It was tall, clumsy and slow, designed for some entirely different purpose. It would do exceptionally well out on the road, in some long-distance travel with plenty of hills to climb.
But, for a kid wanting to speed along the streets of a small town and maybe perform a few potentially injurious tricks rather than just cruise flat-out on smooth macadam, the 5-speed English bicycle was not the vehicle to do the job.
I’m sure my parents had the best of intentions when they chose among all the different bike models on display at Sears. I’m sure it was an expensive Christmas gift; it sure was big and shiny, when I ripped the gift wrap away from it. And, it was a huge improvement over the tiny, 20-inch bike with training wheels that I had learned on, but had now outgrown.
The English bike was a restart of sorts. Its height required a whole new kind of balance. When the streets of Muir were finally cleared of the snow that had fallen that Christmas Eve, I would be back on training wheels for a few days. And, when the training wheels were removed, there would be a few crashes from what seemed a dangerous height.
Soon the bike was mastered, but that never made it a great fit for a kid. Most of the other kids in town had found spider bikes under their Christmas trees. While Google today will tell you that a spider bike has something to do with everyone’s favorite, web-slinging superhero, that is not what they were back in the day. Spider bikes were short, solid and cool. They were agile, fast and capable of trick moves.
The banana seat on a spider bike was long and curved and thickly padded, a comfortable place to plant your butt for a ride. The seat on an English bike was small and hard, scaled down for weight, like everything else on a English bike. It was not a comfortable ride.
When kids paused a bike cruise to gather in a sort of loose huddle to decide their next move, a kid could remain sitting on a spider bike with his feet flat on the ground and his hands resting coolly on the tall angled handlebars. A kid on an English bike was forced to partially dismount, leaving one leg slung over the crossbar and standing on the other foot.
When the huddle broke up, kids on spider bikes were instantly in motion. A few powerful strokes on their pedals and they were away, at speed. An English bike built up slowly to whatever speed it could offer.
In bike tag, a popular game among the kids of Muir in the 1960s that required quick twists and turns while in motion and the ability to hide on-bike in the thin openings between sheds and in garages along the alleys of the town, the English bike was a distinct disadvantage. It was tall and long, difficult to maneuver into hiding and dangerous in any attempt to tag someone on another bike.
Then there were the bike tricks. Shaky, wobbly, tenuous ramps were easy to construct from cinder blocks and old boards. English bikes were never intended to take to the air. Their thin frames and slender tires could not withstand much of a shock.
Spider bikes could climb the various off-road mounds of earth, stone and cinder that were common around Muir. English bikes, forget it.
And, the topper was that catch-22 of kiddom: You don’t need another bike. You already have a perfectly good bike. It was expensive.
