Look Who’s Loving the Bike: June

June has always been my favorite month of the year.  Like we do at the top of each month, we’re bringing you a sampling of just some of the people who are Loving the Bike.  Enjoy what our June lovers have to say and we encourage you to share your cycling memories and thoughts with us as well.  Feel free to submit your “Look Who’s Loving the Bike” story to us at any time.

Chad Freeze – San Angelo, TX

“When you are young you love playing, you love everything. As you get older. Some of the things you love might not seem so special anymore. Like you’re Jack-in-a-Box. Maybe you’ll realize it’s just a piece of tin, and the older you get, the fewer things you really love. By the time you get to my age, maybe it’s only one or two things. With me, it’s road cycling, the freedom, speed and the great wide open.”

Aaron Madrid – Lafayette, IN

“I have only recently started my love affair with the bike, but is has been fast and furious from the start. I am nearly thiry years old, married, and a recent father. I have always been a pretty big guy, but upon discovering that I was soon to become a father, I decided it was time to change that. I quit smoking last October and started looking at bikes around the same time. Due to the fact that I am a larger guy, I never was really interested in traditional gym activities. Combine my shyness with the outrageous price of a gym membership in my area and you have two very good reasons for me to find a different way to get in shape. That is when I decided to look into getting a bike.

My love of the bike has only just begun, but I can tell it’s going to be a life long romance.”

Matt

“My first real bike,I received was when I was 6 years old. It was Christmas time in Chicago, We lived in a small ranch style house in a suburb. My dad told me to go into the kitchen to get some cups, and lo and behold, there stood a beautiful stick shift 3 speed bike! it was a  bananna bike, purple, with the shifter located on the cross bar! I was in heaven! Now I could cruise the neighborhood in style! That bike was by far my favorite bike, I could go faster and farther that summer in my 6 year old imagination. that was over 40 years ago, and in my dreams, still ride that bike. I got back into riding about 12 years ago, I have about 9 times the speeds on my current ride, but never could ride quite as fast as I could that summer… so long ago.”

Peta Beaumont – Melbourne, Australia

“My first cycling memory…racing a boy home from school & getting hit by a car trying to race him through an intersection. I am so very surprised that I started seriously cycling and are now addicted to it some 20years later….Weird!”

Andrew Widgery – Guildford, UK

“Bikes clearly to many of us represent our earliest memories of real independence away from parental control – our first significant feeling of freedom and a sense of speed .
My early memory was in borrowing a very beaten up tricycle owned by a cousin of mine when I was around 5 or 6 and who lived on a steep hill. It was red with a lot of the paintwork missing or somewhat tired and rusty in several places with slightly buckled wheels which rotated unencumbered as there were no brake blocks on the front wheel only and consequently no brakes of any description to slow the tricycle.
That particular failing clearly didn’t deter a young boy with a sense of adventure towards anything with wheels.
Simple pleasures enthralling a small young boy with a sense of adventure – what special memories for me.”