Originally Posted by
Outrider1
For a point of reference, I'm 58. As a kid my bike, as well as those of all the kids in the neighborhood, were lifelines. I literally lived on my bike.
I am 62 and I rode my bicycle a LOT when I was a kid, too, but we also played a lot of backyard baseball and football in those days.
In the summer, I would ride out on my bike around 9am and stay out until almost dusk, usually around 8pm, with just a quick trip home at some point to grab some lunch. Of course, there were times when my mom said "I want you home for dinner tonight at 5:30pm, or something similar. But most days when I was a kid we were fancy free most of the day during summer - riding bikes, exploring or playing baseball or football in somebody's back yard. When I was 11 I got a paper route, and put front and rear baskets on my Schwinn 3-speed to hold the papers. Most kids today don't even know what a newspaper is or how important they used to be.