Gorman's Garage: Night at Ray's

Boy am I sore!! I had a non-fall crash or does that not make sense?

A group of us went to Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike Park in Cleveland last night. The place is in a big warehouse and is full of wood, concrete, rocks, logs and many different items to make trails, stunt areas and various other obstacles to challenge your sense of skill.

The moment we arrived we were greeted by fire and rescue. One possible broken and ankle and another knocked out cold. The night was looking wild already! We got signed in and I headed to one section called the pump track to warm up. This portion of track is full of 18”-24” rollers that when your bars and pedals are pumped up and down the surfaces, you can accelerate without pedaling and attain speeds almost too fast to make the turns. 5 laps around this 100’ long track and you’ll be breathing like a marathon runner and not have pedaled once.

After that I spent an hour riding around everywhere I could. I was making a lap on the cross country course and speeding along on the outer perimeter trail and flew over a jump. The initial part of the landing had logs laid down as the surface, sort of like the wall of a log cabin. My rear wheel kicked up on one of the logs and my left foot came off the pedal and hit the ground. I was moving at a pretty good clip and my foot planted securely to the floor and then my Achilles was met with full force of the pedal that I just fell off of. The impact made things worse and now I was out of control, both feet off the pedals.

Being that I was standing up on a bike with the seat as low as it could go and leaning back a little, the laws of gravity finally caught up to me. I fell backwards onto the rear tire; which like in the cartoon treadmill, shot me straight into the seat while still going close to 20 mph. So here I am, sitting on my tire, the seat embedded into my gut, my ass acting like a bicycle brake locking up the rear tire and my groin smashed into the frame skidding down the track waiting for impending doom.

I ended skidding to a stop, still on 2 wheels, unable to breath, my buns were burnt from friction, my Achilles tendon had teeth marks in it and I was suffering from a mild case of testiculous smashenitous. I walked over and leaned against the wall trying not to look like I was going to cry or look too sissified!!! A few moments later, I was in the lounge area taking a break waiting for Tim to bring my truck keys so I could change bikes.