My Bicycles

Back to the "52 week blogging challenge" and this week's prompt is "What I Miss Most About My Childhood."

That's got to be bicycle riding.

I had three bikes as a kid. A little red one I learned to ride on, a blue Schwinn Stingray (I think it looked a lot like this), and a yellow Schwinn 10-speed. I rode those bike everywhere in the small towns where I grew up. When I got the 10-speed I would try to keep up with cars. I sometimes could depending on traffic.

There was such a feeling of freedom on a bicycle. And it felt as if your muscles were being multiplied ten times by the bike to make you go faster. Especially on that 10 speed. I'd use fifth gear for starting and 10th gear for cruising. Some people never seemed to get it out of first gear (you could tell by how fast they were pedaling). I only used gears lower than fifth for steep hills.

Then I got my drivers license and bicycles were replaced by cars. But sometimes I miss the wind-in-the-hair fun of the bicycle. If I had any hair left.

What do you miss most about your childhood?