Fly

Fly.  This pic is from the seemingly everlasting summer of 1983.  I was 14 years old.  And my sole purpose at the time was to make the SE Racing logo wings on my PK Ripper take flight.  Ever since I started riding, I’ve always been obsessed with jumping.  I remember building small ramps in my backyard with wood planks and bricks when I was about 6 years old.  Eventually, as I got older, the ramps got bigger and bigger.  After assembling each of these launching contraptions, there was always a certain delay before someone gathered enough courage to actually launch it.  This was how legends were born back in the day.  No suspension, small 20 inch wheels, landing on flat ground.  You either acquired new scars and a good “the time I nearly died” story or you were immortalized as a neighborhood icon.  Often, even if you crashed, you still came out of it with all three.  There is something about the feeling of the wheels of my bike losing contact with the ground that fascinates me.  Maybe it’s the human animal instinct to want to be like the birds?  Even at 51 years old, riding a well built pump track on my mountain bike is one of my favorite ways to ride.  Clearing a set of doubles still gives me goosebumps.  The feeling of the bike gently sailing, hovering in the open space between mounds of dirt is simply incredible.  Compress, release, recompress.  It isn’t about speed.  It’s about flow.  It’s about letting the bike rise after gracefully coaxing it.  It’s about just letting it…  Fly.