Second blog entry of Clark’s Bicycle Center website!  I’m new to this, or relatively new at this…I’ve been telling people of my adventures as a child, and can’t seem to shut-up!  I’ve personally ridden bicycles since the age of nine.  My dad was a bike messenger in the Hickory area in the late fifties (his first job in the area), and that started my love for bicycles…I didn’t know this until later on in my life.  I began my cycling journey on a Columbia 3-speed spyder bicycle.  The “spyder” bicycle was a generic name given to any bicycle that resembled a Schwinn Stingray of the Hot Rod/Muscle car era.

That bicycle was yellow with black graphics, wish I still had a pic!, and had a Sturmey-Archer 3-speed hub that was shifted by a cool-looking stick shift mounted on the twin-top tubes.  It had a pleated black semi-banana seat with a chrome sissy-bar.  Man, that was a really cool way to break into cycling.  My dad gave me strict instructions to “be careful”, “don’t let anyone ride your bike”, and “ if you break something on the bike…it stays parked until you can afford to fix it”!  Cycling opened up a whole new world to me…made the neighborhood larger, made the dirt roads fun, and taught me the value of a well-stocked Western Auto store!

I literally rode the wheels off of that first bicycle, and my love affair with the bicycle grew throughout my life.  When I turned thirteen ,  I was able to purchase my first ten-speed bicycle, a road bike, an AMF Roadmaster  touring bike with all of the good parts of that time…ten speeds, skinny(ier) tires, smaller saddle, and a cool tool bag mounted with straps dangling from the rear of the seat.  It also had the rather useless chrome mini-fenders on the front and rear tires.

I started riding longer distances and spending more time on the bicycle.  I also started getting interested in girls about this time…I lived in rural Conover, she lived in Claremont….ten miles between us, and the only way there was by bicycle for me.  I pedaled that bike all over Catawba County.  I met some pretty cool folk in my adventures as well.  One that sticks out in my mind to this day is Roy Hedrick.  Roy was a fit, lean, tanned gentleman in his late seventies at that time (early 1970’s).  Roy would be seen riding his English three-speed (olive drab in color…probably an old Raleigh) all over the county.  He was super-fit for his age, and you could tell riding a bicycle was as natural to him as breathing.  An “old man riding a bicycle” became synonymous to me with passion.  He had to love riding a bicycle, why wouldn’t he just hop in a car like the rest of us did in the 1970’s.  Funny thing is that I remember Roy riding a bicycle before I learned to ride a bicycle!  Funny how the most peculiar things stay in your memory.

The next person in my cycling exposure reference notebook was Fate “Bloomer” Jenkins.  Fate Jenkins had the undesirable legacy of being a person who supposedly stole ladies under garments from clotheslines in the area, hence the name “Bloomer”.  At the time, I didn’t question the why and how of the story…just passed it on as a kid will do in his pre-adolescence.  Fate rode a bicycle as well, but a totally different beast than Roy Hedrick’s.  Fate’s bicycle was a “cruiser” or “fat tire” bike, with a basket, horn, wide bars, full fenders front, and rear,  pedal or coaster brakes.  He also was spotted all over Catawba County in the early seventies.   These two gentlemen opened up a whole world of what the bicycle could do, and what cycling would let me be able to do once I owned one for myself!

I’ve owned many bicycles since my first days riding a bicycle in 1970, and hopefully own more and more as I grow older and more fond of the bicycle than ever.