Maybe I will tell you a little bit about me that you wouldn't neccesarily know.
I grew up in Fruitvale, BC. Go ahead with the jokes...I have probably already heard it all. We lived up on an old ski hill that was no longer in use and so it was growing over with brush. It was a pretty nice piece of land but of course because it was an abandoned ski hill, it was on the side of a mountain. Great for a view, but sucked for the walk home from school as it was 2 miles mostly up hill. I quite often would ride my bike to school. That was always a quick trip due to it being all down hill all the way there. I would time myself and try to better the time it took each week and when I was at my best, I would try to mix it up a bit by riding it with out hand on the handle bars. This was a difficult task as it was not all straight road but with practice I discovered that it could be done for 3/4 of the trip. The other 1/4 was to put the breaks on for extreme speed on corners. Come to think of it it would have been totally awsome for lugeing in the summertime. In the winter the neighbour kids and I would all pile on crazy carpets and take the slope that way. This was not always the safest thing because there would be times when a car would be taking the ascend up as we were going down. It would take some fancy footwork to get your carpet out of the way in time as not to be face to face with someone's bumper. The kids and I always though it was great fun but the drivers of the cars never seemed to have the same humor of the activity. Many of them probably having to go home and clean their shorts.
As I am sure you have guess by now...what goes down must come back up. Yes, the joys of getting to school were not the same joys as walking home. And I mean walking home. (But didn't she say that she would ride her bike to school. Yes, Yes she did.) Let me remind you that it was 2 miles straight up the side of a mountain. I am not talking the kind of hill that you have to go up to get to top of these bumps they call 3 Hills. I am talking mountain. It was hard going when you walked it without the backpack on your back...but when you had to push the bike too. Let's just say that I didn't get a lot of friends volunteering to come over to my house afterschool.
Well, one day I was taking the decent down the mountain with a neighbour friend of mine. She was delivering newpapers and I was along for the ride. We were at the steepest part of the hill when I hit a pothole that I was sure hadn't been there the day before. It wasn't a really big pothole but big enough to throw my small ten speed off into a different direction. My body didn't get the message soon enough about the change of direction and let's just say that it didn't end well for me or my chin. I don't really remember much about the whole incident...just remember my dad coming from out of what I though was the blue and him taking me up to the Dr.'s office. Apparently the Dr. was good with a needle and that was what I would be needing. It took 15 stiches to put my chin back together that day. And in the end I have to tell you that I took the decent down that hill a little bit slower from then on...at least fro the rest of that summer anyhow.
5 comments:
They say 'With age comes wisdom'. I'm thinkin' that a few stitches sure does help too. Owie.
(And yet, what is a childhood sans at least one trip to the doctor for stitches or something dire?!)
We used to jump steel garbage cans on our bike. Our hero was "Rocket" Crocket. He took the most spills but always held the record for distance, height or how many cans. One day, we stole cans throughout the neibourhood for his biggest attempt. We set them up at the base of a huge dirt hill at the factory beside our house. He came screaming down the hill on his ape hanger, banana seated wonder in full peddle. He hit the barbaric ramp we'd always use and took to flight. It was a stunt of beauty, the distance was great, the heighth was dizzieing and the cans, too many. Aaron "Rocket" Crocket took one of the handlebars thru the chest. He didn't die, but he did need an ambulance, we all caught it for that one I'll tell you. "Rocket"Crocket. What a legend!
Did the same thing on a skateboard when I was young. you know you're going too fast when the skateboard starts to get the wabbles. At that point you better be near grass because it's gonna get ugly....it did and I too ended up with a bloody mess where skin used to be.
Man those were the good old days!
Ha, ha, ha!
You are all a bunch of speed freaks. When I was a kid, I was all about the long slow walk along a gravel road listening to the birds.
Aahhh, the ape hanger banana seat!! If only they still made those. (Or do they??)
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