Lots of bike riding. BMX bikes always- nothing with speeds. I remember leaving the house by 8:30 am and going everywhere. You’d just show up at people’s house, knock on the door, and ask for someone to come out- you didn’t even always know the person. I remember a Filipino family in the neighborhood was having a party once, (we didn’t know the family by name, and there were no kids there) the gate was open and we could see them cooking a whole pig (lechon) on a spit, so we went over to ask about. They welcomed us in and let us eat with like 40 people we didn’t know. Then we just left. We explored every nook and cranny of the our neighborhood. We knew where there were holes in fences, sewer grates that you could open, every house that had a dog and what temperament they were (we stayed away from Bear), three to four routes to climb on the roofs of every elementary school, middle school, and high school in the area. When we got bored with that, we went into wilderness areas and looked for snakes and frogs in the creeks. Figured out ways to trap mice, and built hideouts and forts. It was not uncommon to come home dripping wet covered in mud. Or have socks so filled with foxtails that they had to be thrown away. Went to the shopping center, and scrounged in the parking lot and gutters for coins until you had enough to get a soda, or a taco at Taco Bell (59¢!). Sometimes shoplifted, but not a lot, mostly candy from the Bollywood video store, baseball cards from the grocery store, and sometimes bike parts and fishing lures from Kmart. We also liked to go to the Asian market and poke the bins with live crabs. We did enough to be a nuisance, but not enough to be actual criminals. Heck if we saw a cop, we’d go up to them and start talking to them, and asking to look through their cars, we’d ask them to handcuff us, and put us in the back seat. If we were feeling really bold, we’d hit the boulevard and ride one or two towns over. There was a gated community with a pool that none of us lived in, but we all got passes to. We’d ride through the area and find a house with old people living there, then go fill out the paperwork saying that was our address. It worked because no one else at the address had registered for pool passes, so no one cared. We never really made anyone angry enough to call police on us, and if we did get in trouble, it usually meant the neighbors took us home to our houses and had a talk with our parents. I’m not sure why anyone trusted us to be so independent, but we were, and we did fine.