Oh no! (1 Viewer)

[Tim5636sc]

Me and my buddy Brad built a home made wheelie bar set up for our Honda 200X ATC's. We were racing our Dragster at a bracket race at carlsbad raceway back in the early 90's, and brought our ATC with us to the track, (Wheelie Bars attached). Instead of a wheel attached to the back, we welded a metal pad.....(you can see where this is gonna go...) well.... We were done racing, and it was night time so we put the wheelie bars on, and brought the atc up to the staging lanes, and raced it....WHEEL'S UP ALL THE WAY DOWN THE QUARTER MILE SHOOTING SPARKS FROM THE PADS LIKE A WHEELSTANDER!!! That was my generations version of that wheelie bike....

 

[G'ginna]

fond memories of running down the bluff behind my uncle's house in the valley, then picking prickly pear spines out of my cousins backside with pliers because he tried to stop near the bottom instead of jumping.

and of my brother and cousin hangin' another cousin upside down from the upper deck to straighten his attitude out.

and of hiding my jeans under the bed because I didn't want to get caught riding a horse that I wasn't supposed to go near.

of being on the winning end of a bike race looking back to see where my friend was while I was peddling as fast as I could to beat him home and running into the back of a parked VW, flipping myself into the handlebars while my bike flipped onto the bumper. before the days of helmets and knee pads

falling off my horse many times (riding hunter/jumpers and cross country or just generally he**-bent for leather to get somewhere/nowhere) and remembering that if it isn't broke and there isn't bone sticking out that I am supposed to get back up and on. Before the days of body armor and padded helmets.

 

[davey]

Great stuff! My kids are amazed that I'm still alive when I tell them stories. I just tell them that the lack of safety stuff back then was God's way of sorting us out!

 

[rollemup]

...........I wonder how many Nolan Ryan and Cal Ripken Jr rookie cards I ruined by putting them in the spokes of my bike so I could make a motor sound

 

[Nitrohaulic]

...........I wonder how many Nolan Ryan and Cal Ripken Jr rookie cards I ruined by putting them in the spokes of my bike so I could make a motor sound

What a memory! I think that annoyed a lot of adults! I remember a friend of mine getting his son a Big Wheel about 20 years ago. Included was some kind of similar plastic noise maker. He took one look at that and said exactly what the title of this thread is. That DIDN'T get attached!

 

[Student of the sport]

And as Karl said no shoes either! I spent a couple of summers delivering "The Daily Pilot" on my base model Sting Ray it was the perfect bike to hang those bags from. Just a shirt and shorts between me certain road rash! I still have the scars.
Dan

Oh my gosh!!!
The old Daily Pilot, had a route in H.B. in the late 60's, double bags, except on Tuesday!

Had a bike that was made from too many parts from "around the globe" to even give it a name, built it myself and yup, no helmet, no pads, sometimes no shoes, (shoes were mandatory on Florida st. too many dogs!!)

Thanks for the reminder!!

Darrell
Reid Rocker Arms

 

[Nitrohaulic]

I wasn't nearly the only one here who used to sit around rubber banding hundreds of newspapers? Did we ALL do that?

I remember when I first got my route. It had been run by the company until I took it over. For some reason, any past debts, I got 100% of, and the company guys in the vans were hourly and didn't care! I HOUNDED those people! I'd stand quietly on your front porch for ten minutes after you acted like you weren't home! Watch people hiding behind curtains! Trying to get their kids to be quiet! Come back around at the end of my route!

I wasn't the only one who had to go around yelling "Collection!"

 

[willy]

My first cool bike was a '67 Stingray Fastback..Gold 5 speed. $29 new..saved from my paper route. My pride & joy for years.

 

[Bad Rat]

I wasn't nearly the only one here who used to sit around rubber banding hundreds of newspapers? Did we ALL do that?

I got my first Paper Route in 1973. By 1979 my brother and I had the second biggest carrier Route for the St. Paul Pioneer Press in the Twin Cities. We had over 300 Sunday Papers to deliver. Dad always said we could charge whatever we wanted so long as the service was above and beyond. We were making over $300 a month each. The last paper delivered was before the first person was up in the morning. In the afternoon all papers were in the Doors by 5:00 pm. Rain or Shine, even in the Blizzards back then.

I learned a lot from my Dad on running a business through the Paper Route. I had a checking account in 4th Grade and was buying CD's (Certificate of Deposit) by the time I was in 6th Grade. 11 7/8% Earned Interest? To think...

It is too bad Kid's today cannot have that experience. Every morning I have to walk to the end of the dirveway to get the Paper. The guy throws it from the car as he goes by. I need to figure out how he always gets the open end of the Bag facing up hil when it is raining. A wet Paper? Not when I was delivering!

All my Paper Route money, every last dime went to paying for College. Dad would never let my brother and I spend a nickle of it until College. I hated it then but when I graduated with no debt I thanked the ol'Man for a lesson learned. I still have that same Checking Account. That Checking Account got us our Loan to start our business.

In 1973 and new Bank opened at the same time as we started our Route. Dad said "they are a new business and so is your Route. Open an Account there and you can grow together". In the fall 1996 I sat down with VP of the Bank to go over our Business Plan with my Brother Tim. After an hour the CEO of the Bank was called in. He saw my Account number and said it was older than his and the oldest at the Bank. After a little chit-chat back and forth he told the Bank VP to give us whatever we wanted. The rest is history.

The lessons in life are never realized until later in life. My Paper Route was the best experience I had ever gotten...well until I spent a week with Roy Hill in Huston in '05...

 

[Nitrohaulic]

That's a great, great story Pat. Conflicts so drastically with the callers I listen to on the Dave Ramsey Show. I bet your bank account number had/has few digits than anyone's there!

We have six digit D.O.T. numbers on the trucks, used to be called I.C.C. numbers. A company I was contracted to just a few years ago had the same three digit one that they were issued in the 1930s, #541. I used to catch so much #### when I had to use it, such as fueling in Indiana where you have to give it to them before you start. I'd tell them and, they'd say "No. It's a number on the side of your truck." They'd often come out and look because they didn't believe me!

 

[rollemup]

.........do you guys remember the slicks they made back then for bikes, I believe the slicks had a grove on the outer part of the slick, we would deflate the slicks as much as we could to try and get some wrinkles on the slicks and of course we would try and make a parachute out of a sheet, after we would ride a wheelie as far as we could we would 'pop the chute'.

 

[Nunz]

Pat that is a very cool story!

 

[sdwarf36]

.........do you guys remember the slicks they made back then for bikes, I believe the slicks had a grove on the outer part of the slick, we would deflate the slicks as much as we could to try and get some wrinkles on the slicks and of course we would try and make a parachute out of a sheet, after we would ride a wheelie as far as we could we would 'pop the chute'.

I had the colored tires-would leave blue skid marks on concrete. It took a bunch of r+d-but we got 'chutes to work-using those new fangled plastic garabage bags. Now granted you had to 'throw out the laundry" at 500 ft of our 1000 ft strip.....
We also bracket raced-one of the "older kids" (maybe 15) had a 5 speed-we would make him start and stay in 4th gear-we would get him till just before the lites (ok not really lites-probably just a stick or chalk mark) and he would come around us. How much he beat us would determine how much of a jump we would get on the start next round.

 

[Randy]

My neighbor had one of those wheelie bars on a Schwinn StingRay trike he built. But for us we'd do wheelies the old fashioned way. Then I got a unicycle and almost got killed on it, too.

I remember on the front page of the La Mirada Lamplighter newspaper about 40 years ago they did a feature on some kid who won the big bicycle drag races at the La Mirada Mall on a StingRay. He whooped up on everyone. And at the end of each run he'd throw one of his mom's bedsheets tied to strings over his shoulder for his parachute.

Who was this "kid?"

It was Mike Dunn.

RG

 

[Toejam]

I remember on the front page of the La Mirada Lamplighter newspaper about 40 years ago they did a feature on some kid who won the big bicycle drag races at the La Mirada Mall on a StingRay. He whooped up on everyone. And at the end of each run he'd throw one of his mom's bedsheets tied to strings over his shoulder for his parachute.

Who was this "kid?"

It was Mike Dunn.

RG

Was that the one in FC Summer that had a parachute on it?

 

[Nitrohaulic]

Was that the one in FC Summer that had a parachute on it?

That's one of my favorite segments of the movie. I wish that'd caught on, drag racing bicycles in shopping center parking lots with staging switches and timers. Pretty cool that he talks about crashing, getting laughed at, then coming back to kick some butt!

I also like Jim Dunn's answer to his daughter at the dinner table to the question "Why did you redlight?" (after Mike presented him with a redlight bulb mounted to an award plaque!)

"That light was late. I was perfect!"

 

[BaldyLochs]

My brother and I both had the Sears equivilent of the Crate, but my brother put a big sissy bar on his, and radical extended chopper forks, and crazy handlebars where the grips were about 3 feet over his head!!! Unforunately, mine was demolished by my Mom backing out her Pinto out of the garage after I left it laying on the driveway. My bike was totalled, the car didn't get a scratch, the driveway had gouges and paint scrapes... I spent the afternoon crying and I still got my ass kicked once Dad got home.

In the 8o's I got on the BMX craze; I had a nice Mongoose, with 5-spoke fiberglass rims, special pedals, handlebars, you name it. Well one winter, my dumass brother and his friend decided to tie a ski rope to the back of our Raider Twin Track snowmobile and tow the bike on the frozen lake. With my brother driving, the other idiot fell off the bike - and my brother never saw it, so he wound up dragging the bike up onto shore, through some trees and over some rocks. I don't know who manufactured that ski rope, but to this day we don't know how or why it never broke. Once again, another bike was trashed, I got yelled at again for leaving my bike outside in the snow... and my brother was laughing at me behind Dad's back all the while.