#sting-ray

STRAY

Prince Namor, The Sub-Mariner #19

Aug 5th 1969

May 10, 2018: News Item: Al Fritz, Inventor of the Sting-Ray Bike, dies at 88

My 'first' bike, the one that started it all, was a Schwinn Sting-Ray™ Fastback, with a 5 speed stick shift, in Candy Apple Red(!), with the squared-off "Slik™” rear tire. Sure, there was a generic, not-at-all-memorable-except-for-the-fact-that-i-learned-to-ride-on-it bike before it. That one that started off with training wheels, that I ultimately rode without, in the empty-on-a-Saturday-morning General Electric Co. parking lot in San Jose, with my father running behind me, shouting encouragement.

That Sting-Ray, though... oh my gosh! I can still remember the new-bike smell, comprised of the fresh vinyl on the sparkly-red banana seat, the new rubber tires, the plastic hand grips, the enamel on the steel frame, and the lube on the chain. I think it was the first 'sexy' thing my 9-year old self had ever encountered. It had long been an object of desire, and to finally have one was almost too much to believe.

It set me free that first summer, in the era of the be-back-by-the-time-the-streetlights-come-on, free-range childhood of the late 1960s. My best friends, Liam and Tommy, and I would ride all over the place, often no-handed, and always without helmets (what is this "helmet" of which you speak?) We'd ride over to the high school with the ginormous open field filled with 4 foot high foxtails and cut tunnels through them, out to the Guadalupe River to go play in the abandoned gravel pit, with its rusty buildings and precarious conveyor belts. We'd play at dirt jumps in the new housing tract being developed on the other side of the apricot orchard. (Pro safety tip: rotate the stick shift upside down to protect your 'nards' in case of untimely contact with the frame on a jump gone awry.)

The Sting-Ray came with us when my family moved to L.A. We lived in a canyon, and it became a makeshift mountain bike (before I knew what that was, and maybe before there even was one yet) as I tried to ride it on hillside drainage culverts near my house in Beverly Glen Canyon. The by now very worn rear Slik tire was completely out of its element. That was a frustrating enterprise, and I was out-growing the bike too, which didn't make those expeditions through the hills any easier. And, it was starting to fall apart due to the abuse of being ridden beyond its design. Ultimately we parted ways, but that bike and those memories will forever be a part of me.

Thanks for the memories, Mr Fritz. Godspeed.

Quasar #5 - The Absorption Principle.

Acts of Vengeance.