One of my fondest Christmases was when we lived on Ludlow Drive across Jen Andrews. I wanted a new bike, and everybody around me was getting Haro’s and GT’s, so I plead my case for one. But anybody knowing me or my parents growing up will tell you my folks could cut corners unlike any other family I know.
This one time, Jason got a gold name-ring, and I wanted one as well… this is the 80’s, folks, when name-rings were invented. So Jason ends up getting this dope name-ring, and my Mom hands me this crappy cut copper thing and is like, “This a gold name-ring.” I am suspicious, but I rock it anyway. About four hours into the school day, I notice my skin is turning green under the ring. I go and show it to Jason, and he is like, “Your parents gave you a copper ring,” and just bust out laughing. However, I digress—I was telling you about one of my favorite Christmases.
So anyway, I want a new bike. It’s all I am thinking about, and I was all about this GT… but I knew I wasn’t getting it. This was about the same time that Sherard (Haniff) Savage got his Skyway, which was the coolest bike ever, and was surfing down Baxter Ave. standing on the seat and handlebars. So knowing I wasn’t going to get any of these “designer” bikes after the ring incident, I settled on the Huffy Sigma. To me, this would be the coolest bike ever. It was gray and had white wheels tires and these cool disc-wheels that, in my mind, would make my freestyle tricks that much cooler, especially when I installed the pegs and rotor (that I would never be able to afford since we didn’t have an allowance, and Russ Finlayson had the paper route locked up). So I drop this hint, and lo and behold, behind the tree was the most awesome Huffy Sigma a young kid could lay eyes on. But this was not the best present…
The best present was sitting right next to the kick-ass Huffy Sigma: a little 16” Red Kent bike (sort of like the bike to the right, just red with black tires). Little did I know then that these two bikes would be the ultimate freedom machines to getting anywhere our hearts desired. The bikes could and would take us anywhere. It could have been a quick hop, skip, and jump to Alfred Baldelli’s house to watch Stand by Me just one more time, or it was every morning spring, winter, fall when we rode our bikes to Orchard Hills grade school so I could get yelled at by Mrs. Paruka for doing something wrong.
Other times, they were our Return of the Jedi speeder bikes that we would whip through the woods with, taking the shortcut to Ian Cassel’s house. It didn’t matter where we were going—it was me pedaling away on my Huffy Sigma and David right next to me, his little legs pedaling at breakneck speed to keep up since his wheels and bike was half the size of mine. But he’d never stop pedaling, and we would always just be cruising around the town.
It never really mattered the distance we were going. Next door? Let’s hop on the bikes. Riding the bikes down to Morningside or Milford Library—it is surprising how far we were allowed to go on the bikes when you think about it now. Or maybe they just had no idea or weren’t present enough to care. Either way, I would say we probably clocked several hundred miles on those suckers growing up. Not one bad moment associated, not one flat tire the entire time. I eventually pulled the chain guards off both our bikes because they weren’t cool to have on the bike, and Mom got so pissed. But I knew she would, so I bent them in such a way they could not be put back on.
As adults, it was the same thing. Taking a ride with my lil’ bro instilled the exact same curiosity throughout our lives. I had bought my Specialized, and Daniela (David’s girlfriend at the time) happened to get him the exact same bike right around the same time. We would chuck the bikes into my 4Runner and go to the Trumbull tracks. When we got to NYC, it got only better—he and I would do high-speed runs through traffic, weaving in and out of Second Ave. traffic, pushing the other one to move it a little faster or pull of some ridiculously hairy squeak at stopped traffic.
We would check out every street, nook, and cranny we could find. We decided one day to do the entire loop of Manhattan. When I say loop, I mean literally circumnavigate the entire island. And we did, and it was scary. We ended up in some neighborhoods that clearly were not used to seeing clipped-in Mtn. Street Bikers 1&2 who clearly were lost with this tiny girl in tow (Jenny happened to be on the ride that day).
And it all started with that little Kent bike—that, my friends, is one of fondest Christmases I have ever had in my entire life, because it created so many adventures with my little brother that we may have never had if it weren’t for my desire to get the Huffy Sigma and knowing that if I was going to get a bike, David was going to need get a bike, as well, lest he throw one of his famous temper tantrums.
