My first bike, the one I learned to ride on, was a Schwinn Phantom, handed down from an older brother. I rode that bike all over my little hometown and loved the feeling of freedom it gave me. In those days it was the fashion to take playing cards and clip them to the spokes of the front wheel with clothes pins, producing a satisfying clicking sound. If you had a battery powered headlight you were the man, and helmets, knee and elbow pads were unheard of. If some kid had shown up with any of those things he or she would have been laughed off the streets by their peers. It was a very different world then.