Boy's Bikes...

While digging through my shed, which I turned into a blackhole to toss anything into, I came across a part to an old bike I had as a kid. I was buried beneath so much crap I had forgotten about it. Also it came with one of those vinyl handlebar grips. Talk about time warping!

It looked like this except for the color combination. 

It was my favorite bike. Murray had built them so simply and tough that it was pretty much indestructible. I know, we boys treated them like dirt and tried to break them.

Some of you know Evel Knievel, that motorcycle daredevil who proudly claimed to have nearly busted every bone in his body by jumping things (buses,cars,etc.) with his bike. We kids, watching this on TV...just had to try this too! It was easy!

 We boys looked up to this fool!

We built a decent ramp on the street and lined up some smaller things to jump over. The boys, trying to prove “they weren't scared,” would hop over these smaller obstacles. But after a bit, you get bored with the small stuff. We raised the angle on the ramp, and put in place, on their side, garbage cans, the old aluminum ones. First it was just one, then two...then we tried three.

Well...that last one didn't go too well.

The problem with my street was that it was level. You really had to start a bit  back, peddle your ass off to gain the speed and hit the ramp at the right moment. So I, being all brave and full of it, promised to jump over a third can. I started back even further. I peddled and peddled, trying my best to get up to, what? 15Mph? Those gears on those bikes weren't built for speed! I hit the ramp, yanked back on the handle bars and shot up out of the seat to give some “oommf” to the bike. Everything looked great till I heard a dull thump, that was the sound of the third can crushing and then I remember seeing colors, lots of colors spinning all around.

What I saw were the colors of the cars, houses and other kids as I flew over the handlebars and came crashing down onto the asphalt.

“ARRRRRRRGHHHHH!”

Two bloody elbows, one knee and a nice gash on my forehead. I'm wounded! You know what ran through my mind a few minutes after this as I tried to calm down and staunch the blood? “Don't Go Home and Let Mom Find Out.”

If I had, I'd get the usual SALT rubbed into every cut I had. “WHAT did you do? The other boys were doing it so YOU had to do it? I'm NOT taking you to the hospital! (Not made up, I got that once!) What are you, STUPID?”

Gotta love Moms...they can really make you feel like a total heel at times.

I stayed away from home till the cuts dried over. The abrasion on my forehead would take some explaining though. So like a boy, I lied through my teeth about how I got that. I fell on second base at Dagget's ball field. That sounded a lot less moronic than jumping garbage cans.

**

One of the fun places to ride a bike was at a local mall. I didn't know it then, but we were mall rat kids at times back then. It was a strip mall with a Stop & Shop anchor, CVS, McManus restaurant and the obligatory laundromat near our neighborhood. We kids would zip in and out of the parked cars, ride up and down the concourse and generally piss off store managers and shoppers. Stop & Shop provided us with grocery carts. We rode by them, grab ahold and pull them as fast as you could, in order to aim them at the Fotomat kiosk and let go at the right moment. CRASH! Those teen girls who worked in them didn't like us all that much. We never, ever had the balls to aim them at some parked car though. Though a few did accidentally.  Damn wheels on them always pulled to the left.

We tried wind sailing once. I have to explain! Since we romped all over the mall complex, we'd find litter, milk crates and what not on the edges of the parking lot. It was just the detritus of Middle America shopping till it dropped.

One day was really windy and one of us found cardboard boxes up against the hurricane fence on the east side. We broke the larger ones down and used them as sails. We go to west side carrying the cardboard, peddle like hell with the wind and then let go of the handlebars. Riding with no hands was easy then. (I tried that in 2012 when I was on a health kick. I was 48 and nearly went over the handlebars again when I wondered if I could still do it). Anyways, we'd then lift up the cardboard above our heads and let the wind take you. This is how we city kids wind surfed.

Back behind the mall, there were the loading docks along Walcott St. For some reason, Jim and I, bored again, lifted out bikes onto the dock, which was about a good 100 feet long and we biked as fast as we could then jumped off the bikes at the last second before we reached the “cliff” of the dock. Yeah, we'd watch our bikes go sailing right off and bounce and crash into the ground. We probably did it 16 times in a row. Dumb huh? This is what you do at 11 when you're bored and you created your own entertainment.

**

I was hit by a car once...sort of...on an angle. Again, I was 11. Gee...that age had a lot of “stuff” going on with me! What's great about a bike and being a boy is that you can imagine you're flying an F-15. I was tearing up and down the sidewalks on my street, weaving on and off the driveways, into the street, back onto the sidewalk and the effect felt like flying.

A problem existed though, people parked their cars on my street and that blocked everyone's view at times. I was flying off of Mr Knight's driveway when, HOLY SHIT...a car was coming at me! You know how LOUD rubber car tires sound when skidding? I had turned my bike a bit and avoided the bumper but body-skidded all along the driver's side, whacking my left hand onto his metal side mirror,  then I and the bike hit the street with a whomp. 

Every.Single.Mom came out of their house hearing that skid. They see me lying there in the street and I look dead. My Mom and Dad came running over and as usual, Mom was in a panic and Dad took one look at me and figured out I was none worse for the wear.

Ahh..that poor guy..the driver. He was shitting his pants, apologizing profusely to everyone around him who looked like they wanted to lynch him from a tree. My Dad wasn't too dicked about it though, he knew I was guilty, partly anyway. After I was interrogated by him, he tried to calm the poor driver down, saying that I was a fool for not looking into the street with the view being blocked by a parked car. This was when you didn't sue the shit out of someone at the first chance you got.

My Dad let the guy go.

I stood there, bleeding from all four knuckles on my left hand feeling like a boob now that every neighbor was reconsidering the level of my common sense. Steel side mirrors..owww! It took the skin off every knuckle. I was a little more respectful of moving cars after that one.

**

I've owned several bikes since then. 10 speeds, mountain bikes but nothing compares to that Murray though. I miss it.

This is a girl's version of a Murray. You can tell by that lack of a crossmember near the top of the bike. Now why the hell did they design boy's bikes with such a high cross members? You girls know what it's like to fall onto that bar with your nuts? I'll give you an example. When you wake up in the middle of the night, walking to the bathroom and smashing the shit out of your shin bone on a chair or something, it sort of feels like that, except deeper...and it lasts longer.