Sumner Renegar Ms.

Barbara Presnell English 1103 September 14, 2012 Personal Essay Rough Draft My love for the sport of mountain biking started with my very first bicycle that I was given as a child. I remember it was a silver and black Huffy Hammer, if I do remember correctly. This is the bike that I actually learned to ride a bike on. I remember riding around on the driveway initially, and then once I grew more proficient at riding, I liked to take my bike off road. The different terrain opened a whole new world of biking that I had yet to discover. Over the next few years of my life, I delved into that world and havent looked back. When I was younger I loved riding my bike all around my house, whether it be on the driveway or in the yard, I just wanted to ride. I liked to race down the driveway at high speeds then drag the tire down the last 20 feet of the driveway as I stomped the pedal brake. Then I moved up to riding down the steeper hill in the front yard. I would ride down different paths on the hill, ranging in steepness, the most moderate being on the left, and the steepest on the far right. I liked trying to find different and fun ways to get down the hill. I had a few different trails carved out of the deep layer of leaves that covers the hill in the front yard. When I rode down the hill, the leaves would stick to my bike and my clothes, and fall off into the yard. I always ended up raking them right back in to the natural-area after my dad had to tell me to clean up my mess. I also liked to take it for laps around the back yard to see how fast I could go

around. When I took off at the starting line I would put all my weight on one of my pedals to make myself do a wheelie, which all kids know makes you go so much faster. Once I had outgrown my Huffy, my love for bikes would only be fed more with the switch to the full suspension Magna bike. This bike made me feel invincible, with its two inches of travel, I felt I was able to ride over anything. Once the Tour de France came on during the summer I would watch it then go outside to ride my bike around for as fast and as long as I could. Even if I wasnt riding a road bike in France I loved the feeling of riding my bike around without a care in the world. My next venture into the world of cycling came in the form of a diamondback BMX bike from Dicks Sporting Goods. It was a light, almost Carolina, blue, and everything else was a matte black color. I had a lot of good times on that bike. It was super fun for cruising to friends houses, into Mint Hill, or in the woods in the neighborhood, or any other place I could find to ride it. One time I was just messing around riding around on the driveway and as I went to bump up the curb, my foot slipped of the pedal and spiked me in my shin twice. It bled like a steady stream of sap coming from a wounded pine tree. In fact I still have the scars on my shin to this day. One memory in particular that I recall from my Magna bike was the time I face planted on the road in my neighborhood. It was towards the end of 5th grade and my mom was participating in a student teacher kickball game. She came up to bat and when she went to kick the ball, she missed and got an awful Charlie horse. We got back from school and I was thinking about where I could go to get some crutches for my mom, and I thought of my friend Graham

Lawrence, who I had recalled had some crutches at his house. I called up Graham and he said he had the crutches, so I got on my bike and rode right over. Once I had the crutches, it was time to figure out how to actually carry then on a bike. This was actually a common problem while riding a bike in the neighborhood between fishing, building, and airsoft there were plenty of things to carry on my bike so I thought crutches wouldnt be any different. I put the crutches across the handlebars and clutched both the crutches and the bars in my grip. As I exited the slightly downhill driveway and took a left down pine lake lane, I sped up quickly down the road. Not remembering the added length of the crutches on the bars, I got too close to a mailbox I was passing and clipped the crutches on the stationary post. Immediately I knew I had messed up as I left the seat and flew over my bars and into the asphalt. Right when I came to my senses and looked at my wrists were both scraped up from the middle of wrists out to my knuckles. My face felt like it was on fire and I could feel my lip bleeding onto my chin. Once I had realized the extent of my injury, I let out a blood curdling scream that was heard by my friends and his brothers and his friends. One of my friends older brothers came sprinting towards me and looked at me like a different person. He had seen the scrapes all over my face and arms and asked me if I was alright. I said I was but I definitely was not alright at all, I felt like I was almost in shock because the pain hadnt quite set in fully from the road rash. Grahams brother offered to give me a ride home as he pulled up in his green Dodge Stealth. I tried to gather myself to get into the car, but it hurt to bend my knees or elbows because I scraped them all pretty badly during the crash. Once I was in the car I was sitting there thinking about what my mom was going to think about what had happened. I was also trying to ignore the stinging of the open wounds.

I got home, Grahams brother, John, helped me to the door, and as I walked through the door my mom saw my face and gasped in horror at the sight of the aftermath of the crash. I tried to tell her what happened and I think she was tearing up while I told her what had ensued. She felt like it was her fault because she needed the crutches and I went to get them for her. Now that I was all scraped up and needing a visit to the doctors office, she was almost unable to take me there due to her injured leg. Thinking back to the situation, I recall it was my dad that took me to the local doctors office but I could be wrong. I arrived at the doctors office, kind of limping in, and they asked me what I needed, then saw the scrapes on my face. After they asked my parents and me what happened, they proceeded to tell me they needed to clean the wounds with soap. I remember thinking that having soap in an open wound was going to hurt me more than it could ever help, but they insisted it was the right thing to do. When they first touched the skin that they said was my lower dermis, I think, I cringed in pain. It felt like they were putting a hot piece of metal on my skin, all the while telling me it was helping me. You couldnt have convinced me it was going to help me at the time, all I wanted was for them to stop putting that stuff on my skin. Once the soap had been applied on every scrape, they bandaged me up with gauze and medical tape, I looked like a zombie straight out of a movie. On our way out, I was prescribed a topical medicine used for burn victims, since road rash is very similar to a burn. Over the next few weeks, I had to replace the bandages daily and re-apply the medicine usually once a day. I couldnt really bend my legs very well either because of the scrapes on both my knees, and I was lucky enough to be living in a house with two sets of stairs, and a bedroom on the top floor. I did recover eventually, of course, only to return to riding my bike.

One weekend, my friends and I found a spot in an apartment where there was a steep, short hill. It was right in front of a side walk, a strip of grass, and a curb into the parking lot. We decided we could get some speed on the hill behind the little ramp-like hill and jump the hill into the parking lot, about ten feet away. We tried for a while and try after try we were getting closer to clearing the whole gap, ramp to parking lot. Finally one of us cleared the landing and then the others followed suit. Now that we were getting better, we thought we should try to see who could go the highest. This was on my newer bike, the 2005 Specialized Hardrock Sport, which I found on craigslist for $280. That bike was my first real mountain bike, it had good suspension and tight gears that switched at the twitch of a finger. Without this bike, I would not have been interested in mountain biking.