This bike is a pretty good representation of the bike I had to ride while growing up in the Midwest. This bike, though, is actually cool looking compared to what mine was. This one in the picture is a "Stingray" and is sought after by collectors. Mine was a white and yellow bike with oversized handle bars and an ugly torn yellow banana seat. Remember the banana seats? Not too cool in the 80's. It was a bike that was acquired in one of the many rental houses we occupied. Someone left it behind when they moved out, I think. I put a lot of miles on that stupid thing, because I loved to ride and it was all I had. My brother had a cool BMX-style bike and together we traveled the dirt roads and jumped jumps. We were in DARN GOOD shape. When we moved (yet again) to the awful, horrible neighborhood in Goose Haven, Iowa, we encountered the nasty kids who relentlessly made fun of my banana seat. So I put it away and stopped riding it. If I needed to get somewhere, I walked.
Shay, on the other hand, has never known what it's like to be made fun of because of the bike he owns. That's because his first "big boy" bike was an actual BMX one, and I got him into BMX racing. Once he tired of the racing (well mostly I got tired of it) he continued to ride the $300 bike that weighs about 2 ounces. Dang that's light. So his friends all admired his bike and he enjoyed several years of riding it whenever, wherever.
Well now he's "tired" of the BMX bike. He says to me yesterday, "My BMX bike is getting too small, I want to go see about getting a new one." I warned him that new bikes are very expensive, but he didn't care because he had managed to rat-hole away $200 in his bedroom. I have never been able to rat-hole away any more than $20. Impressive. His $200 was in the form of jars of coins. We took them to the Coinstar machine and fed it for about a half hour. Came away with over $200.
$200!!!
After looking at some VERY nice bikes in the pits of hell, Shay insisted that we leave WalMart and go to a local race bike shop. He began pricing bikes there and I saw his look of determination when the guy was pointing out bikes and saying, "This one's $400, this one's $300, this one's $225...."
He pulled out his wallet and said, "I only have $208. Which bike can I get with that?"
The shop owner pointed out a Redline bike, royal blue in color. Sold.
I just stood there in disbelief.
$208 gone, just like that.
And Shay's riding around on a bike I'd never even LOOK at when I was growing up, because I knew it was something I'd never have.
And I would have never jumped this high, because my banana seat weighed about 70 pounds.
I think I'm gonna go kick his butt right now.
