What a wreck...or two

I recently went mountainbiking with some kids from church but what they failed to tell me or what I failed to ask was what kind of biking we would be doing. It turned out to be downhill mountainbiking whereas I have only done crosscountry biking. I didn't really know that it mattered that much what kind of bike you have but apparantly mine does not work very well for downhill biking. It would be like trying to use cross country skis for downhill skiing, technically you could get down the mountain but it wouldn't be pretty and you would probably crash a lot. I did.

When we first got there, people were jumping this man made jump where you went down a hill, shot up the jump and landed on a wooden man made landing. As I watched others do it I realized that I have never done anything like this before but I didn't want to be outdone by anyone. As I prepared to head down the jump I said out loud, "what is the worst that could happen? I could crash". I did just that. I headed down, hit the jump and got plenty of air and distance but when I hit I was too far foreward and went over my handlebars and landed on my shoulder, arm, hip, and leg causing scratches and bruises to all those areas(some pretty good ones too). After that I only took smaller jumps until we headed up the mountain for the single track downhill.

On the way down I went off this little ramp that they built on the trail with a small drop off. My front tire went down first and I went over the front of my handlebars and landed right on top of my head, rolled the the side, and then my bike fell on top of me. I was pretty much done after that. I cracked my helmet and broke my sunglasses. I rode down the rest of the mountain and ended up bending the sprocket on my bike.

All in all it ended up being a pretty painful and expensive day but also a pretty good story.