How I started: in the beginning...

From the beginning, my dad was always putting me on a bike...well at least at first it was a tricycle with streamers in the handles. I rode that thing up and down our street in Lakewood, Oho until I out grew it. I think that was about when I had my 4th or 5th birthday. Maybe sooner, I'm not quite sure as it was long ago before color. 
The real fun began when one of my friends let me try his two wheeled bicycle and he showed me how to ride it. Somehow, the training wheels did not seem to do much other than they were attached to the rear axle and did not quite reach the ground. From that point on, all my dad heard was how I NEEDED a bike (funny how that never seems to change, even now). I begged and pleaded for one (hmm...this seems familiar as well.) Every day. Until, finally, I got a hand-me-down bike from one of my cousins. My dad was shocked when I insisted I did not need the training wheels he wanted to install. As I recall, he basically said, "Okay smart guy, you think you can ride a bike? Go ahead and when you fall over, there better not be any crying or I will give you something to cry about." My dad was sometimes not always so great at encouragement. I do remember his shock at me tearing down the sidewalk on my new to me wheels. It was great. It was even better when my uncle changed the bike from being a girl's bike into a boy's bike by modifying the top tube. Of course, I didn't really know or care  because all I knew is that I had a bike!