OK, I was a kid once... once. I was about 10 when my friends and I built a ramp for jumping with our bikes. Now this was back in the old days before BMX when all you had was a Schwinn -
As you can see by the solid construction these bikes were obviously designed for jumping over things. At one point I think I permanently absconded with Dad's 9/16" wrench for maintenance purposes.
The ramp was a marvel of 10-year-old engineering genius, and we spent many an hour jumping over - well nothing - and having a blast. Distance was key, so a good three or four foot jump was impressive. Then one of us (I don't remember who) finally hit the motherload of ideas:
My family lived in base housing on
Offutt AFB in Bellevue Nebraska, right outside of Omaha. Now across the street from us was a lawn/hill about twenty feet wide between two houses. The houses were built such that the back door was actually on the 2nd floor (the top of the hill) and the front was at the bottom. This was a great sledding hill in the winter even if it was a little short. So, since we were having problems getting up great "jumping" speed on our bikes, we decided to place the ramp at the bottom of the hill. Facing the street.
Guess who was first?
I remember getting great speed and hitting the ramp with the grace of a practiced pro, pulling up on the handlebars just as the front tire was about to leave the ramp. I must have been amped with a little adrenaline as I pulled the bike into an almost perfect vertical position. I was well and truly airborne. I managed to keep my feet on the pedals and pushed the front end down ever so slightly before my back tire hit the ground - seemed like I flew twenty feet but was in reality maybe eight to ten. I rode the wheelie across the sidewalk, off the curb into the street, across the street, up the curb (rounded thankfully), across the sidewalk and onto the lawn on the side of my house. I managed to get the front end down and stopped without dying. It was the perfect jump!
So, we positioned a ramp at the bottom of a hill (where we were able to obtain dangerous speeds) pointed directly at the street, the only protection we wore in those days was Toughskin Jeans! Helmets? For wusses! That was us being stupid kids.
This from MSNBC -
Government health officials warned Thursday that a dangerous choking game has killed at least 82 thrill-seeking youngsters in the past dozen years, the first-ever attempt to quantify the underground practice.
Known also as “the blackout game,” “the scarf game” and “space monkey,” the self-induced strangulation claimed mostly pre-teen and teenage boys who used their hands, or, more often, belts, bungee cords or dog leashes to achieve a woozy high technically known as cerebral hypoxia.Cerebral hypoxia? Are you kidding me? What part of this sounds like a good idea?
