Peachy!":1i07gc6n said:
sinnerman":1i07gc6n said:
London is a huge place, my mum wouldnt have allowed me to venture too far even at 16, the bike gave me freedom, she never knew where i was when on the bike....
Yes, I often think of the double standard in my own life, in 1979 at the age of 11, me & my mates wouldn’t think twice about riding 12 miles across North London to visit the RAF museum at Hendon, we wouldn’t even bother telling our parents....
I can’t imagine letting my 13 yr old do that today!
I owe everything to my Father, the bikes we built and what he showed me, and that day he gave me a wink, and said, When you go out on your bike, your mother wont know where you are, Be careful.
A lot of time spent, building a technical track for training at some woods about 5 mile from our house, which I still take my kids too for bike riding, the remaining time spent training on the road putting the miles in, and when using the MTB we would attack flights of steps, escalators, anything and everything to try and hone the skills we considered necessary for off road racing, all helped by magazine articles of course.
Our town had at least 9 or 10 different bike shops, and we would happily spend the day riding to them all to see all the bikes and collect the catalogues, each shop stocking there own brands, Even Halfords had the full Saracen range. Others stocking Raleigh, Tushingham, Marin, Specialized, Cannondale, Kona, Trek, Muddyfox, Lyiang, Peugeot, GT, Kona, Diamond back, etc etc.
To be fair, all of them stocked, Mainstream brands from the bottom to the top, all I would now consider to be blue collar, very few if any stocked the Boutique.
This was reserved for the magazines, or trips away to the big smoke or at least reserved for Race weekends before you could see any of it in the flesh.
