Bicycles I Have Known And Loved

We've always had bicycles in my family. My mother has had hers since she was a girl, its an old indestructible green Raleigh bike. She saved up her money to buy it, and bought it without my grandmother knowing. Its shiny wheels made me think Dad had bought some new wheels for it, but they are stainless steel, they shine like cutlery.

The first bikes I remember were really tricycles. I think we had a couple of kiddie trikes that me and my brother and sister would ride round the garden on. Brightly coloured orange and red, with big flat metal saddles. Today's equivalent would be cheap and plastic, and not last long. These things were indestructible.

My first real bike was a hand-me-down from my big brother. It was a sky blue bike with white plastic handlebar grips and solid, not inflatable, tyres. Only one brake, the front, which was controlled by a lever that connected some rods that went to the mechanism. There was a chain drive to the rear wheel and a freewheel hub, but no gears. As well as riding it, we would tip it upside down and spin the wheels, splashing water on them in the summer sunshine of childhood.

I used to ride this bike around a lot. For a time I used to walk home for lunch because we lived so close to school. I remember cycling round the block past school at lunchtime, looking in at all the kids stuck inside! My bike was my freedom!

My brother moved on to a red Raleigh Chopper. This was something. Big chopper handlebars, saddle with a high-rise back, brakes front and rear, gear lever in the middle with 3 speeds, and a little plastic indicator that said which gear you were in. Gears. It was like a car. When my brother got it I remember having a go on it, but it was much too big for me and I couldn't reach the pedals. I felt way up high, dangerously high, it was scary, wobbly, and even though Dad was holding me I felt so unsafe.

Eventually Rob grew out of the Chopper and I grew out of the blue bike, so I got the Chopper. Now I was right for it. I took my cycling proficiency test in it. By this time we'd moved further from school, and I had to cycle there for my test. I left the bike at Nan and Grandads and walked across the park for school, then went back to get it later for the test. I passed. I used to cycle around the park a lot with my friends. Once I let a friend ride the Chopper and I was on his bike. He had zoomed off and was now round the corner. So I decided to cut the corner across the grass, but my front wheel disappeared into a hole and I went flying over the handlebars. It didn't put me off though, and I remember one day riding from our house almost all the way to Edmonton on that bike.

When I'd grown out of the Chopper, I was ready for my brother's next cast-off. This was a dark red bike with straight handlebars and a three-speed hub gear. Dad had got this from a second-hand bike shop near our new school. I must have had this bike for a few years, but there are no great memories of it. No injuries, despite this being a time in my life when I was in and out of hospital with various cuts, bruises and concussions. I managed to do those without any help from the bike. Perhaps this discouraged Mum from letting me have a new bike. Once I'd grown out of that bike, I didn't get another for a while.

Probably without Mum's knowing I had been borrowing a friend's bike for a while, a Kalkhoff racing bike with derailleur gears, toe clips, and drop handlebars. We used to have races round the streets, and once we went for a long ride up to Epping Forest, where I narrowly managed to avoid falling in a ditch by managing to get across a six-inch wide plank without falling off.

When I went to University I lived on campus for the first year but for the second two years we lived a few miles away. I would often walk to college. It was a brisk 45 minute stroll, which was one side of a C90 tape on my Walkman. I still associate certain parts of specific Pink Floyd albums with locations on the route from Staines to Egham. The last parts of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" take me back to the plod up Egham Hill.

I would occasionally borrow Bill or Julie's bikes. Bill's was a racing bike, and I could get a fair speed on that. Julie's racing bike was a bit smaller, since she was only 5ft 1in, so my knees took a bit of a hammering. Bill once ran into the back of a car and ended up on the boot. He just didnt see it.

When I left London for Lancaster I needed a bike. I bought the Kalkhoff racer from Mark and took it up to Lancaster. It was sky blue with proud German flags. Gear changers on the down tube, brakes with 'suicide levers' - those horizontal levers attached to brakes on drop handlebars.

I had to leave it outside when I lived in Wyreside Hall, and it took the weather pretty badly. When I came back from Christmas break the chain had seized up, and I had no bike oil or WD40 in the flat. So I used cooking oil. It worked well enough to get to town for some of the real stuff. I moved onto campus shortly afterwards and the bike got a lot less usage. Campus life was far too annoying, and so I moved out. The bike was back in regular use, except at this time I was a fair-weather cyclist. In the rain, I got the bus. Which in Lancaster, was quite often.

I remember one fall on this bike. Cranking up the hill to Abraham Heights, my feet slipped and over I went, cutting my leg a bit. Ouch. On another occasion I was cycling home at about 2am from a friend's house in the country when I was stopped by the police. Clearly cycling around at that time was suspicious behaviour. Actually, seeing a bus at that hour would be suspicious. They took the frame number, and checked with base to see if any Kalkhoff bikes had been stolen. One had. Different colour though. Relief. They let me on my way. When I did get home I discovered my flatmate had locked me out, and I had trouble waking him to get in. I had a vision of a neighbour ringing the police and seeing them again.

I moved to Chatsworth Road after a couple of years on Abraham Heights. We had a bike shed out the back, so I would leave my bike in the garden, go round and through the house to get the shed key, go out the back door, put the bike in the shed, lock up and go in. Of course once or twice I would get in and collapse, and forget the bike in the back. And on the third occasion, someone had spotted the bike and nicked it. I was gutted. I reported the theft to the police, and they asked me if I had the frame number. My response was that I didn't, but maybe they did after stopping me in the street that day at 2am. I didn't get the bike back.

A colleague at work was leaving soon, so I offered him 150 quid for his bike. This was another racer, I can't remember the makers name though. It was burgundy red, slightly smaller than my Kalkhoff. This was the first bike I got a cycle computer for. On my first run down the university drive, I hit 70mph. Then I fixed the sensor so it worked properly.

I moved to Coulston Road after a few months in Chatsworth Road, and here we had a garage out the back for keeping the bike. Alex the landlord kept his bike in here too. I was aware that the racer was a bit small for me, so I bought a bike that Lynne, my then girlfriend had. She fixed up the frame, painted it up a nice blue colour. I think it was a Peugeot frame underneath. White tape handlebars, 12 speed gears. This was a speed machine, thin and raw. I remember doing 40mph according to the speedo.

I'd had the blue bike for a short time, and I was keeping the red bike in the garage. On the day I took the computer from the red bike to the blue bike the garage was broken into and the red bike and Alex's bike were both stolen. The thieves had broken down the door during broad daylight and taken both. Good job it wasn't raining, or I would have got the bus and there would have been three bikes for the taken. We suspected someone had spotted the garage open at some point and spied three bikes.

The blue bike was the one I stopped being a fair-weather cyclist on. I'd broken up from Lynne, and I'd had an invite to dinner from a girl who lived in Galgate, a few miles away. It was raining. Buses didn't go that way. So I had to cycle. Turning up wet at a girl's house can be a great excuse to get your clothes off, but I think she just offered me a towel and I dried myself off as best I could. She cooked me some food, we had a good evening, I went home in the rain. We became friends, so it wasn't a total loss. From then on I discovered cycling in the rain was actually quite fun, and I think of her whenever I ride in the wet weather.

But the blue racing bike wasn't quite suited for slippy roads, so I bought a mountain bike from a second-hand ad on the university BBS. The seller had just bought a Cannondale racer, and was selling off his Emelle Cortina. It cost me 250 quid. I now had two bikes for the first time in my life. The Cortina was black, with thumb-shift gears, cantilever brakes, 21 speed gears, no mudguards, chunky tyres. I loved it, riding was so comfortable on the rough streets and up the steep hills, in the rain, the mud, the rocks. I kept the blue racer for occasional use, but soon I was just on the mountain bike all the time.

By now I'd moved out, into my own house on Mill Street, and soon after that I was seeing Julii. She lived in Norwich. Our first weekend together was a cycle treasure hunt in Norwich, so I took my bike down and we pedalled around the country side and got to know each other while looking for clues and spotting signposts. For the next couple of years we would visit each other regularly. She acquired another racing bike so I didn't have to bring mine. She painted it up with a gold snake winding round the tube.

One day out in the Norfolk countryside we were scooting along quite happily when we came to a sudden T-junction at the end of a country lane, where it met a main road. I went for the brakes and the handlebar slipped, rotated, I couldn't get to the brake levers, and there was two lanes of busy traffic going both ways ahead of me. Somehow I managed to avoid the first lane, cranked it right and ended up almost broadsiding a white van.

We found someone in the nearest village with some tools and fixed it up, but from then on that bike was known as The Death Bike!

For Julii to ride in Lancaster I bought her a Specialized Rockhopper mountain bike from a friend. It was a useful spare for me for when the Cortina was out of service. We rode together to Leeds on those bikes, loaded up with camping gear and over the hills and on the trails. I think she took the Rockhopper to Iceland, where it ran over glaciers and lava flows.

Five years with the Cortina was the longest I'd had any bike. For a year or two I had been thinking about buying myself a new bike, a brand new bike, my first ever brand new bike. Then one day on my way home the front fork on the Cortina broke, I hit the road and broke my elbow. Four weeks in plaster and three months off the bike. I fixed it up when I was fixed up, and got back on. I really wanted to get a new bike now. I thought about getting a recumbent bike, or a trike, or a speedy thing with a full fairing and joystick control. I really wanted a new bike.

It took me another six years. In October 2004 I bought a Dawes Edge Team in Bicycle Magic. 24 speed, shiny gold colour, hydraulic disk brakes, lightweight frame, front suspension. Everything I wanted. So I bought it. Since then my Cortina has been in the spare room, waiting for someone I can trust with it. I've had that bike for 12 years, and it became almost part of me. I knew its quirks and problems, I'd customized it to my taste - lights, reflectors and the massively noisy air horn. I'd tinkered with it nearly every week - fixing the brakes, replacing the bearings, hubs, gears, chain. There was very little of it left from the original bike I'd bought - just the frame and the saddle. New forks, new wheels, new cogs and chainrings. I went through Shimano shifters pretty quickly too. Brake blocks and cables - probably changed every two months. The pannier rack is held on with cable ties. The front changer needs a kicking to shift down. I'd probably done over 25,000 miles on that bike - enough to go round the world.No wonder it had a few problems.

I've now done 1000 miles on my new bike - but I have a feeling its less than that and I need to calibrate the speedo properly. The total amount of maintenance I've done on it is to pump the tyres up once and lubricate the chain a few times. I didn't really bond with it until I did that long ride in December, out into the countryside in the winter sunshine and across the ice and snow. Only after that trip - in fact only after washing the mud off an making it all shiny again - did I really feel it was my bike.

My Cortina cost me 250 and lasted me 12 years. The Dawes cost me three times that and so should last me until I am 75. I may never need to buy another bike. But I probably will!