Over the past summer I went up to my cabin in Harrison, Michigan.  My family and I go up almost every weekend in the summer.  There are several activities we do at the cabin like swimming, boating, golfing, and riding dirt bikes.  My dad, his friend, and I had been riding dirt bikes almost all summer.  This was also my first summer with my new bike, I ride a CR125.  We were planning on riding on a nice, warm, partly cloudy summer day.  We get our bikes loaded up in the back of the the truck and we’re on our way to the trailhead.  I had rode this trail pretty often this summer, probably a good seven or eight times, so I’m pretty experienced with it.  I have also been riding dirt bikes since I was about seven years old when I had a small little CRF 50 bike. 

We got to the trail And after a half hour of setting up, we finally start riding.  We head off and I’m feeling very comfortable with my riding.  After about 20 minutes of riding the heat is starting to get to me.  The trail is pretty deep into the woods and the path is made up of hard packed dirt and it was getting rough with tons of roots and stumps. I come around a corner and I was flying way too fast for the turn but I was riding well so I felt  confident.  I end up taking the turn way too fast and in that moment I knew I was going to fall so I try my hardest to stay up, but I end up coming off the path.  I had no control and I tried my hardest to stop.  I’m off the trail and try putting my feet down to keep my balance but a tree is in my way and as I put my foot down I catch my knee on the tree and I fly off my bike like a rag doll.  As I fell I knew I messed up and could not go back in time to help myself stay up.  My bike ends up running away somewhere and next thing I know I’m lying on the hard ground in pain, it was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life.  Right in that moment I thought to myself “Why was I going so fast?  I know better than that.”  I wish I could’ve gone back in time and not have gone that fast so it would be like any other turn and I wouldn’t have even thought about myself falling in that situation.  My knee is throbbing and I am in excruciating pain.  I lie on the ground and I’m waiting for my dad’s friend to come and help me out.  He comes over and see’s me laying on the ground.

He looks over at me and says “Yo T you need any help?”

  “Yeah, it’s my knee” I said in pain.

He then comes over and helps me out, I sit for about 20 minutes before I’m able to ride back to the truck.  I get up and try riding back to the truck, luckily there is a spot where the trail crosses a road that the truck is parked on so I only had to ride on the road and not through the difficult trail.  I learned to be increasingly cautious of my riding while performing risky maneuvers.  Now whenever I am snowboarding or playing basketball with friends, or even driving I am now very cautious of my surroundings and try and stay at my own capability of these actions.  I won’t try tricks I know are risky, I won’t try and make a big block and fall on my foot in a weird way, and I won’t make any hard lane changes or do any dangerous maneuver in my car.