Oklahoma Superman
It seems to me to be relatively common, at least in the averagely-educated circles I run in, to have heard about kids spending four-to-seven years, and untold thousands of dollars attending college, only to graduate not having learned much of anything. To the hopefully-undying gratitude of my parents (who paid my way in college), they'll never have to say that I was one of those kids.
For instance, I learned the theoretical top speed of my 1987 Trek 850 Antelope mountain bike was 54 mph. Theoretical, because it's a calculation - an educated guess, really - based on the fact that I crashed heavily due to mechanical failure at 55 mph.
Though technically correct, 'mechanical failure' seems a bit disingenuous, almost a betrayal of the bike, since I had a heavier hand in the events that went pear-shaped than my trusty Trek, so a bit of backstory might be fair.
The university I attended my freshman year was in Oklahoma. I enjoyed the state. Lots of great people, and far more things to do and places to visit than most people give it credit for. In the interest of full disclosure, though, one of the things you wouldn't journey to Oklahoma to see, are mountains, much to the chagrin of my friend Kirk and I, who had both made recent acquisitions of mountain bikes. The disappointment we might've otherwise felt was lessened somewhat by the fact that there was, in the same town as our school, a nice hill, probably better described as a plateau, with over 100 acres of wilderness at the top, sloping down precipitously on all sides. And amazingly enough - considering this was in the fledgling days of mountain biking culture - a miles-long network of cycling trails up, down and around the hill.
And it was only a few miles from campus, so we rode there nearly every weekend, and many evenings, to spend an hour or two strafing singletrack, pulling killer jumps (normally over tiny logs), and hucking sick fourteen-inch drop-offs. On a few of those afternoons, though, when class was late or the rare weight of guilt or responsibility leaned on us to study early, we would be running short on time before dark, so we would tie both bikes onto a rear rack, which we shared alternately between our two cars, and head for the hill on four wheels.
On one of those evenings, we made a particularly fast lap of the trails, and found ourselves with some unplanned daylight left. Not enough to circle the park again, we thought, but probably enough for one of us to ride home before the sun slid completely into hiding. Kirk had pedaled enough for one day, he said, and my legs were feeling strong, so we decided he would drive home, and I would ride. We stood there for a few minutes, sipping lukewarm water from plastic bottles in the cool evening air, exaggerating the exploits of the day, when it occurred to one of us that Kirk's 1982 Toyota Supra had something - besides an engine, a steering wheel, and a couple of extra tires - that my bike didn't have: A speedometer.
This doesn't seem like much of a revelation today, in the age of smartphones and cycling computers, but back then, probable speeds attained were arrived at by making a generous estimate, and then adding five or ten mph to it in the retelling. On this day, we would subject ourselves to the unflinching truth of a gauge-measured reality. Or I would, anyway. As it turned out, my buddy ended up with the longer end of the stick, and mainly assumed the dual role of witness and ambulance driver, rather than as the recipient of any real consequences of experimentation.
We arrived at what seemed a reasonable plan fairly quickly: Kirk would drive down the only road leading off of the hill, a ridiculously-steep decline, and I'd follow right on his bumper, while he made a mental note of the highest speed reached during the descent. One quirk of mountain bikes, is that the manufacturers assume much of your riding will be done uphill, and therefore the gearing is very low. On fast descents, you run out of gears pretty quickly, and your pedals simply freewheel. No matter how fast you pedal, you aren't going any faster. That fact didn't stop me from trying.
The slight swerving caused by my attempt to pedal at revolutions higher than physically possible translated into a gentle weave, which then led to what motorcycle racers, and idiots trying to reach top speed on mountain bikes, refer to as a "speed wobble", or sometimes the even-more-colorful and descriptive term, "tank slapper". Either term is acceptable, because they both reference a side-to-side oscillation of handlebars and front wheel so swift and violent, that it becomes almost instantly uncontrollable. The final result of a speed wobble is that the handlebars and front wheel lock all the way to one side. When this occurs while traveling at a decent rate of speed on a bicycle, two things will inevitably happen: The front wheel folds neatly in half, referred to as a "taco" in crash-victim parlance. And then the rider is launched through the air, flying headfirst, superhero-style, for a distance directly corresponding to his rate of travel. In this case, pretty far.
The first choice of landing areas in circumstances such as these would be places like piles of feathers and swimming pools. But I found myself, during flight, with neither the time nor the presence of mind to fully explore options, so I landed relatively close to the centerline on the paved road, sliding, rolling and somersaulting, in shorts and a t-shirt, for what my friend estimated to be twenty or thirty feet, before veering off the road headfirst into a drainage ditch.
Having seen the latest events unfold in his rearview mirror, Kirk had already slammed the car to a halt, and was running up to my location by the time I quit tumbling. Thankfully, one of my better decisions that day had been to wear a helmet, from which, due to the impact of my head on the concrete surface, one end of the chinstrap had torn free. I didn't realize this yet, just like I didn't realize that when the strap detached, the helmet had spun around and covered my face. My relief in discovering I wasn't actually blind, was overshadowed by a quick survey of my elbows and legs, which were now bleeding at a rate, it seemed to me, to be on the north side of profusely.
Feeling a bit dizzy, but with nothing obviously broken, I was able to stand and hobble to the car. Once my roommate overcame a few moments of concern about having my blood potentially smeared across his cloth seats, he shoved me into the passenger side, and we sped off to the hospital.
Concussion, they said. Shouldn't sleep more than two hours at a time for the next twenty-four. That didn't seem like it would cause any particular hardship for a college kid who spent the average week hopped-up on caffeine and anything priced under a dollar from the vending machines.
But that was later. What I was less enthused about, was the presently- called-for method of treatment, which was what the nurses called wound debridement, but which seemed an awful lot like just scrubbing bits of glass and gravel out of my face and joints with a stiff brush. During this process, Dave, another friend, had heard about the goings-on, and rushed over to see me in the hospital. Having not yet seen myself since the get-off, Dave's visit did nothing to curb my growing suspicion that I was most-likely permanently disfigured. Upon one glance at me and the process currently being carried out by the medical staff, and also probably because of his strong aversion to anything up to and including the mere spelling of the word "hospital", he began to faint, and I had to personally help him sit down on the side of my bed. Huge confidence booster. For both of us.
As it turned out, I was only left with a few scars, still faintly visible some thirty years later. But nothing you'd probably notice if I didn't point them out to you. Kirk and I, as often happens in youthful friendships, lost track of each other a number of years ago. Dave and I still keep in touch. No doubt partly attributed to the fact that I went on to marry his sister. I'm eternally grateful to him for failing to warn her ahead of time.
We have college-aged sons now, Dave's sister and I. Both of them ride mountain bikes, and the oldest climbs thousand-foot rock faces both for an additional challenge, and to give his mom something to worry about when the well runs dry. I too, worry about them more than a little. I caution them to be careful when they head out on another adventure, even though I know my admonitions fall on deaf ears. But if I'm honest, I don't even know for sure how much I really want my boys to listen to those warnings from me. Not all of them, anyway.
Of course I want them to consider consequences and not be foolhardy or rash. As any dad would tell you, one of the greatest fears you have about your sons, is not that they'll come up with something that surprises you, it's that they'll do the same things you did at that age. The difficult balance between caution and encouragement, is that sons need to be free to earn a few scars of their own, which only come from taking some risks. Trying things the statisticians and actuaries would caution strongly against. Finding out what they really love, by risking getting banged up a few times on the way there. Not to be unafraid, but to be willing to push past some fear to establish - for themselves - rather than from the opinions of others, their own capability.
What I remember most clearly about that day I crashed my bike isn't the impact, or the blood, or the pain of bristles pulled through broken skin. I don't even remember which hospital treated me, or the faces of any of the doctors or nurses. Instead, it's the first words my buddy said, when he arrived at my mangled bike in the ditch, that stay with me, even today. They weren't profound, but held both information and respect: "HOLY $***!" He blurted with a breathlessness and tone of incredulity that cut through the haze of shock I was feeling, "FIFTY-FIVE MILES PER HOUR!?!"
Damn right.