Archive for May 24th, 2011
The sound of the squealing tires around me gave me an adrenaline rush. I couldn’t believe that I was actually participating in the District Dirt Bike Competition. For all the other participants other than me, this competition had become a yearly ritual. I was thankful to the fact that the others couldn’t see me wet my pants in fear. The ritual consisted of 26 miles of hills along the coastline and an extremely steep one-mile-long climb at the half-way mark. Just like last year’s event, unpredictable weather added to the challenging course. To compete in this race I had trained just about every day for months. When the race kicked off, there was no time to hang around as you had to keep your wits about you to know where everyone was. We settled in and the pattern consisted of long up hills and short sharp descents, all on dirt roads so the going was easy from that point of view, but the climbs took their toll. The race seemed to go on forever and I felt as if my motorcycle was giving in to the wear and tear caused by the dirt road. Suddenly out of nowhere a rock appeared and I realized that I was going to collide with it too late. I felt myself fly in the air and hit a tree with a huge thud. None of the other contestants stopped to check on me. I felt everything around me to be a blur. More than my injury I was worried about my motorcycle. I had spent all my savings for college buying motorcycle parts to assemble my bike from scratch. A few minutes later I passed out and when I woke up found myself in the emergency ward of a hospital. My motorcycle racing career ended before it even took off.