I hate to throw my old man under the bus buuuuuuut.
The year was about 1980 or so. I was getting bigger and my old man thought it would be a good time to upgrade me from the big wheel to a bike. Seemed like a good idea to me to. Anyway for my birthday my old man bought me a brand new bike. These were basically Schwinn's that were out of fashion so in order to move the remaining inventory they sold these things through Schucks auto parts stores.
Not mine...just like it though.
I don't mean to sound like an ungrateful piece of shit, but honestly this was a style of bike that was popular about 10 years before he brought it home. All the cool kids had BMX bikes with the rad fiberglass mag wheels, chrome moly frames, and real brakes. I think the Orange Peeler even came with tassles on the handlebars. Yeah gaaaaaaaaay! At any rate I rode this thing around for a few years even with banana seat and ape hangers. At some point the gooseneck lost all ability to hold onto the handlebars and it got to the point where I couldn't ride it any more. So I saved my hard earned money from my paper route and bought my OWN damn bike
Now as bad as My bike was. Lemme tell you about my little sisters bike.
World class piece of shit. Seriously her bike redefined the meaning of piece of shit.
Her's was called "Denim Days" I'm pretty sure my old man bought it at Schucks too. Don't know when it was decided that the hot place to buy your kid a bike was Schucks but I digress. Back to my sisters bike. The whole thing was painted to look like a pair of jeans. That wasn't the worst part. It had a hard plastic seat, AND solid plastic tires. Think that through for a second.
Didja figure it out?
No suspension, none. Damn thing rode like an old buckboard wagon. My favorite memory of my sisters bike was the day the front wheel fell off. My cousin Randy was living with us at the time and he was hanging out watching us ride our bikes. My sister was tooling along and all the sudden the front wheel. Just. Fell. Off. There was a brief shower of sparks as the forks came down on the ground. It looked like she was going to be able to hold the thing upright until it came to a stop, but at the last minute she had a mouth full of pavement. It was really hard to feel any sympathy for my sister because the whole shower of sparks thing was COOL. I secretly wished she could some how do it again. I mean sparks. It was awesome.
Ahhhh memories. Thanks dad. Sorry about the bus and all. Shoulda bought us cooler bikes.
He's right there in the middle of that huge cloud of blue smoke. Now the best part is that my son and I were outside watching the free show and laughing. Cap'n Stupid turned the mower off and when the smoke cleared he was looking right at the two of us laughing our asses off. You could just see the total embarrassment on his face. At that point my 7 year old son said "It just never gets old does it dad?"
So what the fuck am I supposed to do about this? Slow down? look more closely? Honestly I don't WANT to hit deer, it's just that they're stupid and haven't figured out that staying out of the road is a good idea. Hell I've seen dogs wait for traffic to clear, they figured it out for crying out loud.
