I learned to ride a bicycle at around age five.  I had a red convertible bicycle with training wheels.  I’m not sure, but I think it was from Western Auto (many bikes were back then).  We had a gravel road that went through the trailer park where we lived, and I skinned my knees a lot while learning to balance myself on the bike.  My parents did a lot of the running along side as I struggled and finally prevailed.  It seemed like it took forever, but it probably wasn’t that long  — maybe a couple of weeks at most.

A couple years later; I think I was about seven or eight, I picked out my full-size bicycle.  A blue girls single speed Schwinn — a beautiful bike.  When I was ten, I entered a coloring contest by a local shoe store, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn I’d won first prize — a Hush Puppies Sting Ray bicycle.  So, I was the proud owner of two bicycles.  Pretty cool.

Then ten speeds became the rage, and I had to have one.  My parents had been firm when they bought me the Schwinn that it was the only bicycle they were going to buy me.  So the deal was I was going to buy one for my thirteenth birthday.  Mom was working and needed a babysitter for the younger kids that summer.  I volunteered to babysit for fifty cents per hour to earn the money to buy my bicycle.  I picked out what I wanted from the local sporting good store — an orange Vista ten speed boy’s bike.  (I lived in Charles City, Iowa, at the time, and our school colors were black and orange.  When Mom and Dad moved to Ohio, they should have considered that and bought a house in the Wellsville School District — just kidding.)  I put a down payment on the bike to place the order with the balance to come on delivery in August.  On the fateful day, Dad took me canoeing for my birthday (I loved canoeing), and when I came home, my new bike was waiting for me.  Mom and Dad had chipped in the little bit of money I was short in completing the purchase to allow me to take delivery in time for my birthday.

The thing I loved most is the people at the local sporting goods store dealt with me as a mature customer.  Looking back, I’m pretty sure there were some behind the scenes discussions with my parents, but it was transparent to me.  And while we all survived me babysitting three younger siblings for eight hours a day five days a week when I was twelve and half, it probably was’t the best situation for any of us.  Or, maybe it was.  It was tough on my siblings, and I didn’t like it much either, but it was part of my responsibility to the family to help where it was needed, and I got something I wanted from it.

I rode that ten speed everywhere until after high school.  While we lived in Iowa, the town was pretty small, and I could walk as easily as ride most places.   Once we moved to Ohio, we lived a couple of miles outside of town, so the bike took me a lot of places before I got my driver license and sometimes afterward, because I had to negotiate for one of the two family vehicles, and they weren’t always available when I wanted them.  (Nor should they have been.)