What does your peg look like? Do you have it screwed onto your axle keeping the wheel in place? Have you ever screamed and thrown your wheel across the room because you have to go buy a new axle for the second time in a month? Do you know what I am talking about? I look back at the old school days and realize that some of it was good and some of it was bad.

Pegs... they fall under the category of BAD. If you don't know what I am talking about then consider yourself lucky. Pegs have progressed from crappy little screw on things to comfortable platforms that can be put to full use.

What do I mean though when I say small? People look back at the original 4" pegs (non-hand grenade style) and some may think those are small since they are now riding 5" pegs that are twice as wide. But those are HUGE compared to what the first pegs were like.

The first pegs were little more than about 2 inches long, and they were about half an inch wide. Maybe a TINY bit more. They were typically made out of aluminum or steel. Many riders loved the original GT steel pegs because they were about three-quarters of an inch wide and didn't hurt your frame, or strip out as easily as the aluminum pegs.

WHAT? Strip out a peg? What do you mean by that? Pegs used to be threaded to screw onto your axle! That means that instead of using steel bolts to hold on your wheel you would take off the bolt and put on a peg. Then you would take a wrench and tighten the peg directly against the frame (or a washer). This also meant that the PEG had to deal directly with any side-to-side pounding and pushing that happened to the bike. It also meant that the pegs would have to deal with you standing on them or sliding your foot across them. Don't ask what it was like when people first began to do grinds. Not only would the peg come loose all the time, but also when it came a little bit loose and you stood on it or put any pressure on it you would be pushing in a weird direction against the threads on the peg. Then to make things worse you would have to tighten your pegs about once a day. Every time you tightened the pegs down there was a chance of the axle not being able to take the torque of the tightening or the peg not liking it. At least once a month you would be in the bike shop either buying new pegs or buying a new axle.

But the real problem was the size of the peg. Because they were so small and because they needed to have a wrench fit on them, they were made with VERY small surface space at the end. In simple terms it means that not much of the peg was coming in contact with the frame. In simpler terms it meant that a peg was prone to hurting more than just the peg itself. In simplest terms- they sucked! When less of the peg touches a bike then there is less surface area to absorb the forces that a rider puts on the pegs. Ramp riders didn't get much use out of pegs at the time, except for rocket airs that weren't really that tough on pegs. But flatlanders were, and still are, very rough on pegs. Not only do they stand on pegs constantly, but also they lean the bike at crazy angles while pushing the bike in a different direction. They jump up in the air and come down with their full weight directly on ONE peg. It wasn't as if the peg really had a chance with all the abuse it was supposed to take. It's not like the bicycle frames were built to take the shock that the riders were giving them through the pegs. So you would bend your dropouts and tweak the back end of the bike, or break off a dropout on a fork. You would twist the back triangle of the frame so that it was always tough to get the wheel on and off.

Now what the pegs did to the bike, it did in kind to you. Not that pegs make a point of ruining most flatland riders shins, but riders of flat stand on pegs for hours. If you've seen what grips do to riders' hands, pegs used to do the same to riders' feet. The pegs would grind into the sole of your shoes and in a couple of weeks could rip all the way through the bottom of a brand new shoe. It would take less time before it was grinding into the bottom of your foot. So your feet would get tough. Calluses on the center of your foot to help protect it. If the calluses weren't there then it was several days of bleeding until your foot toughened up. It wasn't fun.

In about 1988 a company named Tioga (do they even exist anymore?) came out with a peg that had a little ball bearing on the end. They were aluminum but about an inch longer than anything on the market. They had a hole drilled across the center of the peg that you could stick a screwdriver in so that you could tighten the pegs. The ball bearing thing on the end was supposed to keep the peg from wearing away against the pavement. It also kept your feet from being able to actually stand on the peg. However, it was possible to use a screwdriver and pop the bearings off the end of the peg in about 30 seconds. These pegs were about the best thing out there for several years.

Then it happened. Around 1991 a company in Davenport, Iowa began to manufacture a peg that would completely change the way that people would be able to ride and use them. No longer would they be threaded. Instead they would just slid onto your axle and then using a deep socket you would tighten down a fifteen-cent nut to keep them in place. If the nut stripped out than you had to go find another fifteen cents. No longer were the pegs going to be so narrow. If you are using a deep socket wrench to install them and if you need to fit the bolt inside the peg you need to make the opening close to an inch wide so that it will all fit nicely. Finally, the pegs were LONG. Older pegs came within about an inch of the length of the SHORTEST pegs that this company was going to be producing. These were four inches long by about an inch wide. Five-inch pegs soon followed them. They were also followed by a peg that looked so similar to a hand grenade that it earned the name- Hand Grenades by the manufacturers.

If you don't know the name of this company, they are Standard Industries. They are the bike company that thrives on their attitude. In almost a decade they haven't been producing complete bikes- only high-end components for riders. Most people have a certain amount of respect for them.

I think of them as the guys that gave me a set of pegs that still sit in my garage, slightly worn, heavy, but indestructible.

Standard changed the way pegs were made for bikes... they changed the way frames, forks, bars, and axles were changed for bikes as well, but mostly it was their first pegs. But evolution demanded that there would be something better yet. So, as freestyle began its journey back to being a popular sport, companies began to produce pegs by the truckload. A co-founder of Standard released the first aluminum bolt on peg for flatland. Indy-Industries gave me comfort AND cut 3 pound off the weight of my bike. Now it is Primo and others producing pegs that are in the five-inch range and 2 or more inches wide. Flatlanders, street riders, vert riders... we all have our choice of what kind of pegs we want to put on our ride.

We also know that it is an important decision, as the peg will probably be on the bike for over a year.

Things sure do change drastically in a few short years.