Brad's story about jumping the 20 ft sand pile reminded me of a similar experience on a brand new Hodaka Combat Wombat 125 I had just won in some contest. A buddy and I were riding in some sand pits we had never been in before. He had a new Honda and took a pretty fast run at a pretty close to vertical 15 or so foot sand bank. The air he caught was awsome. He nearly lost it on impact, but came back a little shaky but giddy with the excitement of having made it. I had to try it. I got a good run at it, and caught some great air. I had the bike angled just right for what I thought would be a hard landing and was waiting for the impact when everything went black for a few moments. When I landed, both footpegs broke off of the Hodaka. I made the obligatory dents in that shiny tank as well.
Another hairy ride was on a hill climb. There was a powerline trail that ran about 100 feet at a pretty steep angle. I had never made it to the top before, and that day, nobody else had made it to the top either. I had just picked up a little Yamaha 125 for next to nothing. It was pretty rough, but it ran. I went screaming up that hill with my head leaning out over the bars as far as it would go. I was about 15-20 feet from the top, down to first gear, when I couldn't hold the bike down any more. As it came up, I fell off the back. After I finished my short roll, I looked for the bike to see if it was coming back down toward me. The bike was gone! Somehow, the throttle had stuck and the bike had crested the hill without me, and I could hear it laying at the top, screaming its guts out. By the time I was finally able to climb to the top, it had seized. Another long push home.
My luckiest adventure was when riding with a buddy on some fire roads. We had stopped to cross a highway, with my buddy on my Left. I looked Right then Left and didn't see anything. For a moment I wondered why my buddy hadn't crossed the road, but dismissed the thought, and stood the bike on its rear wheel with the intention of showing off while crossing the highway. Wham! I remember spinning like a top on the rear wheel of the bike, before I landed in the ditch on the far side of the road. For a moment, I had no idea what had happened. Then I saw a car skidding to a stop on the road. When I had looked Left, my buddy's helmet had blocked my view of a car coming from that direction. Through some freak luck, or divine intervention, the car's Right fender and headlight had hit my front wheel as I had started across the highway and had spun me around. The driver was seriously concerned, but I wasn't hurt, and the only damage to the bike was a broken clutch handle, twisted forks, and a slightly bent rim. The car didn't fair as well, with a dented hood, broken grill and headlight and some nasty dents in the fender and door. I was pretty shook up, but the driver of the car was really shook up. When I told him I was OK, he shoved twenty bucks in my hand, said to get my bike fixed, and took off.
Now that I'm getting warmed up, its tough to stop. This is the last one, I promise. It wasn't so much dangerous as it was a lesson about riding blind on an unfamiliar track. My dad had let my brothers and buddies use a 15 acre field about a 1/4 mile off the nearest road to build ourselves a practice track. My buddy's dad had some construction equipment that we used to make some pretty nice jumps (nice for the early '70s and 4 inch rear suspension travel anyway), berms, and an overall pretty neat track. The neatest part of the track was a little stream that ran through part of it. We had dredged the stream to make it about 8-10 feet wide and about 6 feet deep, and made a down hill jump leading up to it. The water wasn't visible as you were coming up on the jump, and it could just be cleared when hitting it in 3rd gear. My dad was paranoid over being sued when someone got hurt, so the buddies that I rode with had to have their parents sign waivers, and no one else was allowed to use the track. One afternoon, we were up in the garage, working on our bikes, when we could hear a bike winding up back on the track. Everyone that was allowed to ride on the track was in the garage, so we all took off to see who was riding, and to warn them off. When we got back to the track, everything was quiet. We rode around the track, but couldn't find whoever had been there. Not until I took the jump over the stream. Just as I was going over the water, I nearly hit a wet, mud covered kid on the other side. He hadn't taken the jump fast enough, and his bike was at the bottom. We helped get the bike out and told him he couldn't ride there, but he had a long push home in wet leathers, and MX boots. His most dangerous experience was probably the blisters he must have had on his feet by the time he got home.
_________________ Steve Amling
1976 CR 250M 1980 Yamaha DT100G 1980 XR 200 1981 CSR650
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