Meet the exes

Last time around I presented my Pashley Roadster as 'my new love'. To continue the romantic analogy, I thought I'd reflect back on all of my previous love affairs. My old bikes, that is.  

I don't mean to presume that there's something unique about my past relationships with bikes, in fact, I suspect this is a collective, shared memory for most people of my age - the pre-computer game generation. Getting your first bike was probably one of the most exciting moments of early childhood. It was the present. Of equal importance was the day your parents took the stabilisers off for the first time. It was like being able to walk to school on your own. The bike represented freedom, independence. Or at least the first steps (or revolutions) towards it.

I can't recall the very first bike I had (it might well be the one on the right of this polaroid, by then handed down to my brother) but the first memorable one was a Raleigh Striker (left).

To my surprise, they still make this bike and it doesn't seem to have changed greatly but back then everyone had one. I guess it was a sort of proto-BMX only heavier and, to all intents and purposes, indestructible. 

If you were a Striker rider it was customary to graduate to the Raleigh Grifter (essentially the same bike but bigger with 3 speed grip-shift gears).  The other popular bike for the younger kid, at the time, was the Raleigh Tomahawk and the big brother of the Tomahawk was the Raleigh Chopper, my next love.

This wasn't my Chopper, but it's pretty darn close, right down to the shade of green.

The Chopper was the ultimate bike of this era, although I guess it was influenced by American 60s-70s dragster type bikes. It wasn't built for speed and had a tendency to wobble when you were giving it some welly in top gear, as I recall. Keeping it balanced while changing gears at speed wasn't helped by having the joystick gear lever on the top tube either. But this wasn't supposed to be a practical bike! With its long, cushioned seat (perfect for croggies) and wide handlebars it was a bike for cruising.  To my shame, I was a little embarrassed by my Chopper, as my mum had bought it second-hand, and in those days there was a stigma about buying second-hand. This was the ex I didn't appreciate at the time even though she constantly got admiring looks from other boys. You don't know what you've got til it's gone.

By this time I longed for a 'racer'. All the cool, older kids had one. If you were super-cool you had cowhorn handlebars and the length of the cowhorns were proportionate to your coolness. Owning a racer was the final rite of passage of childhood in those days (well, not quite the final one...) This advert kind of summed up that sense of longing and still brings a lump to my throat...

I saved up all of my Christmas and Birthday money in 1982 or 83 and bought one of these from Coalville Cycles - a Dawes Lightning. 

A real looker. My dad approved because it was a classic British make - no jokes about sitting on a razor blade from my dad. It had a sunburst paint effect and foam handlebar grips, as I recall - rather similar to  the  Raleigh Winner,  which  was the  most popular racer  at the time.   My best  mate had  a John Fern special and we'd regularly race around our own circuit, a sort of Tour de Bardon et Hugglescote. 

I probably didn't enjoy the Dawes as much as I should have. In truth I lost all interest in cycling by my late teens. In my adolescent mind it was cooler to walk, and to walk around with your collar turned up and a dark cloud above your head. 

There followed the fallow cycling years. I remember inheriting my uncle's racer while I was at university but I jilted that particular ex and left her waiting patiently in my landlady's garage in Bristol when I moved back home.

I didn't get back into bikes until the late 90s when I bought a cheap Halfords-own mountain bike, in a horrible luminous yellow, which I ran into the ground over a year or two (it literally fell apart half way around the Rutland Water cycle track).  But by this time I'd got the bug again.

So I needed a new bike. I had a friend at the time who was really into bikes. Let's call him Ben, because that was his name.   Ben had more bikes than he could fit in his flat so he persuaded  me to buy his old racer, even though I didn't want it. After riding a heavy mountain bike for the past couple of years the geometry of this slender racer felt all wrong the one time I took her out. So she sat unused in my outhouse for a year, gathering rust. Ben later complained that I hadn't looked after his bike and persuaded me to sell it back to him. Hmm.

Ben had a Cannondale that cost over a grand which AMAZED me at the time. He wanted me to get a Cannondale too and I even got as far as test-driving one but that didn't feel right either. It was out of my league. Instead I bought a Schwinn Sierra, much to Ben's disappointment.   

Schwinn were the big American bike manufacturer in the 70s and 80s, although they never caught on over here to the same extent.  In some ways the Sierra echoed the Dawes - foam grips, sunburst paint effect - but this was a sturdier steed. For most of this time I was living in Loughborough and it was a great place for cycling - with Beacon Hill outwoods and so many pretty villages proximate (Quorn, Barrow Upon Soar etc). I would often do a 10 mile circuit through on my way into work, as well as longer rides in the evening, listening to Neville Jason's reading of 'Remembrance of Things Past'  on my walkman. Aah. Halycon days. I only got rid of the Schwinn recently, to make room for the Pashley. At 16 years this was the longest relationship I've had, even though she spent the last 4 years of it locked in an outhouse. Frustrated spouses, please don't get any ideas.

By this time, I'd moved house and cycling wasn't quite so convenient living in the urban metropolis of Nottingham.  I'd also changed jobs, re-training as a teacher, and after a long, hard year of teacher-training I'd decided to treat myself. The Cannondale Bad Boy 'Lefty' was my treat.  It was a complete vanity purchase, as I've said elsewhere.  She'd caught my eye over a decade earlier when I test drove another Cannondale.  Compared to the Schwinn, she was as light as a feather and great fun to ride. And the looks she would get! I could never tell whether they were of admiration or puzzlement (because of the unusual 'lefty' fork) - but it didn't matter either way. I liked the attention.

I still have the Bad Boy. I even took her out the other day but if felt wrong. She's not so much an ex as a mistress, I suppose. Or is she the wife and the Pashley, the mistress?  I'm confused. And possibly in need of some relationship counselling.