Free Styling and Freestyle Bikes

By : Maxeka Lumuda

freestyle mongoose

There are about a billion bicycles in the world, twice as many as motorcars, freestyle bikes also one of them. Almost 40% are in China. Every year about 50 million bicycles are produced. A Frenchman named De Sivrac built the first bicycle type vehicle in 1690, even though Leonardo da Vinci drew some rough sketches of a contraption that looks like a bicycle long before him. The real bicycle was invented in 1840 by a Scottish blacksmith named Kirkpatrick Macmillan.

Nowadays, there are many bicycles around the world with different type, such as: utility bicycles, mountain bicycles, racing bicycles, touring bicycles, hybrid bicycles, cruiser bicycles, BMX bicycles, freestyle bikes and many more. Their names are made according to the needs or their use. Among those types, there is a kind of bicycle that is unusual, that is the freestyle bikes. This freestyle bikes is challenging and commonly used by youngsters.

Freestyle bikes are used by freestyler to do free styling. Free styling can be track to the San Diego teenagers in the late 1976; it was introduced by a bunch of teenagers using their BMX bicycles (BMX is known for their freestyle bicycles) to do insane tricks. It was done on a concrete skate park, but developed onto the ‘flatlands’ or the streets. BMX is a brand which is widely used as freestyle bikes.

Tricks done by the freestyler can blow your mind away, because the tricks are very dangerous, yet you wonder how it’s done. The tricks can be divided into several types, which are:

Grinds

Grinds are where a rider’s bike slides along a surface (rail, ledge or ramp) on a part of bike other than the wheels of the freestyle bikes. In order to do that they use “stunt pegs”. Stunt pegs are short tubes attached in line with an axle that project out from the main frame of the freestyle bikes. Besides pegs, grinds also involve the crank or pedals.

Air tricks

These kinds of tricks take place almost exclusively in the air. The riders on the bike throw themselves to the air and perform trick while they are in the air.

Flatland tricks

Flatland trick usually needs much balance; often this trick involve the riders to ride with only one wheels and do tricks while they’re at it.

Riding a bicycle is easy, but doing any of those tricks with freestyle bikes is another thing. So if you are interested to try to do any kind of those tricks or riding freestyle bikes, you must pay attention to what they are doing, and practice real hard, because doing those tricks are not as easy as it looks. The most important thing is to wear protection when you decide to ride a bike (especially freestyle bicycle) or to perform a stunt using freestyle bikes.

Just a reminder that bicycles are friendly to the environment and they did not cost a lot, because bicycles are cheaper than automobiles or motorcycles and bicycles do not require any gas, or any fuel which can pollute the earth. There are a lot of bike communities these days, so you can join one of it and start saving the earth. Riding a bicycle can be fun and certainly exercises your body.