Passive And Aggressive

Personalities......your either one or the other, and I am the one that most people view as the weaker...passive. Like anyone I can be aggressive but most of the time I am very laid back. I have heard that we get our personality by the age of 2 and having children of my own it is very interesting to see how similar and how different each of them are in different areas. I would not dare try to change my kids personality because that is who they are and this is who I am whether I or anyone else likes it or not.

Sometimes the ability to be more aggressive comes with being more comfortable, this can also turn around and bite you in the ass if your not careful. I have proof of that, it's a little section known as "Humpty Dumpty". If your reading this I'm sure you know the story but I'll refresh you. Denny and I were pre riding the course for RIM at crowder, we weren't riding all that fast in fact we were just having a good time. Well that was until I started the downhill toward Humpty Dumped Me, I was feeling good and letting my Epic eat up some trail until I launched off the first drop and stuck my front wheel into the next water bar (while I was in the air I remember thinking Oh crap....I am going a little too fast). I am still amazed at how much can go through an individuals head in such a short amount of time. When I hit that bar I started a front wheelie (in a bouncing fashion), after the second or third bounce I quickly came to terms with the fact that I was going to eat it big time (this all had to happen in just about 1 second). I remember grabbing for brake but you can squeeze your rear brake as hard as you want but if your rear tire is nowhere near the ground it doesn't matter so in a panic I grabbed the front brake......it doesn't take a genius to figure out what happen next (I'm pretty sure I would have endoed anyway but I just sped up the process). I remember slamming my left shoulder into the ground and my body went tumbling over my head, if that wasn't bad enough my legs were still wrapped around my bike. That was the first revolution, on the next one my bike broke free from my body and kept tumbling down the hill until it came to a sudden stop into a tree, my helmet caught another water bar and got wedged and I rolled slowly over the top of it (I remember thinking I might break my neck). I quickly got up thinking I could shake it off but very quickly found myself back on the ground, I was feeling severe pain in several areas of my body and was very shaken. Denny checked on me and then recovered my bike from down the hill. I don't know how long it took me to recover enough to get back on my bike but I'm sure it was a little while. When I finally got back on I found out very quickly that my front wheel was "jacked up" and was unable to ride the bike.

It is important to get back into the saddle after something like that and I did that two days later, I was able to borrow a wheel for the race and competed in the 12 hr solo division. I took that section a lot slower than I usually do especially on my last lap which was in the dark and in the pouring rain!!! It took over 2 weeks for the swelling to go down in my upper arm and shoulder, I'm glad it wasn't worse.

I'm glad that section of trail already had a name, I hear there is a section at Swope that was named after my riding partner that day....."Jaw Breaker"!!!!