"I think you can make it man. Go for it." That was my best friend Keith, standing on my right. He always was so positive and reassuring. "I dunno dude. Thats pretty high up. You could end up squashed against the side." That was my other best friend Troy. He was standing to my left, pinching his chin with his fingers, looking at the stunt. "The Jump" as it came to be called in the following year (very a la Christmas Story).
We were standing on top of the hill behind the old OSI building. The building hadn't been occupied for years. In the back was a huge vacant lot that sloped downward. Steeper and steeper until about 2/3 of the way the hill dropped off sharply. We had set up a jump-ramp near the mid-way point of that hill and had been putting things in front of it to jump over with our bikes. We were all into the BMX scene back then. We all wanted to be Evil Knievel. We built this ramp out of old plyboard and 2 x 4's we found laying around back in that lot. It was a big one. Twice the length of a bike. Having it on that sloped hill made for some fun jumping. It was like flying for a while since the ground kept sloping downward even when you were were flying upward. We had been doing jumps for a week.
But my eye had caught something that I couldn't let go of. Near the bottom of that big hill there was an old box trailer. The back end of a tractor trailer that was used for storage. It was sitting there for years, rusting away. I sat there and watched the jumpers and thought "If we angled that ramp a little more and put it the right distance from that trailer, someone could jump the thing." Once I thought about it, I couldn't let it go. That someone had to be me.
All the guys looked at me like I was crazy when I said it. All of them but my 2 best buds. Troy was actually the bigger daredevil of us. He and I constantly tried to top one another. Keith never did do much on the bikes. He was mostly comedy relief. He also loved a good show.
So here we were, on top of the hill, the ramp repostitioned, the bikes ready. Me, I wasn't even thinking about it. I had to do it. Keith wanted to see the show. Troy, the voice of reason (this day) had reservations. That should have been a hint to me. If he wouldn't do it, well.... I should have listened to him.
I looked to the right, then to the left. There was no doubt in me. I was just being dramatic. I looked straight ahead, speaking at both of them and said, "What? Do you wanna live forever?", hopped on the bike and hit the hill.
As I was rushing down that hill I could see all the neighborhood gang standing around the periphery. Funny thing was, I never heard anything. I was totally focused on that ramp. I picked up speed, faster and faster, as fast as I could go. I hit that ramp dead center, perfectly. It launched me high into the air and suddenly I felt like I was flying. It was an awesome rush. Then the edge of the trailer was passing beneath me. I thought "Ha! I knew we had it right!" We did too. I cleared that trailer with feet to spare. Then I was over it and suddenly something occurred to me. We had been so focused on the take-off and clearing the height. No one ever considerd that I would have to land. It was a funny time to think about it, eh?
The hill dropped off very sharply behind that trailer. I looked down after clearing it and it looked so far away. That was the first time I felt a little concern. But the rush of flying that high was awesome enough that I just let it happen.
The ground seemed to take forever to reach up to me. Just like I had done thousands of times, I landed the back tire at a perfect angle to let it take the major brunt. The thing is, I had never landed on that steep a hill before. Nor from that high up. So when that back tire hit, several things happened: The tire instantly blew out, the bike lurched far forward and the front tire blew out, the handle-bars couldn't take the stress and they let loose and went straight forward, my rump bounced hard enough on the seat and it just broke right off. All those things could have been easily survived but that was just the first impact. Naturally the bike would hit and bounce up. the second impact was the killer.
It bounced up and came back down. That hurt! My rump hit that naked seat post and I felt the skin on the small of my back rip open as it slid up my back. Those handlebars were so far forward that my nose ended up right with the tire but that wasn't the worst part. I fell off the pedals because I was reaching so far forward and my privates crunched on the bike frame. My ankles slid on the metal grating of the pedals and ripped open. Then the back wheel flew off. I was told it looked so cool. Parts were flying everywhere.
Once my privates hit I just let go. I ended up rolling down the hill in a ball. The bike kept rolling too. Afterward I just lay there staring up at the blue, blue sky, taking inventory of myself. Was I broken? It took a while but miraculously I wasn't. I got help to sit up. One of the girls looked over my back and got all squemish. The cut was from the beginning of my tailbone to the middle of the back. About 6"-8" long. My shoulders hurt for days from the strain of going so far forward. All my joints hurt for days. My privates hurt for longer.
But I walked away from it. I had done what I said I could do. The bike was a total loss however. The handlebars had totally broken off. The seat was a goner. Both rims, tires and tubes were trashed. Later we found a crack in the frame. But I hadn't used my good bike so I wasn't out of it.
It was the single most talked about event of that Summer. I never topped the rush of it. Some time later Troy devised a landing ramp and he made the jump too. It worked very well. He and I were the only ones brave (stupid?) enough to do it. We should have thought of that landing ramp for the first jump.
Troy went on to race motocross. Sponsered and everything. I did too for a while but I was never as good as him. Keith went on to play in his band at the Whiskey-a-Go-Go in L.A. Never did do many big-time jumps. He was always all about the show anyway.
But I will never forget the rush of flying that day. I still think about it sometimes when I drive through the old neighborhood. I was there shopping in my old hometown the weekend before Christmas and had to drive by. I saw the old house and drove around the neighborhood then I paused at the dirt road to the OSI building. In my mind I could still see that old trailer sitting there as if it were yesterday. I sat for a second and looked at that old field and thought "Here there were daredevils".
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