Many years ago, I briefly practiced Judo at the Buddist Church in downtown SLC. The first thing I learned was a shoulder roll. This was particularly helpful for me because in Judo class I spent most of my time airborne. A shoulder roll is an amazingly effective way to avoid injury when you are being thrown to the mat. As wrestling coaches, we teach this to our wrestlers to help them avoid injury. The shoulder roll that I learned almost 40 years ago has come in handy on many occasions. There have been many moments in my life (while being hurled to the ground like a human projectile) where I have thought: "If I can just rotate my body enough to get my shoulder to the ground, I will survive this fall." My faithful crossover readers from Darrell's Yakimania might well ask, "To what moments could you possibly be referring?" or "Are you sure you are not being just a little dramatic here?" Let me assure you, I am not exaggerating in the least. If nothing else, I have always reported my life experiences modestly and accurately. These airborne experiences have occurred while participating in various and sundry physical activities. Oftentimes, they involved a dare, a bet or somehow involved someone calling someone else a "chicken." (There's a lot of things I can tolerate, but being called a chicken is not one of them, and I have fake teeth to prove it.) To be certain, however, most of these harrowing experiences have been while losing control of my mountain bike.
At any rate, after taking up mountain biking a number of years ago, I learned the term "Endo." "Endo" describes going over the top of your handlebars head first. I still proudly exhibit vestiges of my first Endo on a mountain bike that occurred over a decade ago. Some of my Endos have been rather benign, others more impressive and memorable. This past summer I had 3 significant "Endos".
One of my life heros, Rangi Smart introduced me to the Disneyland of downhill mountain biking--Deer Valley Utah. I had never ridden trails with stunts prior to this introduction. Half way down the first run, I was hooked! I returned the following week with a most excellent son-in-law, Nick Jordan to ride Deer Valley. I took a hard Endo while riding with Nick (my third Endo for the season) and for a moment thought I broke my neck. After regaining my wits, I am happy to report that all I broke was my seat post and my helmet. While I am still nursing a sore left thumb (the same thumb that was surgically repaired several years ago), my neck feels pretty good.
Above are some pics of Nick negotiating some really cool trails.
Below is Nick hitting the turf pretty hard!
Nick was an amazingly quick study and kept pace on some fairly challenging trails. We had a great time. Below are some pics of our little adventure.
3 comments:
You are the endomidable biker for sure. Please take care of my husband or else it will be one long lifetime for me.
As much as I dislike cats, you have to have multiple lives--way more then nine!
I hope I still ride as fearlessly as you when I am 50. I'm not sure where you are getting your stats from because I think I witnessed you endo three times in one run at Deer Valley. I guess you did preface them as "significant" endos. I think I could only say I witnessed one of those, and there was absolutely no shoulder roll involved in that one. It was square on the noggin. Hopefully we can ride again next summer. That was a blast.
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