February's Lovely Write-Away Winner

Thank you to Riley at All Rileyed Up for judging the 32 entries on "First Bike" and my biggest thank you goes to our sponsor, Just Bicycles.com, for the best Write-Away Contest prize yet, a beach cruiser bicycle suitable for enjoying the wind in your hair.

If you haven't yet visited their site to see the gorgeous bikes they have then you're really behind the times. Go check them out! Quick! This is the first time I've wanted to wrestle the prize away from the winner and keep it for myself.

And last of all, thank you to our entrants without whom there would be no Write-Away Contest--you're all wonderful.

. . . And the winner is:

Mozi Esmé with Riding Tandem

A blog by a mother of a beautiful little girl who lives and blogs in Mozambique. If her African adventures are new to you then you're in for a real treat.

Honorable Mentions:

Such the Spot with In Due Time
She Lives with The Easter Bunny, My Big Bike and Dad
Just a Few Thoughts with It Went REALLY Fast

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Here are a list of the entries in the order they were received:

1. What Mimi Read with My First Bike
Before I got my first big-girl bike I had a Superman Powerwheel. Remember those things? I used to ride it around my Spider-Man kiddie pool (see a theme here?) on my dirt driveway. We lived in the woods of rural Maine, so I didn’t have anyone else to play with except my uncle Jeffy, who was 8 years older than me and very into super heros – hence my genre of choice when it came to the plastic things I surrounded myself with.

2. I Blog About Nothing with Lessons I Learned from My First Bike
Did you have a bike as a kid? I did. It was a beautiful thing. It was blue and white with streamers coming from the handlebars. That bike was probably my favorite childhood possession. I received it as a gift for my 6th Birthday and I still remember learning how to ride with my older sister running alongside of me with her hand on the back of the seat to help me balance.

3. Such the Spot with In Due Time
When Cass was first born I used to believe that she would break all the records for people with Down syndrome. I believed if I worked with her hard enough, if I just pushed her the right amount, if only I had enough faith in her, I could will her “normal.”

4. The Merry Meyers with My First Bike
So here is my memory of my first bike. It was my sister Mandy's birthday and my dad pulled up in his truck. He pulls out of the back of it a cool dirt bike, she was a bit of a tom boy back then. (I know for those of you that know her now that is hard to believe huh?) Mandy's eyes about came unglued she was so happy.

5. Past Continuous with Freedom Dashed
"Cycling and swimming are things that, once learnt, can never be forgotten." - or so they said. My parents were keen bikers, and they gifted me my first BI-cycle (as opposed to TRI-cycle - that safe, sturdy, secure, sweet little mode of childhood transport), when I was about eight or nine.

6. She Lives with The Easter Bunny, My Big Bike and Dad
I don't remember when I got it, but I had a little, red, hand-me-down bicycle with training wheels when I was small. I do remember the cloudy day that smelled like rain when the training wheels were taken off, my dad holding onto the back of the seat and running alongside me the way dads do.

7. Summer's Nook with A Rocky Reminder
I don’t remember how it happened, because in my mind it only mattered that it happened. I remember the wind tousling my hair as I gained speed, the hard black handles leaving indents in my fingers as I gripped them tightly and a sense of new found freedom. I could ride just like the big girls in our neighborhood.

8. Tiaras and Tantrums with My First . . .
. . . bicycle, that is. Well, I guess I got some attention with that title, right? This is actually a pretty funny story I am going to tell about my first bicycle. When I was a couple of months shy of age five I wanted a bicycle desperately. My neighbor had one, a beautiful pink bike with a white plastic basket in the front and a wonderful flowery banana seat. I LOVED her bike.

9. Semantically Driven with Biking
I was riding towards the fence and powerless to change the direction I was going in. There was only one way this was going to end and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

10. Tales of the Kids with My First Bike

My first bike...was a girlie bike as opposed to the bikes my older brothers, Tom and Mike, rode. Mike had a bike with a huge maroon banana seat and wire baskets on the back for carrying newspapers. He made me ride in the baskets on the way to the swimming pool. I hated it.

11. Blog o'Beth with Cycling toward Adulthood
I was almost too old to be riding a bike but at fourteen I had no other means of transportation. I had a green ten-speed that had been a hand me down from my older sister. It wasn't fancy but I didn't mind.

12. Shabby in the City with First Bike
The bike we are talking about here is my SECOND first bike I think. Surely all four of us kids rode that enormous handed-down bicycle that I learned to ride when I was five. My brother, who is eight years older than I, started me on that large one by giving me a push down a steep hill. We were both some long-legged kids, thankfully.

13. A Writer's Dream with Unfulfilled Dreams
It was a Christmas present my parents--painstakingly I'm sure--picked out at the local department store. I can still vividly recall it propped against the wall behind the tree. My six year old legs itched to try it out, even if there was two feet of snow on the ground.

14. Mozi Esmé with Riding Tandem
My Dearest Not-So-Little Esmé: You’re on your first bike. No training wheels, of course. You’ve got your Papa to keep you upright. At 22 months, you barely reach the downstroke pedal with your tippy toes. And you hit the back pedal brake as much as you pedal forward.

15. Sandier Pastures with First Bike Memories Never Die
I loved my first bike so much. I slept with it every night. One summer, a long time ago, my father brought home a sturdy BMX kid bike with training wheels and my life was never the same again. I was gleaming, I was in love. I had reason to get up every morning, every day.

16. This Eclectic Life with I Can Do This
I sat on the front porch step with my chin in my hands and an enormous scowl on my face, as I watched the other children gleefully riding their bicycles down the street. My heart was positively green with envy.

17. Baby Makin(g) Machine with The First . . .
Six-year-olds don't talk about what they do for a living, how long they've been married or when their going to have kids. They just wanted to know if that beautiful pink beauty with purple trim and sparkly streamers was mine... And oh yea, it was.

18. Gaining Equilibrium with Letting Go

"Don't let go! Whatever you do! Don't let go!" My voice hinges on hysteria as the white streamered handle bars swerve wildly. "Are you holding on?" The gap between our lawn and the sidewalk seems monstrous and a tractor beam emanates from it, pulling my skinny wheel towards it and ultimate doom.

19. Cruisin' with Cricket with My First Bike
Sixteen years ago, due to retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease, I had just given up my driver's license. With two young children, ages 7 and 5, I felt grounded as a mom. I yearned to take my children to swimming lessons, to the park on a picnic, to the grocery store without asking for a ride.

20. Glacier Racing with Model #1
There are children, raised well by the village, that are expected to return the favor as adults, elevating by action or reputation the quality of life in the place that formed them. "Peanuts" Mendosa was not one of those children. That he lived to adulthood at all was viewed as a miracle by those that knew him, and in Model, Colorado, pop. 32 in 1931, everybody knew him.

21. The Art of Panic with My First Bicycle

It was Christmas time in the rural Nebraska town where we lived. Snow covered the ground and it was our first Christmas there. We had moved, following Dad's job on the railroad, just in time for me to start kindergarten in a new and strange place in the middle of the term. Amidst the loneliness of making new friends and the terror and joy of the new experiences I was undergoing, one thing was clear and bright: I wanted a bicycle for Christmas.

22. Thinking About . . . with My First Bike
I remember the exact day that I received my first bicycle, a hand me down from my older brother. The training wheels were long since lost, which didn’t stop me from wanting to learn to ride it. I would practice every day in the courtyard of the church next door to our house.

23. My Neurotic Spot with The Bike of Freedom
It was a force to be reckoned with. All chrome and wheels mixed in with a delicious blend of cherry red and creamy custard yellow. A banana seat and high streamer capped handle bars designed to work with me and the pedals to take me to the moon and back. Whenever I would step on and begin the pedal sequence, to my 7 year old imagination the wind in my hair was the feel of sweet freedom pushing me down the block.

24. Stories for Us with Childhood Biking
Watching Little Miss Sunshine wobble down the street on her new pink bike with white training wheels has brought back so many memories of riding bikes as a kid. I will never forget my very first bike. My Grandparents bought me a shiny red Schwinn bike. That bike survived not only me learning to ride, but also my brother and two younger cousins.

25. Hold That Thought! with My First Bike
I received an awful phone call in 1977 that told me my Daddy had been killed instantly in a terrible automobile accident which left my mother severely injured. As I stood, paralyzed in unbelief, strangely enough one of my initial thoughts was of my first bicycle. I was taken back to that day when that beautiful silvery blue bike became mine on my seventh birthday.

26. My Round File with My First Bike
There's a Facebook post making the rounds about being a girl in the 70's. It's Donny and Marie and Shrinky-Dinks and Shaun Cassidy. It's bell bottoms and Dorothy Hamill haircuts and Little House on the Prairie. And, it's bikes - bikes with a banana seat and a plastic basket with flowers on it hanging off the handlebars.

27. Joy in the Little Things with A Thousand Miles
Who knew that a beautiful turquoise blue bike, complete with banana seat, white plastic weave basket with magenta, yellow and turquoise flowers, streamers and training wheels could provide such a profound life lesson?

28. The Hermit of the Southern March with Pink Is for Girls
My first bike was pink. Neon pink. I'm not crazy about pink, but you take what you can get when you're one of five, and your dad is an unemployed teacher in Montana. And when the other four kids in the family are boys, you come to realize that a pink bike is actually an advantage.

29. Our Little Tongginator with At Some Point You Gotta Let Go
In an instant, with a single glance over my shoulder, my daddy's hero status lay in tatters on the cold, hard pavement, just next to my skinned knee. I still remember the sense of exhilaration I felt just seconds before my fall: the wind blew through my hair; my hands clutched the shiny handlebars oh, so tightly; my legs pumped madly at the pedals.

30. Circles and Dots and Other Distractions with Pink Lightning
Pink Lightning. That was the name of the bike. And it was just as its name implied--with pink handles, a pink and white seat, and pink decor to be found along the frame (including a pink bolt of lightning), that bike was amazing. And to me, it seemed like no bike could go faster, look cooler, or fit me better.

31. Just a Few Thoughts with It Went REALLY Fast
IT was a maroon color with a white background and a custom paint job. A small bell hung near the front tire, just for luck. The Indian painted on the front inspired countless questions, and the Eagle on the back was lifelike. It was truly a case of love at almost first sight.

32. G's Cottage with The Big Bike
My first two-wheeler bike was a J. C. Higgins purchased through Sears and Roebuck. It had a stunning deep blue metallic frame with a two-tone seat of blue and white. Like typical bicycles of that era it came with standard coaster brakes, tire fenders, a battery-operated headlight, and the luggage rack over the rear tire.

Sponsored by Just Bicycles for beach cruiser bikes and by Tiny Totties for crib bedding sets.

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