Sounds about right, I don't know what our age difference is but it could be 2 years or it could be a decade. I did the same thing though it was usually riding my bike with a backpack. That bike was probably older than I was but it still worked.
Those bikes were awesome. They were heavy, so you had to work a lot harder to use them, and they almost never broke down.
I learned how to take them apart and repair them when I was in grade school. Not that they really fit me. I hurt myself plenty of times since they were not my size but fuck it. You do you, right?
One even had one of those little "bike light generators" that you flipped down and it would power a small light bulb (before LED's were common or a thing) while you were peddling.
We had bring your bike to school day and they had one of the teachers show us how to do minor repairs (get the chain back on, replace an inner tube, adjust the seat etc), we were probably 8. Damn kids are coddled these days.
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