A Dumb Idea (#12)
Growing up, I was the Evel Knievel of cheap BMX bicycles.
When I got older and bought a mountain bike, I became much more reserved with the way I rode, but when I was a kid, I'd try anything on a bike.
Now don't think for a moment that I was skilled at what I did. These entries are called "A Dumb Idea," not, "Skilled Things I've Done After Careful Consideration." True BMX riders may go big, but they methodically work their way up to things often defying imagination. Me: I was just dumb.
I briefly mentioned a bike wreck on the tobbogan hill where I broke my thumb skiing and where I was almost knocked unconscious inside a bunch of inner tubes. The bike wreck was a pretty dumb thing. I stood at the top of the steep side of the tobbogan hill and pedaled as fast as I could, until I was flying downhill and could no longer keep up with the pedals.
The bike I had wasn't good for going down hills; the gears had no neutral position, so the pedals moved with the spinning of the back wheel. Which was spinning very fast. I couldn't brake (the bike didn't have hand brakes; braking was done by reversing the direction of pedaling). I had no choice but take my feet from the pedals. As I did, things went off balance and the bike violently rocked side to side. I tried to counter the shaking, but only made it worse. The handlebars were yanked from my hands and the front tire turned 90 degrees. My abdomen slammed into the handlebars and I found myself sliding on my chest across the grass with the weight of my bike on top of me. I think it took me five minutes to get up.
The sand hill was in Kansas, and the same group of friends who played the arrow game raced on the sand hill.
The sand hill wasn't as big as the tobbogan hill, but it was almost as steep. And there was plenty of level ground up top to pedal to full speed before hitting the hill.
The hill was a nice, grass hill. At the bottom was a giant sand pit. The goal was to see who could make it into the sand the farthest. Distance from a crash counted in our book.
I had friends who had lighter bikes than me, and they would bunny hop their bike right before hitting the sand pit and sail through the air a bit before hitting the sand. Once you hit the sand, it was all over. The sand stopped your bike instantly, throwing you face first into the sand if you went hard enough.
I always went full speed.
My bike was heavy, and I was starting to finally hit my growth spurts. While I never bunny hopped into the sand, I always went harder at the sand pit than my friends. I never beat their distance while staying on the bike, but when I crashed, I crashed big and slid farther than they ever did. Yeah, it was dumb and resulted in some sand-filled bloody lips, but I held the record on the Olathe, Kansas sand hill.
My Kansas friends and I used to play in a parking lot behind some building that always seemed to have discarded matresses, plywood, and cinderblocks by their dumpsters. We made a lot of small ramps with the cinderblocks and wood and practiced our jumping after business hours. As we got better jumping, we constructed bigger ramps, challenging each other's limits.
Our group was whittled down to me and a friend. We decided to go overboard. We would construct a ramp big enough to jump the dumpster! But lest you think we weren't safety conscious, we planned to put matresses on the other side of the dumpter where we'd be landing.
Or so we thought.
Standing at the side of the ramp, it didn't take a physics genius to recognize the ramp, while very tall, was not tall enough to launch someone over the dumpster. My friend chickened out before I did; all I had to do was make the effort.
But simply trying was never enough--I was convinced, with a well timed bunny hop at the top of the ramp, I'd sail over the dumpster like Evel Knievel sailing over the Snake River!
Oh, yeah...he didn't clear the Snake River.
Well...I didn't clear the dumpster.
The force of me and the bike hitting the ramp pushed all the cinderblocks forward; they buckled beneath the ramp. The ramp gave out beneath me about half way up--it dropped out below me and I found myself airborne. I saw all the cinderblocks in front of me--this would not be a safe landing.
I came down full speed into a bunch of cinderblocks. I did a good job ditching the bike and only nailed one of the cinderblocks before slamming into the dumpster.
Like Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff and having a rock nail him after hitting bottom, my bike slammed into me.
I didn't clear the dumpster, but I earned the respect of my dumb friends yet again.
My step brother from my step father's side was quite a bit older than me. I never felt he liked me much, and I was never too fond of him. When he visited, I usually did what I could to get out of the house.
One particular time, I decided to go for a bike ride.
All the roads in our neighborhood were hilly and winding. It was a great place to ride bikes (well, coming down the hills was cool--going up them always sucked).
I was flying down the hill leading to our house when a friend riding her bike was going the other way. I turned back to say hi to her, and that's all I remember for a few moments.
When I got my bearing back, I was in front of my step brother's car. My left leg hurt. I looked down and knew I needed stitches. The cut wasn't necessarily large, but it was deep.
I held my leg and looked for my bike. I found it behind my step brother's car. Near the dent.
There was a good-sized dent in the rear, passenger side panel.
I went over to visit some friends who always had butterfly bandages handy. They shared a basement bedroom, so when you found yourself hurt, you could alway count on being let in through the basement window and patched up in the basement bathroom without any adult knowing.
It took a lot of butterfly bandages to close the wound enough that the bleeding stopped, and we packed a lot of gauze around my leg. I'm always amazed none of us never got the kinds of infections that resulted in lost limbs for Union and Confederate soldiers in the Civil War. We really shouldn't have patched each other up the way we did.
I snuck back into my house and put on jeans. I never wore jeans in the summer, but my mom and step father didn't question me appearing in the dining room in jeans.
When my step brother left, my step father noticed the dent in the rear panel of my step brother's car. They figured somebody must have backed into the car, or hit it driving by. I nodded me head and said, "Yeah, you're probably right."
I loved the damn bike I had growing up. It was a blue BMX bike that was heavier than a BMX bike should be. It was more suited for downhill racing than jumping. But hell, Evel Knievel jumped bigass Harleys--not dirtbikes, so I was in good company! I loved that heavy blue bike so much that when I bought a mountain bike in my early 20s, I gravitated toward a blue GT with a similar paint job. I've had the mountain bike for close to 18 years, and it's heavier than a mountain bike should be, but when I ride it downhill or try jumping stuff, I feel like a dumb kid again.
My beloved BMX met its match one summer. My final "jump" was at The Drop.
With all the hills and twists in the neighborhood I lived in at the time, there were a lot of drainage ditches to channel water around so the streets didn't flood. One of the deepest ditches was in front of some friends' house.
The drop from their driveway to the bottom of the ditch was probably four feet. If you could get good air and jump deep, the drop was closer to five feet deep. With the aid of a ramp and a well-timed bunny hop, the drop reached seven to eight feet, depending how hard you tackled the ramp.
I always went all out.
It was starting to get dark when we were dumping into The Drop. We did it enough that none of us ever crashed. We started off jumping from level ground early on, and never hit the deep part of the ditch. We worked our way up to the deep part of the ditch over some time, and then started jumping farther from the driveway. Soon, we used the aid of a ramp.
We were about ready to call it quits for the evening when I wanted to do one more jump. I started all the way on the hill where I hit my step brother's car and went as fast as I could. I hit the ramp, and I swear I could feel the thing flex and launch me higher than ever. My timing at the top couldn't have been better. I was convinced I was twelve feet in the air, when I was probably only seven feet. Still, that's a decent drop for an eleven-year-old on a heavy bike.
I came down and prepared for my landing, but something went wrong. The cranks on my beloved blue rock of a bike snapped. Like the hip of an eighty-year-old acrobat, years of jumping had finally taken its toll.
I was in the midst of puberty at the time, and "the boys" had descended. They met the frame of my bike in a big way!
I didn't have padding on my bike. To put a "rack pad" on the top bar on the frame was to admit you would need it while jumping. In my mind, it was just me, gravity, and a bunch of American Steel.
After racking myself on the top bar of my bike, my abdomen slid into the handlebars and I went face first into the hard dirt. My legs bent over my back and my bike hit me in the back of the head. When everything settled, I stayed on my stomach and didn't move. I didn't move until I heard one of my friends say, "Holy shit! You cracked your cranks!"
Instead of being opposite of each other, the cranks on my bike were both facing down. One of them was almost ripped from the frame.
I stood up and my pelvis hurt more than my jigglies. I really hit the bar hard. I looked at my poor, mangled bike and knew it was time to finally let it die in peace.
I didn't own another bike until I was in my early twenties and bought the mountain bike that reminded me of the bike that made its final jump during the summer when I came to grips with my mortality.
In a roundabout way, that bike helped me grow up...
When I got older and bought a mountain bike, I became much more reserved with the way I rode, but when I was a kid, I'd try anything on a bike.
Now don't think for a moment that I was skilled at what I did. These entries are called "A Dumb Idea," not, "Skilled Things I've Done After Careful Consideration." True BMX riders may go big, but they methodically work their way up to things often defying imagination. Me: I was just dumb.
I briefly mentioned a bike wreck on the tobbogan hill where I broke my thumb skiing and where I was almost knocked unconscious inside a bunch of inner tubes. The bike wreck was a pretty dumb thing. I stood at the top of the steep side of the tobbogan hill and pedaled as fast as I could, until I was flying downhill and could no longer keep up with the pedals.
The bike I had wasn't good for going down hills; the gears had no neutral position, so the pedals moved with the spinning of the back wheel. Which was spinning very fast. I couldn't brake (the bike didn't have hand brakes; braking was done by reversing the direction of pedaling). I had no choice but take my feet from the pedals. As I did, things went off balance and the bike violently rocked side to side. I tried to counter the shaking, but only made it worse. The handlebars were yanked from my hands and the front tire turned 90 degrees. My abdomen slammed into the handlebars and I found myself sliding on my chest across the grass with the weight of my bike on top of me. I think it took me five minutes to get up.
The sand hill was in Kansas, and the same group of friends who played the arrow game raced on the sand hill.
The sand hill wasn't as big as the tobbogan hill, but it was almost as steep. And there was plenty of level ground up top to pedal to full speed before hitting the hill.
The hill was a nice, grass hill. At the bottom was a giant sand pit. The goal was to see who could make it into the sand the farthest. Distance from a crash counted in our book.
I had friends who had lighter bikes than me, and they would bunny hop their bike right before hitting the sand pit and sail through the air a bit before hitting the sand. Once you hit the sand, it was all over. The sand stopped your bike instantly, throwing you face first into the sand if you went hard enough.
I always went full speed.
My bike was heavy, and I was starting to finally hit my growth spurts. While I never bunny hopped into the sand, I always went harder at the sand pit than my friends. I never beat their distance while staying on the bike, but when I crashed, I crashed big and slid farther than they ever did. Yeah, it was dumb and resulted in some sand-filled bloody lips, but I held the record on the Olathe, Kansas sand hill.
My Kansas friends and I used to play in a parking lot behind some building that always seemed to have discarded matresses, plywood, and cinderblocks by their dumpsters. We made a lot of small ramps with the cinderblocks and wood and practiced our jumping after business hours. As we got better jumping, we constructed bigger ramps, challenging each other's limits.
Our group was whittled down to me and a friend. We decided to go overboard. We would construct a ramp big enough to jump the dumpster! But lest you think we weren't safety conscious, we planned to put matresses on the other side of the dumpter where we'd be landing.
Or so we thought.
Standing at the side of the ramp, it didn't take a physics genius to recognize the ramp, while very tall, was not tall enough to launch someone over the dumpster. My friend chickened out before I did; all I had to do was make the effort.
But simply trying was never enough--I was convinced, with a well timed bunny hop at the top of the ramp, I'd sail over the dumpster like Evel Knievel sailing over the Snake River!
Oh, yeah...he didn't clear the Snake River.
Well...I didn't clear the dumpster.
The force of me and the bike hitting the ramp pushed all the cinderblocks forward; they buckled beneath the ramp. The ramp gave out beneath me about half way up--it dropped out below me and I found myself airborne. I saw all the cinderblocks in front of me--this would not be a safe landing.
I came down full speed into a bunch of cinderblocks. I did a good job ditching the bike and only nailed one of the cinderblocks before slamming into the dumpster.
Like Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff and having a rock nail him after hitting bottom, my bike slammed into me.
I didn't clear the dumpster, but I earned the respect of my dumb friends yet again.
My step brother from my step father's side was quite a bit older than me. I never felt he liked me much, and I was never too fond of him. When he visited, I usually did what I could to get out of the house.
One particular time, I decided to go for a bike ride.
All the roads in our neighborhood were hilly and winding. It was a great place to ride bikes (well, coming down the hills was cool--going up them always sucked).
I was flying down the hill leading to our house when a friend riding her bike was going the other way. I turned back to say hi to her, and that's all I remember for a few moments.
When I got my bearing back, I was in front of my step brother's car. My left leg hurt. I looked down and knew I needed stitches. The cut wasn't necessarily large, but it was deep.
I held my leg and looked for my bike. I found it behind my step brother's car. Near the dent.
There was a good-sized dent in the rear, passenger side panel.
I went over to visit some friends who always had butterfly bandages handy. They shared a basement bedroom, so when you found yourself hurt, you could alway count on being let in through the basement window and patched up in the basement bathroom without any adult knowing.
It took a lot of butterfly bandages to close the wound enough that the bleeding stopped, and we packed a lot of gauze around my leg. I'm always amazed none of us never got the kinds of infections that resulted in lost limbs for Union and Confederate soldiers in the Civil War. We really shouldn't have patched each other up the way we did.
I snuck back into my house and put on jeans. I never wore jeans in the summer, but my mom and step father didn't question me appearing in the dining room in jeans.
When my step brother left, my step father noticed the dent in the rear panel of my step brother's car. They figured somebody must have backed into the car, or hit it driving by. I nodded me head and said, "Yeah, you're probably right."
I loved the damn bike I had growing up. It was a blue BMX bike that was heavier than a BMX bike should be. It was more suited for downhill racing than jumping. But hell, Evel Knievel jumped bigass Harleys--not dirtbikes, so I was in good company! I loved that heavy blue bike so much that when I bought a mountain bike in my early 20s, I gravitated toward a blue GT with a similar paint job. I've had the mountain bike for close to 18 years, and it's heavier than a mountain bike should be, but when I ride it downhill or try jumping stuff, I feel like a dumb kid again.
My beloved BMX met its match one summer. My final "jump" was at The Drop.
With all the hills and twists in the neighborhood I lived in at the time, there were a lot of drainage ditches to channel water around so the streets didn't flood. One of the deepest ditches was in front of some friends' house.
The drop from their driveway to the bottom of the ditch was probably four feet. If you could get good air and jump deep, the drop was closer to five feet deep. With the aid of a ramp and a well-timed bunny hop, the drop reached seven to eight feet, depending how hard you tackled the ramp.
I always went all out.
It was starting to get dark when we were dumping into The Drop. We did it enough that none of us ever crashed. We started off jumping from level ground early on, and never hit the deep part of the ditch. We worked our way up to the deep part of the ditch over some time, and then started jumping farther from the driveway. Soon, we used the aid of a ramp.
We were about ready to call it quits for the evening when I wanted to do one more jump. I started all the way on the hill where I hit my step brother's car and went as fast as I could. I hit the ramp, and I swear I could feel the thing flex and launch me higher than ever. My timing at the top couldn't have been better. I was convinced I was twelve feet in the air, when I was probably only seven feet. Still, that's a decent drop for an eleven-year-old on a heavy bike.
I came down and prepared for my landing, but something went wrong. The cranks on my beloved blue rock of a bike snapped. Like the hip of an eighty-year-old acrobat, years of jumping had finally taken its toll.
I was in the midst of puberty at the time, and "the boys" had descended. They met the frame of my bike in a big way!
I didn't have padding on my bike. To put a "rack pad" on the top bar on the frame was to admit you would need it while jumping. In my mind, it was just me, gravity, and a bunch of American Steel.
After racking myself on the top bar of my bike, my abdomen slid into the handlebars and I went face first into the hard dirt. My legs bent over my back and my bike hit me in the back of the head. When everything settled, I stayed on my stomach and didn't move. I didn't move until I heard one of my friends say, "Holy shit! You cracked your cranks!"
Instead of being opposite of each other, the cranks on my bike were both facing down. One of them was almost ripped from the frame.
I stood up and my pelvis hurt more than my jigglies. I really hit the bar hard. I looked at my poor, mangled bike and knew it was time to finally let it die in peace.
I didn't own another bike until I was in my early twenties and bought the mountain bike that reminded me of the bike that made its final jump during the summer when I came to grips with my mortality.
In a roundabout way, that bike helped me grow up...