To Whom It May Concern

Blast From The Past: Gravel Flop

On my 7th birthday I was given one of the best gifts a boy could ever have gotten: a chrome frame Mongoose BMX style bicycle, with mag wheels, and two "Suzuki" button up pads, one on the handlebars, one on the crotch bar. My cousin Carl, who is about 10 years older than me, gave it to me, through my father, who had to weld the frame in an area that had broken.

What made this sort of birthday present even more spectacular was that, growing up on a farm, I had endless possibilities when it came to BMX activities, from riding the bike down to the creek to go swimming with friends, to ramping the bike off of all sorts of different items to see how much air I could get.

It was the latter that got me into trouble one day. I was probably 9 or 10 years old at the time. It was a hot summer day, the kind that would find me riding around on my bike at the farm, wearing only cut off jean shorts, and shoes/socks. For the days event, I had set up an old car tire and some boards leading out of the shed, and I would ride to the back of the shed, then get up a head of steam, and ramp off the boards.

This was working quite well, so I added another car tire to try and get even more air. I rode again to the back of the shed, peddled with all my might, ramped up the boards, lifted on the handlebars, and UP UP in the air I went... much higher than previously.

The next thing I knew, I was hitting the ground in a very painful belly-flop, knocking the wind out of me quite literally. With no shirt on, the gravel tore into my skin, so the secondary screaming pain after getting over the initial shock was the horrific burning where the tiny rocks had embedded into my skin. I can remember looking up through a tear stained gaze and seeing my front wheel bouncing along further down the driveway, and it was then that I realized what had happened: the front wheel had come off in mid jump. And unlike what most people figure would happen, the bike did NOT embed itself into the ground forks first. With the front wheel gone, the bike lost stability, and went sideways, throwing me off.

I ran up the driveway to the house sobbing uncontrollably, and my grandmother, always the caretaker, immediately started tending to my chest and stomach, using cotton balls and... RUBBING ALCOHOL! Third horrific painful shock of the day. Not sure if you've ever had someone put rubbing alcohol on a fresh cut, but it is not in any way pleasant. I would recommend hydrogen peroxide next time. I sat in the house for a couple of hours, watched cartoons, nursed my wounds, a big portion of which was my pride. About 2 hours later I went out to get my bike, thankfully it wasn't damaged, but it took me nearly 20 minutes to find my tire, which had rolled all the way down the interior driveway and across one feedlot into the bushes.

Within a few days the gravel had worked its way out of my skin, and there were no real lasting ill effects of my nasty spill. One of the more interesting notes about all of this was that when my uncle Nick was about my age, he had ridden a 10 speed for the first time down the really steep gravel road south of the farm, didn't know how to stop, and had taken a far worse spill than I did. He believes he still has gravel embedded in his skin to this day. Youch... glad I wasn't going that fast.