Remember when...

 

Yep.

 

Definitely a time well remembered... Fun and exercise all rolled into one... You don't see that much anymore...

 

I remember...

 

And no helmets, how did we ever survive?

 

And no shoes.
And riding in the street.
Oh my.

 

Preach. My dad took 8mm movies of us kids riding our bikes down the street when we were kids. Always loved those Schwinn Sting-Rays, especially the ones w/ 5 speeds and that big shifter, SWEET. First bike I could call my own was a brown 5-sp Schwinn Collegiate with chrome fenders. Took off the fenders and put some ram-horns on it and rode it everywhere. Broke a few spokes jumping it on a pile of dirt my friends found that was an easy 3' of air.

Never forget the road rash on the top of my foot from slipping off the pedals of my sister's bike going flat out barefoot. I try to scare my kids with that story.

 

Oh Man! the Good Times and stories from the Stingray converted to the then-new (early 70's) style of BMX! Riding wheelies around the block. Take off the monkey bars and put on a bar with a cross-bar and a dual-neck gooseneck and rat-trap pedals from Monky-Wards, exchange the banana seat for ten-speed style saddle, and like Johnny says, remove the fenders, then JUMP it, ramp-to-ramp a-la Evel Knievel! Measured at 22', 4", at about 3.5 feet in the air! Man, this takes me back! We used to set up a take off ramp three tires high and a landing ramp two tires-high. We would have spotters watching where we hit the landing ramp, then tape measure from the trailing edge of the take-off to the spot marked by the spotter. Another thing a buddy and I did was to remove the front tire. Then literally pounded on some triangular profile aluminum tube to the bottom of the fork legs, then squishing the bottom of the tube flat and drilling it for the front axle bolt. Instant Chopper!! Too Kool for Skool!! Did a wheelie on my chopper and the fork extensions dropped off! Wound up with a few gashes from that one! And like Bfg says, No Helmets!

 

I still have my Stingray Scrambler. We also launched off of car tires under a ramp. Good times? GREAT TIMES!!


Just a different world now.

 

Look at those foxes! BIG Hair! Go Big, or Go Home, LOL!

 

Don't forget the banana seats! For some reason, where I lived out in the country, you were almost automatically cool if you had those.
I think the best thing was just getting a bike in the first place. It meant you were no longer tied to a fixed area around your house and you and your friends could go almost anywhere.

 

II had this - mom said but there's no fenders ! lol and the back tire is bald !
Big Money Back ThenRadiant Coppertone

• J39 Deluxe Sting-Ray, coaster brake..........$56.95

https://bikehistory.org/catalogs/1965.html

https://bikehistory.org/bikes/stingray/

 

I don't know what it was about stingrays. They were just sooo easy to pop wheelies with. Lotsa fun!

 

1972 Pennsylvania...
Mom: Have fun, be home for dinner
Me: OK

 

Oh yes, big hair, Jordache jeans, parachute pants, untied high tops and low horsepower cars!

Pat

 

Remember those days when your Mom would just say "Be home by dark."?
If you do that now-a-days you'd most likely be arrested.

 

Remember when race car drivers were fat and tires were skinny

 

Remember when teens could get a paper route, mow lawns, wax cars, rake leaves and shovel snow for cash? Or went to work with Dad and learned something useful, or at least just helped him out?

 

Haha i was just having the good old days discussion w my kid yesterday. I was saying how you dont know it now and it may not seem like it, but these days right now will be “your good old days”

 

I had some old banana seat bikes. My better one was one of the Schwinn Krates, the Apple Krate, red. My old man donated it to a museum in the 90s. Never managed to rack my nuts on the shifter. Previously had some similar one but one speed with coaster brake. My friend had a miami dolphins colored light blue and white Huffy BMX. Talk about a dumb trend, a BMX bike is inferior for everything except BMX, and when you used one for transportation, it really put the hurt on you as I recall by being heavy and not able to go fast. I think I bought a more modern bike in 90, then my current bike in 94, which went to my brother, my dad, then back to me. Specialized Rockhopper, one of the last pre-suspension mountain bikes.

All those dirt roads I grew up on are paved and 4 lane now.

 

Teens hell! I was doing that at 10. I got $10 for each driveway shoveled in the winter, $2 a day for the paper route, $5 for mowing the lawn. Every summer I worked the local farms for $2 an hour (off the books) for mucking out stalls, gathering hay bales and any other scut work that they could come up with.
By the time I was 12 I was scraping and painting houses for the same $2 an hour.
When I hit 13 I started working at my Dad's garage every day after school. It was almost a vacation after working farms and painting houses in the summer sun.

I also walked to school up hill... both ways... in 2 feet of snow.
Now get off my lawn!

 

I also walked to school up hill... both ways... in 2 feet of snow.
Now get off my lawn![/QUOTE]

Geez, I had to fight off the bears with my pencils one way and the wolves on the way back. Now turn off that damn thumping stereo!

Pat

 

Geez, I had to fight off the bears with my pencils one way and the wolves on the way back. Now turn off that damn thumping stereo!

Pat[/QUOTE]

Pencils? You had Pencils? I had to fight them off by using my school books, held together with a belt and slung over my shoulder, as a club.

 

You forgot barefoot...

 

I had to walk to school barefoot! Not because we were too poor for shoes, but because we were too tight to buy them! Through the citrus groves, hopped the fence into the bull pasture, outran the bull, then down the dirt road, all with shoes around the neck to save the leather!

 

Wow, you had those fancy leather shoes.

 

I had to be driven to school in a chauffeur driven limousine that had no air conditioning

 

My dad told me he rode a dinosaur to school. This was supposedly shortly after the earths mantle crusted over.

 

[QUOTE=Koda;1330279]. Talk about a dumb trend, a BMX bike is inferior for everything except BMX, and when you used one for transportation, it really put the hurt on you as I recall by being heavy and not able to go fast.

I had a Dan Gurney Eagle (ChroMo nickel plated hard tail) BMX bike that was pretty cool, could make it go on open ground with rear sprocket changes but who cared? It said Dan Gurney on it & had the nylon 5 spoke wheels, cool & exclusive!

Prior to the Gurney I solved the slow road speed BMX bike by lacing a rear wheel with a Sturmey-Archer 3 speed hub with shifter on seat post pretty much under the seat, that was my first sleeper.

 

[QUOTE=bccan;1330353]Now that's impressive.

 

I had a Columbia sting Ray style bike I think they were called Muscle bikes pretty non descript except for the bright yellow color,
Koda made me remember this painful day !! the chain broke on my bike
I was in the back yard trying to fix it (broken master link ) my buddy came by and wanted to go to the PLAZA a favorite kid past time I said sure I need to go to the hardware store to buy a master link he said you can borrow my brothers bike, his brothers bike was what we called English racer style, full size, skinny tires, hand brakes and 3 speeds operated by a little lever mounted on the handle bars,
Going to the PLAZA required going up the steepest longest hill in the neighbor hood !! I was probably about 1/4 of the way up the grade when I noticed the bike was in third gear !! I decided ti down shift to first to climb the hill BIG MISTAKE !! when I did that the damn thing went in to a neutral position and of course I was standing up to get more umphh for the grade, well you can guess what happened !! I hit the asphalt in the middle of the street of course I was in severe pain and convinced I would never father children !! I dont think I moved for 20 minutes !! DAMN THAT HURTS !!!!!! my buddies of course thought it was hilarious !!
But the worst was yet to come, when my buddies showed up I dropped everything to go to the PLAZA I left the Columbia in the middle of the yard which the Old man decided to mow ( don't know why , that was my job) he removed the bike but never saw the chain in the grass. He hit the chain with his brand new pride and joy Lawn Boy !! so when I got home OMG he was not very happy !! ouch !!!! I know the pain of RACKED !!!!

 

My dad was a pipeline welder. I first worked as a welders helper between my junior and senior high school, all summer. Made enought to buy myself another car to replace my Model A that my sister burned to the ground, but that is another story. Learned to weld, met lots of rough other helpers, joined the union, and made it back home in time to start the next semester. Done this for four summers before joining the Navy.

 

[QUOTE=bccan;1330353]I am old. You owned a Dan Gurney? I would love to see Any pictures.

 

Solly. Columbia bikes are junk. No offense but JUNK!!

 

I don't know much about bikes, I remember the Columbia was a replacement for my Roadmaster that had chrome fenders, twin headlamps a horn built in to the tank that was stolen from the bike rack at school. my old man felt bad and brought home the Colombia as a replacement,
lots of kids in the neighborhood had Schwin Sting Rays, but the sporting goods store the Oldman managed had Columbia's, I think before getting that Columbia I may have been one of the last kids in town to have a full size bike, except for my buddies brother who had that damn
English racer that RACKED my stones !!! maybe I should consider that the reason I produced only 3 girls no boys !!!!