Sci-Fi

Outside of the hand me down trike. My first bike was some 50-60's era Schwinn bike with 20" tires and coaster brakes but the frame was a traditional triangle. Made it into a Stingray and painted it metalflake green with a few coats of laq clear. Rode it everywhere. Loads of fun until it got stolen. One of a kind. Next bike was a 1968 Royce Union 3-speed which i still have and it has been my most reliable and durable bike.

Rabid Koala

I had a whole bunch of secondhand bikes coming and going over the years, I was a child bike flipper!

My first new ones:

Wards Hawthorne 24" wheels with a tank light, think I got that in first grade, probably my birthday in 1964.

Huffy built Monark Sting Ray knockoff, blue, Christmas 1966.

Raleigh Grand Prix, Red with black trim, my first derailleur bike, Christmas 1969.

Gary Fountain

Seeing all these great photos I wish my parents had a camera. They mustn't have had a camera otherwise they would have taken a photo - right? Must ring my father now!

old's'cool

First bke I got to ride: my sister's hand-me-down 20" coaster brake step through frame
First bike to call my own: 24" Eaton "Glider" boys coaster brake
First 10-speed: 21" frame Royce Union (Shimano Lark derailleurs, Dia-Compe sidepull brakes, no aluminum alloy except brakes, levers & maybe hubs).
First real bike, 1976 Empire Professional, soon to be featured in overhaul thread.

Suburban Grind

I was a month from turing 5 when I got my first bike, a new '67 Columbia 20" pseudo-tourer. It came to me in bright red including long fenders with a white saddle, handlebar grips, and pin striping. It was single speed with a bendix coaster brake and a chain guard. Quite heavy for its small size, but fun to whiz around the neighborhood on with some clothes-pinned playing cards snapping on the spokes, but for a small kid like me I always took some planning on how to execute corners, stops, and leaning into fast direction changes. It was a basic bike and I always envied the kids whose parents got them the cool stingrays, moto cross style, choppers and the Evil Knieval bmx bikes.

My first bike had a square personality, and it would take 7 years for my folks to finally cough up the its replacement.

Amesja

I had a cheesy 12"-wheeled solid-tired Murray or something like that as my training wheel bike. but I can't count that as a "bike" -only a BSO.

My first real bike was a Huffy 3-speed banana seat bike with nut-cruncher top-tube shifter between the dual top-tubes with Red/Orange/Yellow flames on the chain guard, fenders and the seat.

I fixed up the bike to give to a friend's kid in the 90's and it promptly got stolen 2 days later. I've never ever seen one like it and have failed in all attempts to find a picture of one online.

Amesja

Found a picture of my first BSO but not the fiery Huffy.



Me on the left.

dpicare26

Reviving an old thread, I know. But while searching CL found one that looks ver familiar to me as a kid. I know for sure it was a dept. store Road Master, and I think this is it!
Circa 1997 Road Master Ultra Terrain:


This also Inspired me to find my other memorable ride as a child. Didn't think I could find it but I did:
1998 Dyno VFR in these exact colors. I should find these frames and hang them on my wall or something haha

WilliamK1974

My first bike was a Free Spirit with styling influences from a Schwinn Stingray. Banana seat, apehangers, and the unfortunate color choice for a boys bike of powder blue with clouds on the chain guard. Not sure who made that decision. But I learned to ride on it and rode it all over the neighborhood. It got used and abused cause both younger brothers treated it like an off-road BMX and kinda turned it into one. Dad sold it at a garage sale about 10 years ago for $5 or $10.

First bike-shop bike was a Schwinn World that was a 15th birthday gift. First bike I bought for myself was a Huffy Jackyl MTB that came out of the JCPenney catalog. I worked at one of the local JCP stores, so I got an employee discount on it and knew how to finish the assembly process. First bike purchased as an adult was a Haro Flightline Sport MTB. And I am currently looking for another ride, or may transform the Jackyl into something else.

tom25

Raleigh Rampar BMX. About 1982. It's still around in rough shape but still rideable. My 7th birthday present.

loxx0050

I like this thread.

My first bike I don't really remember what it was, just some cheap single speed department store bike and for some reason I don't know why is that I only have two memories of it that I can vividly recall. One was that being several miles away from home the chain/crank or wheel (don't recall which) was messed up and being able to get any reasonable speed was like trying to go up a big hill in a 53x11 gear, meaning for most of us not going to happen. It took me what felt like forever to get home that day. The other memory is (I also don't recall how it happened) the seat post being broken off and my a$$ being bloody trying to pedal home standing up in pain several miles away from home.

The bike I really rode all the time as a kid was bought by my parents sometime after that was a light blue Huffy called "Warp Factor 3" or something like that (I remember the Warp 3 part) which had completely white tires. It was a single speed bike with the pedal/crank brakes. Rode that thing everywhere and I still remember test riding it at the store (Children's Palace when they still existed). Had it for many years and I don't even recall exactly when that bike was sold (or thrown away or maybe given away). But I do remember wearing out the back tire and the replacement tire my dad got was standard black in color which bothered me because of the mismatched colors and didn't look right anymore.

Zinger

A 1956 JC Higgins with 3 top tubes. Of course my dad was one of the "He'll grow into it" buyers that didn't want to have to buy another one later so I didn't manage to learn to ride it until I was about 8 or 9 years old. Actually I learned on my neighbor's smaller bike. But once I started riding I was living out of town and we used to ride 8 miles into town, during the summer, to spend the night at my friend's house and ride back. That's when I started wishing for one of those 8 or 10 speeds we used to see in the Montomery Ward or Sears & Roebuck catalogs......mostly for the easier gears they had for the Texas Panhandle headwinds.

I remember stripping the JC Higgins down once including the chainguard. Was 'blasting' down the road, with one of those 30 mph wind gusts at my back, right after taking the chainguard off, and caught my pants leg in the chain. Pulled my foot down in front of the pedal, racked my goods on the top tube, and spun me around to the ground hard.....Put that chainguard right back on.

shiver

My first bike was Peugeot, second bike Peugeot again, and again for the third one.


Peugeot's Bicycles by Shiver_Image, on Flickr

Roypercy

Single speed cruiser, either 16" or 20" wheels, red and white (IIRC) from Western Auto in Maryville, TN. Circa 1964 when I was 5. It was too big for me when I got it, and we lived on a very busy road near a factory, so getting me to a street safe enough to ride on was a bit of a chore for my parents, with the result that I never got the training wheels off it. When I was 10 we moved out to the country where there were lots of empty roads; I started riding for real, and haven't ever stopped.

Lanovran

My first "real" bike (i.e. adult-sized machine, purchased from an LBS) was a 2005 Trek 820, in yellow & black. It was a cheap, entry-level all-steel "mountain-style" bike, but I loved that thing! Riding it all around campus helped me to slim down, improve my health, and enjoy the daily trip to classes. I awoke one terrible morning to discover that it had been stolen off of the bike rack in front of my apartment at college. That was the day I learned to distrust cable locks. Here's a pic of that bike taken on a wint'ry day on campus...



Hey, at least I had a plastic shopping bag protecting the saddle, right? I ended up replacing my stolen 820 with a new Trek 4300 (in theory, a superior bike with better specs, but it never rode quite as nicely as that steel 820 did).

daf1009

I had a no name "chopper" style bike with 3 speeds...

then...a Kool Lemon Schwinn Varsity

dwightisright

My first ride was an Evan's. It was gold in color and it could be switch from a guys bike to a gal's bike with removal of a few bolts.

bikemig 

First bike was a green robin hood 3 speed. I used to ride it down a bike path to the lake near our house to go fishing. Never caught much of anything but I did learn how to ride no hands. Second was a silver ten speed nishiki that my father gave me when I was 14 to ride to high school. I learned how to wrench on that bike. I bought a copy of Richard's Bicycle Book and decided I could do my own work. I went down to the local Raleigh bike shop and bought a basic set of tools. Man did I want one of those Reynolds 531 Raleigh bikes. I still own and use those tools 40 years later. I remember taking that bike apart and thought that this was easy. It took me a week to figure out how everything went back together! Heck sometimes it still takes me a week (or more) to figure out how to put things back together,

RubberLegs

First bike was some no-name, third hand BLUE painted (handpainted) 20" GIRL'S bike...my brother rode it and I started to learn to ride on that...a few years later, I got my OWN bike, a RED Schwinn Typhoon.

awfulwaffle 

https://www.foldingcyclist.com/Russia...ding-bike.html


My first bike was a Minsk Motovelo Zavod folder:



Took my mom quite a bit of effort to get a hold of it for me back in the old country. I recall the neighborhood kids redefined the factory acronym (MMVZ) to be 'transport of little milksuckers forbidden' (Malih Molokososov Vazit Zapresheno)

Did have a 'bike' before that one as a little guy, but it didn't really qualify. Solid rubber tires and no wheel bearings, just partially threaded bolts in holes. I remember being amazed at how easy it was to ride a bike with pneumatic tires and real bearings when I got the new one. Still kind of sad we had to leave it behind.

First bike that I "bought" was my frankenbike:




Put it together from some Nashbar parts and a drivetrain off of an old Trek MTB that I cracked the frame on as a kid.

Cougrrcj

Mine was my older sister's hand-me-down girls'-frame 24" balloon-tire behemoth. Total mystery make/model because my parents bought it used/repainted, but for some reason I'm thinking it < might > have had a Montgomery Ward headbadge... I remember putting a Vrroom unit like this on it:



For my 12th birthday I got my own new Sears three-speed instead of pirating my parent's matching 1959 JC Higgins 3-speeds, or my older sister's Sears 3-speed.

The first bike I bought for myself was a '74 Fuji Special Tourer in orange. That got stolen three months later, so I got the identical bike as a replacement.

Then in '76 I 'saw the light' (weight) after riding my College roommate's Viscount Aerospace Pro (with death fork, but we didn't know that at the time), and I bought the Fuji S-10S that I still have today... Was my primary ride until this year when I picked up my Univega.

CheaterSlick

My first bike was a 1968 CCM Mustang