Two Bike Minimum
1974 Schwinn Continental.
I have no way of knowing whether or not this was the first 10-speed I ever owned — I just don't remember — but this is as close to my recollection of that bike as I can find. The color is the same, and mine definitely had those dangerous "safety" brake-levers.
When I was in sixth grade (?), Huffy released (and heavily promoted) the Aerowind, which soon became the must-have bike. A real 10-speed! (I'm not sure if that's the correct model name or not, but the bike I'm thinking of sold for around $100 and featured Christopher Cross' "Ride Like the Wind" as background music in the television commercial. It just made you want one, SO BAD!) Dave Jones was the first to get one of these bikes — it was sky blue — and I was infinitely envious.
Perhaps it wasn't long after that when Dad took me to this small bike shop in Naperville that no longer exists (it was located in the little strip-mall next to the DuPage river, between Burger King and Prince Castle — also no longer there). He ended up buying me a second-hand 10-speed in "racing brown"; the catalog calls it chestnut, which was also the color of the plastic, translucent bar tape. I'm almost certain this wasn't the bike I wanted, but it was a 10-speed all the same.
(Random memory: while riding down Calumet one day, I was "practicing" stopping short on the front brakes to see how far I could swing up and balance over the front wheel without actually going vertical and flipping over. Sorry to say, I found out the hard way just how much is too much. I never did it again, though...)
Placing this bike on my personal timeline is proving a bit tricky. It seems likely I would have got this bike after the Raleigh BMX, but I can't be certain of that. The only credible memory I have to date this bike is riding it to Wheaton during 8th grade to visit my maybe girlfriend, Kelly Clarke. (I can't verify she was my girlfriend by any standard measure, but we did spend an ungodly number of hours on the phone together.) Kelly lived behind Monroe Junior High, just across the tracks from our school but quite a trek from our house in Warrenville.
(Thinking about it now, that was a strange family — though they were always amazed at how far I'd come to see Kelly. As for me, I remember being so impressed that her brother would regularly jog 4-6 miles and a little freaked out that her mother had achieved a kind of perverse notoriety for dating — was it dating? — a local Elvis impersonator, Rick Saucedo. It's probably good that our "relationship" fizzled when it did. I had things to do.)
In any case, this bike was the first to ferry me beyond the periphery of my known stomping grounds, allowing a taste of the adventure and freedom that most kids don't experience until they start driving.
1974 Schwinn Continental.
I have no way of knowing whether or not this was the first 10-speed I ever owned — I just don't remember — but this is as close to my recollection of that bike as I can find. The color is the same, and mine definitely had those dangerous "safety" brake-levers.
When I was in sixth grade (?), Huffy released (and heavily promoted) the Aerowind, which soon became the must-have bike. A real 10-speed! (I'm not sure if that's the correct model name or not, but the bike I'm thinking of sold for around $100 and featured Christopher Cross' "Ride Like the Wind" as background music in the television commercial. It just made you want one, SO BAD!) Dave Jones was the first to get one of these bikes — it was sky blue — and I was infinitely envious.
Perhaps it wasn't long after that when Dad took me to this small bike shop in Naperville that no longer exists (it was located in the little strip-mall next to the DuPage river, between Burger King and Prince Castle — also no longer there). He ended up buying me a second-hand 10-speed in "racing brown"; the catalog calls it chestnut, which was also the color of the plastic, translucent bar tape. I'm almost certain this wasn't the bike I wanted, but it was a 10-speed all the same.
(Random memory: while riding down Calumet one day, I was "practicing" stopping short on the front brakes to see how far I could swing up and balance over the front wheel without actually going vertical and flipping over. Sorry to say, I found out the hard way just how much is too much. I never did it again, though...)
Placing this bike on my personal timeline is proving a bit tricky. It seems likely I would have got this bike after the Raleigh BMX, but I can't be certain of that. The only credible memory I have to date this bike is riding it to Wheaton during 8th grade to visit my maybe girlfriend, Kelly Clarke. (I can't verify she was my girlfriend by any standard measure, but we did spend an ungodly number of hours on the phone together.) Kelly lived behind Monroe Junior High, just across the tracks from our school but quite a trek from our house in Warrenville.
(Thinking about it now, that was a strange family — though they were always amazed at how far I'd come to see Kelly. As for me, I remember being so impressed that her brother would regularly jog 4-6 miles and a little freaked out that her mother had achieved a kind of perverse notoriety for dating — was it dating? — a local Elvis impersonator, Rick Saucedo. It's probably good that our "relationship" fizzled when it did. I had things to do.)
In any case, this bike was the first to ferry me beyond the periphery of my known stomping grounds, allowing a taste of the adventure and freedom that most kids don't experience until they start driving.