My Short Stories. The Ride of your Life.

Our cousins lived not too far away from us, they were pretty comfortable off, both their parents worked so it meant they got quite a bit from them, not OTT, but they did OK, one of the things I longed for as a lad was a bike, everyone seemed to have one, we could never really afford one, so it was up to the good nature of our mates to let us have a go, my wee brother is only a couple of years younger than me, so we used to do a lot together, mainly fight lol, but looking back we did have good times together.

He was the same, he wanted a bike also, so like me he relied on his friends to give him a go, back then you could go for miles on a bike, kinda like the world was your oyster, energy wasn’t an issue you could ride all day and night and never tire of it, we ventured pretty far at times and thinking back now I often cringe at the situations we got into, but back then in the seventies, it was much safer than it is today.

Our cousins were cool, two girls, they came round to our street every morning to give us a ride of their new bikes, we circled around the block having goes between us, this was really cool, we had a blast, I can still feel the hot sun beaming down on a summers morning when they arrived. Finally, one Christmas our parents bought us a Chopper bike, these were the best back them, 3 gears one wheel smaller than the other and built to last, you have no idea what these bikes meant to us back then, we went everywhere and had the best of times. Nowadays a bike wouldn’t be the ultimate present but things change, happy days.

THE CHOPPER BICYCLE IN THE 70S