff was still there, but my bike was not. The worst part was that the bike had my leather Ideale saddle on it, which I had broken in with about 3000 miles on my butt. I had no insurance, so after saving my pennies for several months, I went to the local bike shop in Boulder. Univegas were not available in the area, so I bought a Ross Mt. Rainier. The Ross had gussets in the frame--a good sign--and it was a pretty blue color. I did lots of rides around Boulder, but none as long as I used to do on the road bike. Some of my friends had horses and we used to do combination rides where we'd take turns riding on the mountain bikes and on horses. That was a blast.
My first job out of grad school was in Indianapolis. There was a neat trail called the canal tow path that started right near my house. It wasn't a long ride to it's end in the Broad Ripple neighborhood, but there were great places to eat there. I did that ride many times on the Ross, until...
One day in 1991 I left the house for less than an hour. When I got home I saw I had left the garage door open. The Ross was gone and the eye bolt I had cabled it to had been cleanly breached with bolt cutters. Damn it. This time, I did have insurance. I found a Univega dealer in Indianapolis and bought a Univega Alpina Uno, which I still have. When we moved to Illinois, I would frequently take a Sunday morning ride, as most people were in church and the roads were deserted. One of my favorite places to ride was Argyle Lake. The paved road around the lake was scenic and smooth, but had some steep hills. At one point they opened up a single track route around the whole park. It wasn't well marked, so the first time around was a challenge to navigate. Once a turkey jumped out of the tall grass next me. I about jumped out of my skin.
After we moved to Missouri, I generally continued with the Sunday rides, at least in good weather. In some years, my last ride would be during Thanksgiving break. I developed some neat rides out of Canton, usually with a mix of gravel and pavement. One route went through a low water crossing of the Wyaconda River, which had no bridge at that site. There was a lot of horse manure in the stream because of all the local Amish. One time I was riding across it and ran straight into a big rock. All forward motion stopped and I fell over sideways into the water. The worst part was that my gloves got wet and bled black dye all over my hands. Another favorite was the Sunflower Road ride, which went over an old iron bridge on the Wyaconda. Very scenic, and no traffic. The trails at Wakonda State Park are great to ride, I discovered. There's a nice hogback between Wakonda and Agate Lakes, though the rest is fairly flat and not challenging. One day I rode every trail I could find out there and totaled about 12 miles. When I was on the Canton Tourism Board I developed a map of all my favorite rides to be made into a brochure for tourists, though it was never printed.
Also while I was on that board I was appointed to handle local arrangements for the Big BAM, the first annual ride across Missouri, which was to end in Canton. It was a lot of work and kind of fun. We had a really neat ending planned for the ride, along the riverfront. The last two days of the ride were rained out, so no one completed our ending as planned. At least we got to enjoy the concert, which went on as scheduled.
The following year, we learned that the Big BAM was going to end in nearby Hannibal, so Savannah and I decided to ride it. This ride would be our first multi-day biking adventure. We trained fairly hard. We both needed bikes though. Savannah got a deal on a used Felt--a really nice woman's bike. I looked long and hard and maybe a month before I found a used Fuji on Craigslist. It was like new and fit me quite well.
I'll save that ride for another blog, but we did meet some new friends, Deb and Matt, who we rode the latter half of the ride with. The next year, the BAM ended in Louisiana, MO, which is not too far away, and we decided to do it again. On the first day, Deb and Matt introduced us to Corky, and we became fast friends. We rode RAGBRAI the following two years (2018 & 2019) with Corky and various friends. The Big BAMs and RAGBRAIs deserve their own blogs, which may or may not appear.
A small photo album with pics of my bikes: https://photos.app.goo.gl/fwpfNaXpeevJ3kBk6
