Colton74442
08-01-2011, 03:09 PM
The first time I ever got on a bike was when I was 14. My sisters boyfriend had brought over his "new" dirtbike, a 250. He had just bought it from one of his friends and it hadn't been started yet. It was a kick-start that seemed as if it had been left out if the rain more days than it could bear. The rusty pile wouldn't start no matter how many times he kicked at it. When his foot slipped off after one particualry hard kick that left him bruised and bleeding, he decided to give up and ventured back in the house. I was trying to impress, being a few years younger and into that sort of thing. I boasted that I could get it started, no problem. He said he'd let me ride if I did get it started and that was more than enough reason to give it my all. It must have taken me a half our of non-stop, sweaty, painful kicks before the engine first started to turn over. My second wind came over me and within the next five minutes, I had her on and purring. They came back out when they heard it fire up and he quickly got on to test it out before I rode. He ended up jumping the clutch and hitting the wall of the house. The bike then took the path of lesser resistance (the house being quite resistful) and ran up the wall right over the kitchen window. It didn't break, but the force of gravity did bring the bike and him down into a pile below the window. Surprisingly, this didn't deter me in the slightest. We walked the bike around to the front of the house and out into the street. I climbed on and fired her up. He gave me a quick lesson consisting of "this is your brake, this is clutch, and this is gas" and I took off... Bad idea. I rode straight for about a block until I came to a fourway stop. When I went for the hand brake, it was nonexistant. The foot brake was lacking significant stopping force and I realized how little I actually knew about bikes. There weren't any vehicles at the stop so I decided to try and make a turn left and coast until I stopped. Halfway through the turn, I realized I wouldn't make it and tried to continue stright. No luck there, either. When I turned back to the right my hand pulled the throttle back, which caused my weight to shift back and pull on the throttle more. I flew into the ditch on the opposite side of the road and ran into a fence. For the second time that day, the bike met a significant force of resistance, but already knowing how to escape it, the bike shot into the air and out of my control. I landed underneath it in a thorny patch of tall grass and waited. About five minutes later, my sister and her boyfriend meandered up to my crash site and pulled the bike off of me. The worst of my injuries were scratched knuckles (from the thorn bushes) and a bruised ego. I consider myself lucky and I learned to always do a pre-check of brakes before I go for a ride. :)