What was your First Adult Bike?

Threesticks said:

A Schwinn Typhoon so I could deliver news papers in the late 60s. Wish I had a dollar for every flat that I had using it to explore the local hiking and horse trails.
Then a Centurion Le Mans to get back and forth to school. I had 700x32s on it and rode it everywhere. Rim brakes were a big improvement over the coaster on the Typhoon.
First MTB was a '87 Univega Alpina Uno. Raced that bike for a couple years. Also used it for bike packing with my friends.
Found dirt bikes in the early 70s and never had a BMX. My friends kids had some, but at 6'2" they were too small and awkward for me.

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I'm a bit old for BMX but still have this bike. I chuckle when some make their claims for first riding a very popular trail complex because in the late 60s one neighborhood mom would shove bikes in the Ford station wagon and drop off boys with metal lunch boxes at the same trailhead. Even in late 1960s not all the parents were cool with that.

The bike I'd call my first adult bike would probably be my 1972 Raleigh Grand Prix. That really upped the scale of the riding a few of us would do. It makes the gravel bike craze entertaining because they're much the same.

KaktusJaque said:

I think its safe to say most all of us started out on BMX style bikes, but what was your first adult bike? My path to a mountain bike was a hand-me-down RB-Montgomery Wards 10 speed in a sand yellow, dating myself a bit, but mountain bikes were not a thing yet., next a RB-Nasiki custom sport 10 speed, RB-KHS Fiero 9 speed, then my first MB, a GT Tequesta hard tail, loved this bike for climbing with. (Put many miles on this one), RB-Viscount Aerospace, RB-Greg Lemond, Buenos Aries 9 speed, back to MBs, Specialized M4 Stumpjumper (blew out the rear shock mount on this one, it was a poor design) MB-Jamis Drakar, a flip bike, I rebuild it and sold it. My current MB, a Specialized Stumpjumper 120. RB-Specialized Allez, Other bikes hanging on the wall but don't ride much, MB-Trek Y5, MB-Norco Nitro hardtail, and a Archetype Bloodline 24" BMX. My next endeavor will be a Gravelbike. I've looked at many but the top three are a Salsa Cutthroat, Trek Checkpoint, & Specialized Diverge, leaning toward the Trek.

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Adult BMXglobalcountry...



There, I said it!! 🤪

There weren't store-bought BMX bikes when I was a kid. People were taking old Schwinn Sting-Ray type bikes and making simulated gas tanks with cardboard and electrical tape. The whole point was to pretend you were riding an off-road motorcycle when you were too young for your parents to let you have one. There was no concept of BMX as a real sport for people who enjoyed riding bikes.

My first adult bike was a steel Raleigh 10-speed hand-me-down from my dad, which I got when I was about 19. It weighed about 50 pounds and had all those horrible 1970s features like "chicken brakes" and the shifters mounted at the bottom of the stem and above the top tube, put there on the theory that "the masses" would never be able to figure out down tube shifters.

That was quickly replaced by a Trek 614 in 1979. I rode my first centuries on that one.

The year after, I saw a postage stamp-sized ad in the back of Bicycling magazine from a company called Mountain Bikes in Marin County. They were making something I had never seen before: a fat-tired adult bike with tons of gears. It sounded interesting, so I went up there and paid them a call. MTB legends Gary Fisher and Charlie Kelly sold me the bike. It was a top-of-the-line Ritchey Everest. I went down to Tom Ritchey's house in Woodside (near Palo Alto) to get measured for a custom frame (I have ludicrously short legs for someone my height), and picked it up in early 1981. Ritchey offered to show me some local Woodside trails for my inaugural ride, along with another guy who had also just gotten a Ritchey mountain bike. The guy was a Stanford student who was getting into biking and thinking about becoming a pro bike racer. It was Eric Heiden, who had just dominated the 1980 winter Olympics like nobody before or since. To say that Ritchey and Heiden blew my doors off on that ride is a world-class understatement. That Ritchey was my main riding bike for years, including a cross-country trip and thousands of miles of other tours.

Marriage, kids and career followed, and I didn't ride from around 1990 until 2015, when the nest was empty and I got back into it. I thought as a big guy (250#) I liked the idea of a road bike with disc brakes and wider tires, for better stopping and fewer rim blips in potholes. The only bikes that met the spec in those days were cross bikes, so I ended up with a Trek Boone 5 carbon/105. Loved it, and it's still my main road bike.

The next year, I started to read about fat bikes, and found a discounted leftover at my LBS in the spring, so I bought it. It's a Felt DD30. A bit heavy but it looks pretty cool, especially as I replaced a lot of the components with orange pedals, grips, bottles, tires, etc. Those complement the turquoise paint job and the bike looks amazing. I constantly get compliments on it, particularly the prototype orange tires I scored off Vee Rubber by being persistent and annoying after I saw them on a blog post.

The year after that, the mechanic at my LBS put his personal mountain bike up for sale. It was a hell of a deal, so I leaped at it. I now have a bike that is far better than I will ever be able to make use of, but the cost was in line with the budget. It's a custom S-Works Enduro build with top-of-the-line everything, better quality than the stock high end S-Works Enduro. The paint job is fantastic -- if I can't be fast, at least I can ride a visually stunning bike -- and it has done far more than I could ever imagine with no gear failures. I got it for about 1/3 of what it would have cost new, so I figured, why not?

This year, we planned to do the GAP trail (until my partner's hip surgery led us to postpone it to next year). None of the existing bikes would work with a rack and panniers, so (sigh!) I had to go buy N+1. Fortunately, my girlfriend is a cyclist as well, so I only have to dream about N+1 and never worry about the value of D. This is a Surly Disc Trucker in Banana Slug Yellow/Green (yuck). Does all the touring things, but a bit heavy. Nice to come full circle with the last two bikes to fulfill the missions (MTB, touring) of the Ritchey mountain bike I bought 40 years ago. The Ritchey is still in the basement and when my next job promotion arrives, I'll be able to afford to have it shipped off to a company that restores classics and get it rebuilt with all New Old Stock components.

First real adult “mountain bike” was a used DiamondBack Ridge Runner, something like this:



It was a total clunky POS, but it got me out in the woods riding and exploring trails (in maybe 86’ ????). The rest is history. Been at it ever since.