An uncle, who rode a motorbike, helped me build my first pushbike scrapheap special, must've been about 9 or 10. Metallic purple frame, hand-painted by me, cow-horn bars, little chrome 'racer' mudguards, and only a back brake! Knocked meself out the first test ride down a nearby hill, but we agreed not to tell me mother! DS
I had pushbikes and still do. But my first bike was a blue ceedee. £25 and no mot. Got a lid and trailsmaster jacket and trousers thrown in
A telling demographic detail. Did they have those weird spiky lumnious handgrips that had a reflector in the end ?
Hmm I do vaguely recall a trike and then a bike with stabilisers, no idea what it was then a Raleigh Striker followed by a Raleigh Commando and then a very second hand Raleigh Chopper. My favourite memory of the Chopper (rusty and second hand around 1982 as my Christmas present from my dad) was that a local posh kid whose Christmas present was a brand new Raleigh Bomber wanted a shot on the chopper, went to cycle out of a junction, the handlebars turned one way and the front wheel went the other and the posh little git came a cropper! Gave a little brightness to another crap skint Christmas. I bloody hate Christmas with a passion (The festival of greed rather than the celebration of a man who tried to point humanity in the right direction).
Can't actually remember my first pushbike, obviously had a few as a kid and used to (had to) ride everywhere. Nowadays i ride this.
I started out with one very similar and during the lock down i actually stated riding a push bike my daughter gave me years ago.
Ooo, you've got me thinking. I remember those spiky handgrips, but iirc correctly, it just had plain black ones. But we are talking early 70s so things are a bit hazy! DS
Raleigh "Ranger." Of course. Never allowed a Chopper or Commando or Grifter or Burner or Bomber. Mate had a Raleigh Bomber. What a machine. Got a HARO* in the garage now. Dreams do come true, see? *Its hers and its a ladies ex-hire MTB. But its a HARO. But nobody understands what that means!
Mine was a second hand Raleigh Chopper too, Mark 1 with the round gear knob.... Broke the frame doing jumps on it.....can't believe that was possible looking back the thing was heavier than Bonneville of that year!
I’ve no pics of my first push-iron... it was an old junker handed down through years of the family... Red (patchy rust), brooks style sprung saddle, single speed but with freewheel and pushrod brakes! Probably still worth feck-all now, but I’d love to see it again. The first “new” bike I had was a Triumph Traffic-master, 3 speed sturmy-archer... I wanted a BMX cruiser, but “had” to have one of these because that’s what my older brothers had got too! Two years of cutting the grass at my parents and grandparents house to get a bike that wasn’t my choice... but I went everywhere on it (much more freedom than the BMX would have given me) and living in the sticks in the Lake District, that was important. It was very like the below picture. Edit - I just remembered, I had dynamo powered lights on it too! I lived on top of a get big hill and coming home from anywhere involved having lights equivalent to a candle’s illumination on the flats, down hill it rose to barely adequate... but the long drag uppards, I’m convinced I’d create a negative light situation and suck any residual ambient light right out of the air which would power an increased dynamo resistance.
