I had a massive OTB the weekend before last, grazed my elbows, pulled muscles in my back, neck and shoulders and badly bruised my knees where I smacked in to the bars on the way over. It bloody hurt and left me stunned for a couple of minutes and sore since.
I would love to say that it happened when I tried to hit up a massive 10 metre gap jump that we had carved out of solid rock with a tea spoon and our teeth by the light of a candle in a howling storm whilst on a tricycle, but sadly that was not the case.
After riding with clips for nearly 20 years I recently decided to go back to flats on my AM bike for a change. It was going pretty well except for a lack of confidence jumping without the security of having my feet physically attached to the bike [clearly showing up a lack of good technique]. To combat this I decided to pull out my sons old plywood BMX jumps that a chippy friend had made him 7 years ago when he was 8 or so and get some practice in.
I set them up on the nature strip outside our house. There are two of them, one a massive 450mm high : ) the other all of 350mm.
The bigger one was set up as the take off with the small one as the lander. As my confidence grew so did the gap between them.
And then my wife decided to come out of the house and watch…, cue the bigger run up, harder pedal on the run in and as a result a massive over jump of the lander, the bike rotated forward as it missed the landing ramp and I was body slammed in to my nicely manicured nature strip.
My wifes concern for my health was truly touching until she realised that my income producing capacity was not harmed at which point I became a stupid old bugger who should have known better at 49
