Cubist
Still wavin'
- Location
- Ovver 'thill
Cubester is to celebrate his 12th birthday tomorrow, and as a treat he asked for a day out at Dalby Forest on Saturday. He was told he could bring a couple of mates with him, so he chose his mate Niall, who rides various bikes, trials, freeride, dirt jump, etc etc. No probs. He also asked his new mate from school, who, he said, was a dead keen MTB rider. Great. We therefore planned to ride the 23 mile red route.
When I got back from work on Friday evening his new mate was on the doorstep with a very shiny Marin full susser with all the bells and whistles, very impressive I thought. (It made a change from his mates turning up on catalogue specials and me having to spend the next three hours making brakes work, lubing seized chains, fixing puntures and trying to index shitty twistgrip gears
)
When Cubester arrived to look at his mates bike, I saw to my horror that although it had a lovely rear brake rotor, it didn't actually have a caliper.
Rather than disappoint any of them I persuaded Cubette to lend the mate her bike and we all loaded up the car and drove up to the forest the next day. I was starting to get a niggling feeling about a boy who didn't appreciate that he couldn't ride on the trails without brakes, so decided to ride a loop with some red and a blue escape route instead. Sure enough, he was neither fit enough nor skilled enough to ride the first bit of red out of the visitor centre so I sent Niall and Cubester off on the red loop and nursemaided the new kid round the blue loop.
After lunch they all decided they would ride round the skills park at Dixons Hollow, and so I watched them for a few minutes before setting off on the loop of red that leads off from there. I had watched the new kid riding the 4-X track very competently, and decided they were safe enough.
Three quarters of an hour later I was about as far away from the park as I was going to be when my mobile rang. A stranger (still need to thank him) was telling me that the new kid had got a jump wrong and hurt his knees, and would I get back to Dixons Hollow asap.
Apparently he had decided he wanted to try the big jumps, and despite Niall and Cubester telling not to, he promised he wouldn't go fast and dropped in. They reckon he got about 6 or 7 feet of air off the first tabletop, and threw the bike away, landing between the jumps on his knees.
Malton Hospital is a lovely place, and has lovely nurses who patched him up (several stitches in a wound the size of my mouth on his right knee, and a graze down to the wood on his left.)
Bloody kids.
When I got back from work on Friday evening his new mate was on the doorstep with a very shiny Marin full susser with all the bells and whistles, very impressive I thought. (It made a change from his mates turning up on catalogue specials and me having to spend the next three hours making brakes work, lubing seized chains, fixing puntures and trying to index shitty twistgrip gears
)When Cubester arrived to look at his mates bike, I saw to my horror that although it had a lovely rear brake rotor, it didn't actually have a caliper.
Rather than disappoint any of them I persuaded Cubette to lend the mate her bike and we all loaded up the car and drove up to the forest the next day. I was starting to get a niggling feeling about a boy who didn't appreciate that he couldn't ride on the trails without brakes, so decided to ride a loop with some red and a blue escape route instead. Sure enough, he was neither fit enough nor skilled enough to ride the first bit of red out of the visitor centre so I sent Niall and Cubester off on the red loop and nursemaided the new kid round the blue loop.
After lunch they all decided they would ride round the skills park at Dixons Hollow, and so I watched them for a few minutes before setting off on the loop of red that leads off from there. I had watched the new kid riding the 4-X track very competently, and decided they were safe enough.
Three quarters of an hour later I was about as far away from the park as I was going to be when my mobile rang. A stranger (still need to thank him) was telling me that the new kid had got a jump wrong and hurt his knees, and would I get back to Dixons Hollow asap.
Apparently he had decided he wanted to try the big jumps, and despite Niall and Cubester telling not to, he promised he wouldn't go fast and dropped in. They reckon he got about 6 or 7 feet of air off the first tabletop, and threw the bike away, landing between the jumps on his knees.
Malton Hospital is a lovely place, and has lovely nurses who patched him up (several stitches in a wound the size of my mouth on his right knee, and a graze down to the wood on his left.)
Bloody kids.
