Having now successfully fallen off my bike a couple of time, injuring my back and heel I felt it was time to slow down. I’m still practicing the 180 and getting higher in the bowl and also dropping straight in from quarter pipes rather than lowering myself in. Riding off a pipe is a major block I’ve had, made all the easier by a teenager who insisted it was easy to do. He was right, having made me feel so foolish for not just trying it. He was also showing me how to jump up from the quarter pipe onto the down ramp. Having told him I was 38, not 15 and about twice his weight he did see my point that it wasn’t something I was going to do today
Trying to get higher up in the bowl and turning, easy does it….
A rolling drop in sequence. Awesome, such a rush when you drop in!
The question is will I drop in to the bowl next week or bottle it?
Kieran and I headed out early on Saturday to the BMX park. This was a chance to check that I could still get out of the bowl and get up ramps OK. Note to self, no coffee next time I do this! Having got through the initial caffeine shakes I settled into doing some ramps. After plucking up enough courage to fall off my bike and break my face I dropped in off a ramp, this is about a foot lower than the bowl so a good start.
Kieran took great delight in telling me how his bike was better as his front sprocket was much smaller so it didn’t bank the lip as we dropped in off the ramp.
The major achievement was getting up the ramp the other end of the drop in. Given I’m not a teenager and weigh ever so slightly more, getting speed is a major issue.
This was so much fun! We spent two and a half hours messing around on the bikes, I spent the rest of the weekend recovering from it!
Day 3 was pretty good, no falling off! After some trepidation I had a go at getting out of the bowl (I still can’t get in to it without using the drop in). This felt really good, it’s just about speed. The first two attempts were interesting, how to slide back in to the bowl without losing the skin off your knees! Anyway, out I got….
Having mastered this we also tried the ramps, same concept, just less run off when you do get to the top of the ramp. Once mastered I couldn’t stop it. Thank goodness for the railings on the odd occasion of over cooking it trying to get a bit of lift.
Awesome! I can’t wait until the next time we get out, but that could be a week or so now.
Day 2, which was some point last week, possibly Thursday or Friday. We braved the Volcano for the first time. After falling off on the first attempt, going too fast the second and third, taking the paint off my shiny new bottom bracket on the fourth, I managed to get over it, albeit without any “air”, which I’m told is the next step.
I now have under 2 years until the dreaded 40 have decided that I’d embark on a few challenges. One of which, laid down by my teenage son was to get on a BMX. So, off I popped to the shops and came back with something resembling a toy bike, I don’t remember bikes being so small, Kieran’s blog gives the spec, but it’s apparently a We The People BMX, called “Crysis”, quite apt I feel. So, this is my ever so quick journal on my advances. Bear in mind I have never been to a skate (BMX) park in my life, and it was about 23 years ago I last got on a BMX to do a bunny hop.
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