Column: Can’t I? Or can’t I?

Can’t I? Or can’t I? Roly Lambert simultaneously faces the truth

– and some very scary jumps.

I’m a ‘can’t do it’ type of chap. Let’s be honest. It was such a good simple plan. With childcare arranged I would pop by, collect Jones and two jump bikes then head over to the secretive dirt jumps. Unload the car, pad up and roll over the first few, before getting heel-click, nak-nak, banging-jubblies sorted by teatime. The date was carefully picked to be a Thursday in the week before the schools broke up so there would be minimum chance of us being spotted by people not required to shave yet. What I saw when we got there was a lot of leaves on some bumps in the ground. I was instructed to set to work with a branch, sweeping the leaves off. Was this some kind of Karmic Pre-emptive Payback? Sweep the leaves off and you’ll go higher? No, I was told. If you don’t sweep the jumps you’ll slide off the leaves and pop your hip out. Oh. Those of you who have a diet as rich in bike mags as I do will have become accustomed to the Slope Style huuuuge wooden jumps, or scrawny boys in big jeans going upside down next to main roads over humps of dirt with bits of carpet on. But to be there in the woods, just me, him, our bikes and real piles of earth? Hmm. My plan was to get me jumping the small ones after rolling them first before working my way up to ones with a gap in the middle once I’d lost my fear of air, speed and impacts. After nearly coming off down the first roll in (well it was off-camber and the bike has only got a back brake) the path chosen for me was ‘roll over that big log, then line up for that small double, then line up and shoot that berm’. That’ll be a gap jump then? I nodded knowingly when my Dirt Sage talked about not overshooting the downslope and landing on the flat. I wanted to stop, go back to the car and the safety of kitchen banter. Instead having sat at the top of the run-in (yes, I am collecting groovysounding descriptive words) flicking the brake lever for a while, I went for it. Rolled down the log, braking, then spotted my chance - to the left of the jump there was a shallow hole where they had scooped the earth out! Back wheel now locked (man, I’m disrespecting the builders!) and by all accounts it was a graceful slide to the side, as various lengths of brambles wrapped around my pedal and flailing foot and I landed in a

ball. In a keen attempt to go faster not only did I ask Jones to not watch me, but I dialed the pads right out of the brake. This did not arrest any speed at all and I also pinched my finger against the bar. And then rode round the jump on the other side. In desperation Jones showed me just how easy our chosen jump was - he jumped it, he set off and didn’t pedal and just rolled over it. Then he locked his arms and legs rigid, gripped the bars in a death grip and still smoothly popped up and down the other side. Having sat at the top of the roll-in for long enough to hear traffic driving past, birds singing and my instructor getting quietly bored (I’m sure that sitting on a log snapping small twigs was not designed to motivate me) I decided I needed to start smaller. As the area was built by Young People there were no tabletops, all the jumps had Roly-swallowing caverns in the middle. Using my beady Weeds’ Eye I spotted a suitable learner jump off to one side. On closer examination it was right up my alley. A pile of earth no more then 8in high with a core of rotting wood. Perfecto! With an XC-like run up I was able to hit it and not push too much of it down the path. I left the ground and survived. Several times. I ‘sessioned’ this softening bump a bit longer, thinking that I might yet get jumping cracked if they were all as good as this. Sitting back atop the roll-in I was back to my elevated perspective – the gap was still there. It had not receded. It was still quite big. I’m a 32 year old with a mortgage. I can’t do this. I announced my intention as such and rode back to the car. It was a jolly nice cup of defeatist tea we had in the kitchen later. Room-stale macaroons masked the taste of failure. Later that night, face lit blue by the computer screen in the otherwise darkened house I looked up just how much a jump bike identical to the one I had so badly piloted was. Really? That’s quite reasonable...

To be continued?

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