We used to just call it the jump. Sometimes we might expand it to “the jump at miggy woods”. A micro valley, a bombhole, with a smooth shallow transferring to steep run in with an equally tarmac smooth take off. It was our two wheeled playground. Regardless of skill any rider could become airborne merely by rolling the approach and kissing the sky when kicked off the lip.
Collectively the hours were clocked in. Airtime, crashes and singletrack runs filling our summer evenings and weekends. Time passing slowly in the way only youth fails to understand and treasure.
Sat astride a stupidly oversprung downhill bike, the taste of crusty salt on my top lip, skin painted with dust, the heat made the air still and comforting. Facing down the run in, lids hung over handle bars, the good news passed on before we set off to our spritual dirt home was being contemplated in tired silence.
“Charlie got that job.” Only just sixteen and starting out on the long road head of 9-5 one of our crew had become the first to join the ranks of the drones. We hung together in post adrenalin calm. Riders, friends, brothers.
“Let’s face it lads he aint coming back here anytime soon.” We were right. The statement brutal in it’s honesty. This was our last summer as children. By choice or circumstance it was the final time the group would roll the jump together. As the sun began to set and we made our way home, even back then I knew I’d witnessed the end of something I would spend the rest of my life trying to recreate.
Fat Lad
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