Bicycle chicken with a banana seat

As a young pre-teen, I spent hours riding my bike around the neighborhood and in the “trails” near our house. At that point in the late 70s bikes with banana seats were the trend and my parents had just gotten me and my siblings our own ride…that included that trendy banana seat but with handle bars I wasn’t so fond of. So with a couple of nearby friends we started modifying our bikes in to what we wanted, which at that time, still included the long banana seat, but I switched out my handlebars for a “BMX” handlebar. As time went on and parts would break on my bike from jumping ramps, riding in the trails, riding “wheelies” and more, I started replacing parts from any spare bike parts I could find.

One of the things I remembered doing while riding my bike was something called “chicken”. Basically, we would ride our bikes towards each other until either one of us turned or we crashed in to each other. There were many occasions we would crash in to each other, laugh, get up, and do it again.

Now that we’ve owned chickens, I have a better understanding of why they called what we were doing, “chicken”. Our free-range chickens took the liberty to go wherever they wanted in the daytime, which often meant they would be in the driveway. One day, while trying to drive down the driveway, there were chickens in the way. Instead of moving right away, they would keep pecking to find food and look like they were totally ignoring us. As we approached the chicken, at the last moment it would run out of the way.