Ouch! F#@k! Shit!

Heya Guys 🙂

Well, before I get any further into this entry, I need to warn you :/

THERE ARE SOME VERY GORY PICS COMING UP!!!!!!

It’s not a joke, I posted two pics of my shin after I tangled with the pedal on my right side of the bike. They are’nt that close that you can see the bone, but rest assured, it was there. Funny thing is though, it did’nt hurt THAT much at the time, infact I kept riding with a hematoma the size of a golf ball hanging out of my leg!

For those of you who don’t know, I love downhill trailriding (mountain biking). With no word of a lie, Canberra is the country’s leader in the sport, simply because of the facilities provided. We have some of the most wikid courses, all the way from intermediate to pro. On sunday two mates and I ventured to the pine forest of Mount Majura, about twenty minutes from my house by car. Pat and Craig had been there many times before, but this was my first.

I should have known the day was going to turn out bad from the moment I arrived there! I had the bike on the rack behind the car and did’nt bother about throwing the front wheel in the back of the car. What I mean is, that I left it attached to the forks. It sat high enough off the ground, that was’nt the problem, the mistake was that the tyer sat only about two inches away from the exhaust tip of the car. Are you beginning to see what happened?! The loud pop that I mistakenly thought was the car backfiring (not that it ever did that before), I unfortunatly realised was the front tyer of the bike EXPLODING from the heat! It would’nt have realy bothered me, except that it was worth around $65 Australian ($110 US), and it had only been ridden on around 40 miles or so.

So, Once the guys had their bikes off and ready to go, I had to try and source a new tyer and tube. Fortunatly for me, a friend about ten minutes away lent me his for the day, and with in an hour I was back at Majura ready to go (and no, I did’nt leave the front wheel on). The ride started off wonderful! We walked the bikes all the way to the top, and stopped half way down to tackle the tripples (theres a lil vid below).

I am SO happy that I made friends with these guys, I’ve been off the bike for so long now, and to sweat it out yesterday was awesome! Now, we had been riding for about an hour and a half, and I “stupidly” thought, “shit, I hav’nt stacked it yet!”. There are some things you just don’t do, one of them, and probably the most important, is that you NEVER doubt your run! When you are halfway through a tripple, and you still have one last bound to go, you NEVER hessitate to think! If I had bailed on a huge gully, or got what I recieved from casing an unriden table top, I would openly accept the gash I gave myself. I mean, at least I got it trying to max air right! Oh no my friends, that is NOT how I came to grief.

Pat blew the seam in his rear tyer, so that meant that we had to head back to the car, he was ok to follow behind, but the arvo was done. So Clarkie (Craig) and I decided to take the “Mine Shaft” (a mad run) and thrash it all the way to the bottom. I kid you not, I was about 100 metres from the bottom when I heard Pat scream at me from behind, “Luke! When you get to the break in the trail, GO LEFT!”. When your’e peddling flat out and concentrating on the next tree branch and berm, you kind of forget which way he said to go!

About ten seconds later I was on it! I saw Clarkie on the other side, and the fork in the trail! My mind said “GO LEFT”, but my body said, “SHIT! WHICH WAY WAS IT? RIGHT?!!!!”. I went right 🙁 The reason the guys told me to go left was because it was this amazing dropped gully that throws you about ten foot into the air and casually levels out. The rush is awesome, the landing smooth and easy to achieve. The right hand side however, puts you face to face with a log built jump that if you don’t know it’s coming, and if you don’t have enough speed, will see you fall short of the twelve foot gap across the gully!!!

I knew once I passed the fork that I was going too fast to stop, but it was the disconcerning scream from Clarkie on the other side that made me doubt my ability! All he screamed was “TOO SLOW DUDE! POWER UP!”. Before I knew it, I was on the lip of the ramp, and I KNEW I was too slow. I managed to get two power strokes in before I hit the lip, but being right handed I needed to have my right foot forward, and the last split second had the left up front. I know this might sound like gibberish to some of you, but it’s all about landing the same way, time and time again. It feels different, it feels false, it feels unsafe! Above all else, you allready know you are going to have trouble finishing off.

If I was a pro, I guess I would have thought ahead and swapped mid air, but there is this thing called “FEAR” that kinda hinders that! Pat never even knew my right foot had come off, I actually managed to land on the other side and pull up. However, I must have let go of my right foot near the end and as I hit the ground (from about five foot high), my shin was the only thing that hit the pedal. I just fitted new ones to the bike, they have these little allen key studds that you screw into them so that your foot stays FIRMLY attached to the pedal and keeps you alighned till you end the jump. However, they are wikidly sharp, and if they even scrape your flesh, they want to bite in!

Thats what they did, they not only bit in, they ripped my shin from the bottom of my knee, to the top of my foot. By the time I had pulled up, my ankle at the front was already popped out. I dunno, maybe I was just on a high, it did’nt hurt like it should, but when Pat at saw it he frowned. “Thats the worst I’ve seen dude, you need shinnies!” “Keep ridin, it’ll go down by the time we get back to the car”. Yeah, it did go down somewhat, but not enough to have Ani gasping at the sight of it! She’s a good girl though, LOL, I did tell her I would come home with bark off 😛

At the end of the day, I called into the bottlo, grabbed a few beers, limbered home in the car to Ani, and waited for the agony of the “cleaning”. She made me have a bath, then scrubbed it out with detol and warm water. I guess once I stopped and the adrenilin stopped pumping through the veins, I felt a little sick. I don’t know, maybe a little shock, thats what my mates said, just go home and relax!

OH! by the way! can somebody tell me why when you cut yourself, break a toe ect, that ya fukin well kick it on something the next day or graze the area!!!!!! I did it three times today, the last leaving this “Oh So Manly Man” (thats laughable) in tears! Fuck it hurts, it hurts like a bitch man! Jesus, I’m such a sook lol! Anyhow, pic

s and flicks below!

I Love You Guys!

Luke XOXOXO!