Nightglow Window

The G-Boy

Last week, during the sales meeting, I ambled down memory lane. The editors of Ride BMX were giving their presentation to the sales crew when they asked everyone to raise their hand if they once rode BMX.

A dozen hands went up, including mine. The editors then went around the room and asked what kind of bike we rode, and I gushed about my G-Boy.

When I got that bike, I had been riding bmx for a few years. Mission Viejo only had 5,000 people when my parents moved me there in 1969, and I dedicated the whole of 1976 and 1977 to riding my Schwinn Stingray off the countless jumps found in the hills and trails around my house.

It was totally my deal.

Then we moved to Pleasanton in 1978, when I was in fifth grade. I wasn't happy about it. No beach and it seemed like Hickville U.S.A. People said "bad" when they thought something was good. It was terra incognito.

The only great part about the NorCal experience was that my parents bought me a new bmx bike for Christmas, that powder-blue G-boy -- the coolest bike anywhere.

For the next year and a half I rode like crazy, bunny hopping everything, powersliding through corners, and crossing it up on the big jumps. Wow wee, I lived on that bike.

Then some jerk broke into my garage and stole it. Painted it red. I caught him a few months later and called the cops, but his dirtbag parents vouched for him, said that he had owned it for years.

I didn't get another bike. Soon my love for bmx faded -- especially when we moved to San Clemente in seventh grade.

Sometime I wonder what would have happened if that bike was never stolen. I probably would have kept riding for at least of couple of years, maybe longer.

(Probably a good thing I lost it when I did, I guess.)

But I really loved that bike.


Christmas 1978. I was in the fifth grade.