Infancy - a red & blue metal trike which was passed onto my sister.
5- 8 Then a small single-speed boy's bike, secondhand, colour gold IIRC.
I remember coming home from infant school and finding it in the hall of our house. The hall was later demolished altogether so I must have been about 6 years old when that bike arrived. I also remember I came off on gravel into a nettle patch !
8-12 Chopper !T
hen aged about 8 my parents bought me a new Raleigh Chopper from
Halfords. I remember going to the shop. I had to choose between it and a Bomber, and I remember asking my Dad for the Chopper that evening. I was just starting junior school and my mates were well impressed with my retro-cool, they were all on Raleigh Burners.
12-16 blue un-named drop bar bike
After I started secondary school my Dad bought a bashed up road bike from a police auction and we did it up together. We painted it with blue hammerite. and it did me all through secondary school. I don't recall the name of the bike but it had a rack and blue pannier bags so I could deliver medicine to old ladies & nursing homes for the pharmacy where I worked for £1 an hour on two evenings a week. It had Weinmann centre-pull brakes.
18-19 steel framed road bike.
Aged about 18 I was offered a steel-framed road bike the right size, which I accepted. I needed to use rust-eater on the rims. I rode that to a summer job, from Waterlooville to Southsea.
19-24 the Lotus years..
During my first year at University I lodged with a family & the Dad, Geoff was a keen cyclist. He had a MTB for his commute - he was a big bloke - and one of his best pals was a roadie named Lance, who worked in a cycleshop in Bath. Geoff noticed a secondhand "Lotus" road bike my size in Blackboy Hill cycles for about £100. It had lovely quality old Shimano components but bent forks from a collision. I stripped it and had it stove-enamelled the original black. Kept the badge.
Some new chrome forks sorted that out. I rode that throughout University through all sorts of weathers, 6 miles each way, for nearly four years. Aged 24, I sold that bike in 1996 to buy a shotgun, as I had not ridden it for about a year.
24-32 no bike !
32-34 getting back into it.
After turning 30 I was looking for a way to lose weight & thought about cycling to work. I bought a "hybrid" for £175 online (which I still have and use for family rides) and cycled the 7 miles in.
I then grabbed a Dawes flat bar bike from a chap who was about to put it in a skip. Got it up & running but it wasn't quite what I wanted, so I put the bits back on the hybrid & sold the frame on with the new BB, quill stem and seatpost I'd bought.
34-now - more serious..
Selling the shotgun I had bought in 1996 I bought a Giant FCR3 flat bar road bike in 2007 or so.
Sold that bike and bought my current Defy 2 last Spring..
