Two weeks ago I went dirt biking out at Five Mile near Tooele. It was quite the experience. Of note was the long ride that Danny and I took early in the morning, which involved riding up into some hills on some crazy hill climbs. Later in the day I felt especially confident so I tried my skills at a step-up. For anyone who doesn't know what that is, it is exactly as it sounds. It involves a step, which in this case was only two feet off of the ground, with a small kicker a meter in front of the step, off which one would ride and clear the step. The danger lies in not clearing it, as you could imagine... I cleared it, and my bike cleared it, but those two objects weren't necessarily conjoined... I banged myself up pretty bad, but worse off was my bike, which had this huge dent in it's exhaust.
If you thought that that was enough, later on I was jumping off this big hill climb. It was beautiful. With no effort you'd cruise up the 20ft hill in 3rd gear and it would just glide you over the rise at the top of the hill, where you'd land softly on the down slope. Not very dangerous, and I had done it at least a dozen times before deciding on trying it that "one more time" before heading back to the truck. I gave it a bit more juice this time, and soared beautifully, but at a bad angle. I landed on the side of a slope to the left of me, and before I realized what happened, I was in pain and sprawled out (and pinned under the bike).
The terrible news was that I bent my handle bars. I felt awful about it for weeks.
Why am I telling you this now after two weeks? Well yesterday was a particularly stressful day, so I took the bike up into the hills above alpine. While going along a very simple trail, the bike spun out on some loose sand and I crashed... again. Although it hurt again, I had some glorious fortune- it bent the handle bars back. Now, how wonderful is that? I guess I could relate this to some life lesson about the silver lining in the storm, but I don't really want to. All I care about is that my bike is okay. Which should be obvious, as I am typing this at 2 am a whole day and a half later!
