26 thoughts on “It’s A Chopper, Baby

  1. Clampers Outside

    Brilliant! I remember doing that on a ‘Grifter’… a bleedin’ heavy bike too :)

      1. U N M U T U A L

        We’ve all been there in some form…
        Evil Kneivel
        Awful Knawful
        Brutal Knutal
        Terrible Knerrible…

      1. Janet, chatty mammy

        did you ever get stuck on the middle seat of the backseats of one of those ? metal bar right down the middle

        1. GiggidyGoo

          No thanks be to God. But I owned one of them. Bright yellow, with a roll-back canvas roof. ‘The Duck’. My dog could hear it coming from half-a-mile away – all 500cc’s of it. Ha haaa.It was what I tried to climb Patricks Hill in Cork in, and had to give up.

          1. Janet, chatty mammy

            both my brothers had that as a starter car, was camping all over Wales with it and Connemara, deadly little car, if you’re sitting up front ;)

  2. Redundant Proofreaders Society

    Cool.
    Road games were the best.
    Did anyone else have a kid in their gang sitting atop a pillar that kept ‘sketch’ for oncoming traffic?

  3. goldenbrown

    my fab childhood in a nutshell

    filled with proper mates, bikes, adventures, love, scrapes and footballs

    not an app in sight

    re. the jammer….I’m going for a Renault 6

    1. Janet, chatty mammy

      plus freewheeling down hills at breakneck speed with your little sister screaming on the backer, penny sweets, slug collections, chewing gum scraped off the tarmac ( still minty ) …oh and fancy paper

      1. goldenbrown

        don’t forget

        robbin’ orchards

        (weirdly there always seemed to be one available within a mile of any housing estate I ever lived in or visited)

        1. U N M U T U A L

          Playing kerbs, scotch on ya, squares, british bulldog and the invisible rope trick…

          1. scottser

            yeh, kerbs. you won’t find a road in dublin empty enough to play it on now.
            i remember when all this was fields, etc..

          1. U N M U T U A L

            That’s some immune boosting hole’sum fun right there, if you pardon the pun….

  4. Seamus

    I’d say the car is a Fiat 127.

    I had a Chopper, definitely in the 1970s. My cousin in England got too big for it and they brought over to me. It was some weight. It was like trying to pedal a small car. I tried that stunt my self just the once. Didn’t build up enough speed and the front wheel just dropped over the top of the ramp and I ended up in heap on the ground with a half ton of bicycle on my back.

    1. Paulus

      After exhaustive research, I think you’re correct with Fiat 127 – wasn’t the 2CV more rounded at the rear roofline?

  5. Tarfton Clax

    Yup. and playing “kerbs” One of the few games you could smoke while playing. I got pretty good at that. Still have a Raleigh Chopper in my parent’s attic but the bottom bracket is worn out so the bike is unusable. Have another one in the folks garage buried behind old sofas and Weights benches and assorted other detritus.

    Used to go to College on my chopper back in the 80’s after my racer got nicked. Gold colour Dawes fox 5 gear. CJ3926 serial number. Never forgotten that number just like the old radio Dublin number 758684. Burned into my cortex from entering competitions in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Had a Big old red Grifter nicked from UCD as well. Damn heavy Bike. May the thieves rupture their spleens by impaling themselves on a rusted gear shift lever of an old chopper.

    “Never Forgive, never Forget, Never for Fun” as 2000 AD’s Torquemada used to say.

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