"What goes up, must come down." "When it rain, it pours." My first day dirt riding was the epitome of those phrases combined. Since I have been riding about three years now, I assumed that I would have enough know how to be able to successfully ride my dirt bike for the first time. (Of course my definition of successful means not dropping the bike more then 1 or 2 times, and not getting extremely hurt...but that didn't happen). I am sure we have all heard our fair share of stories about the newbie street riders who thinks that they are so cool, go out and buy a motorcycle that is more than they can really handle, only to end up crashing pretty badly on their first rides. I have always shaken my head in disapproval at those people, so I am embarrassed to say I was one of those over confident riders that thought I would be able to handle my dirt bike easily despite it being the first time ever riding dirt. I do not think that my bike is more powerful than I can handle, it was just that I had next to no experience on dirt and I assumed that my street riding experience would all carry over to my dirt riding. I found out the hard way that that was not the case.
My first day of dirt riding was one of those experiences that would have sent anyone running in the opposite direction, far far away from any dirt bike. I do not think that I have ever had a worse riding experience in my entire life. By the end of the day I had managed to stall the bike 2 times going uphill, dropped it probably about 5, and one MAJOR crash. I managed to fly off the trail, cleared some rocks, went into the dirt and overgrown weeds, only to then land onto my back. My crash was so bad that my friends had stopped mid-tracks when they saw what happened, dismounted their bikes and rushed over to my side. Lucky for me I did not break my back on those rocks next to the trail's edge. However, that night when I totaled up the damage to my body I counted a scrapped elbow (despite having worn elbow pads), sprained ankle, popped shoulder and a huge bruise. When I had that major crash, some unknown part of the bike had hit my left thigh so hard I was left with a bruise about the size of a cantaloupe!
Despite being bumped and bruised all over, and it being my worse day of riding ever, I found that I was actually looking forward to the next time I would be able to go dirt riding again. I think it was because of the fact that I did so badly that made me eager to keep on riding some more. Street riding and dirt riding were totally different styles of riding for me and I felt like I had to start all over on a clean slate in order to get past crashing all the time on my dirt bike. So of course the only way I could get better at it was to keep on riding some more. I will just have to remember to be a little more timid on the throttle the next time I take the bike out.
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