Just Giver! Mike's Adventures in New Zealand

A couple weeks back I took a mate out to Woodhill to hit some jumps. He hasn’t had a lot of experience jumping, so I took him to a fairly easy jump line. You pretty much just point the bike in the right direction and you are good to go! It’s wide open, so even if you do bail there shouldn’t be dyer consequences. We hit this line for about an hour. At the start he was pretty timid and maybe a bit overly cautions but as time passed he got off the breaks and was really doing well. You could see his confidence growing.

Confidence is a funny thing. 1) You have to be confident when hitting jumps. If you think you are going to crash or you cant do it; walk away. 2) There is confidence and then over-confidence. It’s very important to know the difference.

We finished riding that jump line and decided it was time to head back to the car park. One of the trails we took on the way back has a drop and good little gap jump, well first time down my mate just went around it. While talking about it at the end of the trail and eye balling it, he thought he could manage it. I had my doubts, but didn’t say anything. I don’t want to be that guy, saying ‘you cant do it’, ‘ I don’t think you are ready for this’ so I kept my mouth shut. Well I should have said something. He hit the drop and it was all slow motion from there. When he hit the jump he turned his wheel in the air and landed a bit sideways sending him out of control. Boom… face/chin right into a tree.

He lay there, gasping for air and groaning. Ah fuck! We told him to lay still and just relax the best he could. He mentioned his neck was sore which is a pretty big issue. I didn’t want to move him in-case of serious injury, so we rang the ambo to come out and get him. He was totally concussed; didn’t know where he was, where he lived, how he go there..memory gone. The ambo showed up in 45 mins. In the end there was no major problems other than a concussion…thankfully.

A crash like that definietely takes care of that over confidence, but unfortunately destorys the confidence too. I dont think he will be coming out to play anytime soon.