What got you into riding?

[Pickle]

Just wondering how you lot all got into riding?

For me, it was the Summer of 1992. Me and a mate were always tearing around the streets and footpaths on our bikes in the school holidays, and one day we took a ride into town.

On popping into the newsagents and gazing over the magazines I saw this brightly coloured magazine call 'Mountain Biking UK'. "Hmmm" I thought, "this looks interesting". So, I brought it (it was the one with free socks......I still have them ).

Later that afternoon I had read the magazing from cover to cover, and was totally inspired. I can remember taking my reflectors off, and going to the local cycle shop to buy knobly tyres.

I was hooked

 

[DM]

A small, orange bike - quite "traditional" looking, with colour-coded metal mudguards and full chaincase.

This was probably 1971-2.
And it was a singlespeed!

I probably ditched the stabilisers too soon, as my bike skills haven't progressed much since then.

 

[pinguwin]

August of 1983, my brother was into cycling and had connections in the bike world. He brought his mountain bike over and at that time, no one I knew had seen one before. I took it out one night and said, "I have to get one." And the rest is history.

 

[jonnyboy666]

what first got me into biking was moving south and starting a new school with no mates, had always mucked about on bikes and started finding my way around the new forest from the age of 12, by 15 i was doing 70 mile rides on the weekends with a guy i met through through another mates girlfriend, he was a few years older and lent me a road bike, we still ride together now all be it when we can get the time coz we now work at the same place but on different shifts.

 

[tintin40]

rubbish public transport.

 

[Huntso]

Lived in a flat in the east end as a kid and to be honest we were fairly poor, so never had a bike
My old man reckoned I never needed one and with the traffic nowhere to ride it anyway, also the added problems from having to lug it up and down the stairs.

So once I got older always promised myself I would learn to ride a bike and must have looked a right old sight wobbling about over hackney marshes in my twenties (no stabilisers though)

Got there in the end and in a way more rewarding than having one when I was younger, can still remember that feeling of going more than one wheel revolution and actually pedalling it whilst still being upright.

Must have enjoyed it because still at it and i'm fifty in two weeks time

 

[orange71]

I was always into bikes from a young age, but it was at University - I met a couple of guys who had mountain bikes, they invited me along and let me ride their spare bike and it went from there. This was in 1991.

It helped of course that we had the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales on the doorstep (Lancaster University)!

 

[cce]

t1nt1n's P7 got me into bikes...

 

[development_cycle]

My Dad.

He was always riding or fixing his bike, and as my brother was not really into it that much he and I used to go riding together when I was old enough. He had this old Claud Butler road bike with Campag on it, pretty old I would say, long gone now I think!

I guess I got into Mountain biking just because I grew out of my bike at the time and Halfords had some Carerra thingy in that was my price, and I never looked back!

 

[perry]

i have a brother 15 years my senior so once he found the joys of 2 wheeled internal combustion i naturally inherited his old bmx stuff as soon as i was big enough to get on it

so ridings always been there , i regard seeing the st neots vert ramp in 94 as the point where i saw the reason my bike was the way it was and the long wheel nuts it had wernt for people to get a lift my brother had told me about how it was in the 80s but its not the same as seeing someone air a few feet out of a 10 foot tall ramp on a bike similar to what i rode to really make it real

the mountain bike side came around 95 when i had moved to devon and a lad on the same street had a GT outpost trail . it was the coolest thing ever , or maybe it was because he never rode it slowly a cheap mountain bike was persuaded out of mumsy shortly after . but was shite and kept breaking so i stuck with the bmx until the late 90s where i could afford better mtb stuff