Boys and their bikes....
.... always result in damage.

A long while back and before we knew `teh fear', a group of friends would spend hours away from home every weekend, riding the hills, quarries and countryside. A favourite spot was the Rock Pools in a hot Aussie summer. An outcrop of hard rock in the side of a hill with a series of pools big enough to swim in.

After an afternoon's dirt biking and bush bashing on our treadlies we hit the Rock Pools for a bit of a splash and a cool down. One of the pools was shallow enough to ride your bike through, at speed. The `speedier' you went, the further you got through the pool to the other side.

Of course, the best way to cool off was to ride through at a decent speed, enough to spay all the kids at the pool's edge. Fun indeed.

On this day, one of the boys comes tearing down the hill like a daredevil at a never-before-seen pace, screaming at the rush and just before hitting the water pops the front wheel up to ride through the water on the back wheel.

This has got to be the closest anyone has come to walking on water, only on a bike. He aquaplanes across the top of the water on the back wheel for what must have been a good number of metres before doing a backflip and landing in the middle of the shallow pool, square on his back.

Dragging his bike from the water, one of the other boys notices a small smear of blood seeping through the daredevil's white tee shirt and calls out that he may have cut himself. Pulling off his shirt to proudly show his battle scar, he does indeed have a small 1/2" long gash about half way up his back and about half way off to the left.

On being told this, the daredevil asks "where" as he lifts his left arm, looks under and around his back and with his other hand pulls at his side to see better 'around the corner'. At this stretching of his skin, the small slit of a cut immediately splits open like the sudden opening a tent zipper.

The.full.length.of.his.back.

The blood didn't come quickly. At first. But when it came....it was endless.

That day, a small group of eleven year old boys met `teh fear'.... and suddenly felt older.

Closest I ever came to that scene again, was at the recent birth of my own son..... And the doctor didn't even offer a few extra stitches!

(Length?.....from head to tail, I tell you..!)
(Sir Jester, Tue 12 Aug 2008, 3:46, 2 replies)

Zipper gash.
...feel...woooozy...

*click*
(ice9, Tue 12 Aug 2008, 9:14, closed)

I'm clicking this...
...even though once again, I wish it was called something other than "I like this"
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Tue 12 Aug 2008, 14:13, closed)