re: #16 A Three Hour Tour

When I got my first bike in 1972 at the age of six, we drove downtown to the Portsmouth, Virginia city municipal complex to license my bike. The license was printed on a sticker that we affixed to the frame. After we moved to Chesapeake a couple of years later, we didn’t bother. None of the other kids or their families bothered either. At the time, Chesapeake was more rural than Portsmouth, and had only been incorporated as an independent city for roughly a decade.

We could get bike tags that were supposed to help you get your bike back if it was stolen, but didn’t have required licensing. I got pulled over on my bicycle in my teens. The cop asked me for ID, and I explained to him that ID is not required to ride a bicycle in America. That may have just been true for my little patch of America.