A bike is never just a bike – it’s a reflection of where you are, where you’ve been, and, sometimes, where you want to go.
Iain Treloar
Bikes of the (Staff) Bunch: Iain’s Moots Vamoots CR
Velo, Updated Oct 9, 2023
Iain wrote about how you can trace the changes in his life by what and where he has been riding. This made me think about all the bikes I have owned.
I started road cycling at the end of 2008, relatively late in my life. That is when I bought a Trek 7.5 FX and started exploring the streets of downtown Houston.
Many posts in this blog trace my cycling journey from that hybrid bike through a succession of road bikes.
There were earlier times in my life when I owned a bicycle. My first bike was a Raleigh Chopper.
I was eleven or twelve years old. That Chopper, with its stick shift and easy rider handlebars, was certainly cool. It also wasn’t very safe. The rearward centre of gravity made it easy to pop unintended wheelies. I still carry a scar on one knee from a fall after I stamped on the pedals and the front wheel went skyward.
I don’t remember what happened to that bike. There wasn’t anywhere to cycle to, and I don’t recall any other children in the neighborhood having bikes. I must have stopped riding it, and my parents got rid of it.
I was fifteen when I was given another bicycle. This time, it was a Raleigh Grand Prix road bike.
It came with toe clips and straps on the pedals. If you flipped the pedals, the clips scraped on the ground on the downstroke. Speaking of scrapes, the cottered cranks regularly took skin off my ankle bones. I rode that bicycle a lot. I rode it to school. I rode it to evening football games. I rode it to visit friends in places like Petaling Jaya, a 25 km round trip.
I didn’t ride for fun as a teenager. I didn’t explore the city on my bicycle. I didn’t have any friends who cycled. My bicycle was purely a mode of transport to get to and from places. Again, I didn’t have friends who cycled, so there was no social aspect to enjoy.
I still had that bike when I went overseas to university. When I came home after graduating, I found that my father had given it away. At that stage of my life, getting settled and starting my first job took centre stage. Riding a bicycle never crossed my mind. I didn’t think much of it then, but I wish I still had that bike.
My career and family occupied most of my time through my thirties and into my forties. My main forms of exercise then were playing football, basketball and jogging. It wasn’t until work took me to England that I owned another bicycle. We lived in a cul de sac, and my neighbours had bicycles. They rode as a group on summer evenings. I bought a Carrera mountain bike to join them on those social rides. Mostly to a local pub! I rode it to work a few times, but it largely served a social purpose.
The only photograph I could find of what looks like that bike is in this mid-1990s advertisement.
That Carrera came to Kuala Lumpur with me at the end of my overseas posting. I occasionally rode it around the neighbourhood but depended upon football and squash for exercise. I recall a death-defying experience when I followed a mountain-biker friend at speed down a jungle trail to find an open ditch at the bottom of the hill. To this day, I do not know how I bunny-hopped that ditch and stayed upright. That was the last time I rode off-road.
A few years later, I accepted a job in Paris, and the Carrera came with me. I used it more to ride around the neighbourhood with my sons than anything else. My life was in turmoil at the end of that posting, and the bike got lost in the shuffle.
It was seven years before a bicycle entered my life again. The year was 2008. I was fifty-two, with a recent ACL replacement. You can read about it here.
Cycling has played a major role in my life since then. I ride for the physical challenge, to explore, and to enjoy the sights and sounds of nature. I also ride with friends for the shared experiences and camaraderie.
I still ride three of the four road bikes that came into my life after the Trek, starting in January 2010. My second road bike is accumulating miles with a friend in Canada.
There will come a time when an e-bike is a sensible option. I hope not for a while longer, though. I like where I am and where I want to go.
Old Roots, New Routes 