Showing posts with label Rocye-Union. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rocye-Union. Show all posts

05 September 2010

Remembrance of Bikes Past

Funny how, after getting a new bike, I'm having a remembrance of bikes past.  Not that the new bike makes me wish for the old ones.  Rather, I think it has to do with the fact that Helene is my first new bike (and the second bike I've bought) since my surgery.  


Perhaps one day I'll sit down and list, and possibly write remembrances of, other bikes I've owned and ridden. 


While searching for something else on the internet, I came across this photo in ratrodbikes .  




My very first bike (that I can recall, anyway) was the diamond-frame version of this bike:  a Royce Union three-speed.  


The bike was my grandfather's last Christmas gift to me.  I was seven years old, if I recall correctly, and it would be another three years before I could ride the bike!  Being the eldest sibling, and growing up in a time when adults (including my parents) rarely, if ever, rode bicycles, I had no worries about my treasure becoming a hand-me-down.  


I rode the Royce-Union until I got my first ten-speed at age thirteen:  a department-store Murray that I managed to wreck within a year.  Then, with money I saved from delivering newspapers, I bought a Schwinn Continental for the princely sum of 105 dollars, including tax.  The shop in which I bought that Schwinn also sold Peugeots, including a PX 10 for 250 dollars.  Then, I thought it utter decadence to spend that much on a bike.  Three years later, I would pay 350 dollars for the very same bike--used!  


I hope that one day soon,  I will list all of the bicycles I've had--or, at least, the ones I recall.  Until then, consider this the "down payment."  In a sense, that's what my Royce Union three-speed was.