In 1971, I was eight years old and, like most eight year olds in 1971, I dreamed of owning a Schwinn Sting Ray. Back then, Schwinn was the Cadillac of bikes and I saved for years to have one. When I had saved seventy-seven and change my grandfather took me to Green Spot Bikes to get a Sting Ray. Seventy-seven dollars took a long time to save and, for me, I remember it being a scary amount of money to spend on a bike.

Like some sort of evil fairy tale shopkeeper, the man who owned Green Spot Bike Shop broke the news to me: I still didn’t have enough money for the Sting Ray. I’m not sure what the price was but 88 dollars is still stuck in my head. It might as well have been a million dollars. I had seen movies and read stories where kindly people would help a kid get his dream wagon or tuba or bike. So I was a little surprised that Mr. Green Spot didn’t really seem to notice that a kid’s dream was dying right there in his shop. I think it was my first real lesson in the rules of commerce, and I didn’t like it. 

Mr. Green Spot then brought my attention to a bike I could afford. It was the Raleigh Chopper. It was 74 dollars and it was red and it had the longest banana seat I had ever seen. My opinion of Mr. Green Spot was improving with every step closer the bike got to the trunk of my grandpa’s 1963 Impala. It fit perfectly and within minutes it was unloaded in our driveway and away I went. A bike in those days was something very different for a kid than what it is today. It was freedom, pure and simple. I loved that bike more than any other object before or since. I hadn’t learned not to love inanimate objects yet. We would pedal off in the morning and be gone all day. I would literally put the kickstand down, put my feet on the handlebars and take naps on my bike’s tremendous, luxurious stretch of vinyl seating. We were inseparable for years.

I wish that Raleigh had made a bigger version of the Chopper in the same way that Schwinn built a bigger version of the Sting Ray called the Manta Ray. But they didn’t so I guess this sick freaking Manta Ray I found on eBay will have to do. I firmly believe it is the best dollar for value purchase ever made in the history of man. It may not turn heads in Miami or New York but in Boulder this machine causes more rubber necking than a Ferrari Testarossa.