It started with a tricycle … this is my first bike back in 1967…
Closely followed by another trike in 1968, but this time with a boot, which was the perfect thing for carrying toys and food…
Stabilisers arrived in 1969, and I realised the importance of a proper crash helmet… although I had my first proper crash on this one, wipe out in the gravel on the road right outside the house…
By 1981 I’d moved onto a proper racer and had turned dad’s old bike from a Sturmey Archer hub-geared bike into a five-speed derailleur jobbie… and first first set of bicycle-related stitches, this time in my head after running into a high bank on a school cycle holiday on Dartmoor (no helmets back then)…
A gap year in Australia in 1988 found me working a bike courier in Melbourne, which was probably the best job I’ve ever had… and I went through two Hillman mountain bikes in twelve months…
I had a lurid pink Hillman first, which horrified most of the Aussies…
And then swapped for a more modern version, which had a U-Brake under the rear chainstays, which was great in sunny Melbourne, but not so good in the clay of Wiltshire… I had two big crashes on this one, the first one in Melbourne when a van jumped a red light light and I ran into the side of it, and another one back in the UK when I dropped it going down a hill near Runnymede and ended up with a knee full of stitches…
The Saracen came next in the early 90’s…
Young kids meant a decent hybrid, the Cannondale Adventurer… what a fantastic bike…
With a road bike joining the stable in 2004…
The Saracen was replaced by my first front suspension bike, a Marin Eldridge Grade…
And then came the Giant Anthem…not to mention Louis growing too quickly and starting to ‘borrow’ MY bikes on a regular basis…
And a very brief foray with an old Post Office bike…
For a ‘big’ birthday the Bianchi was a treat, but the decision took months in the planning and sleepless nights over the colour…
And in recent months I’ve taken a turn to the dark side, of cyclocross, with another Cannondale…
The story continues… watch this space.
This summer (2015), I’ve been using a Kinesis Crosslight Pro3 to great effect in my first series of cyclocross races… oh my word, how hard is this proving to be??
Not forgetting grandad’s bike as a fall back…
