Sampling the Soil = Safety First!!
By Mike Sullivan

I guess it’s best to write and review these sorts of things when they first take place, but, hey, more than anything I’m trying to make sure that I’ll be in shape to handle work the next morning!

For the past couple of weeks I have been getting together with my cousin (a newbie into this 2-wheeled addiction) who has been trying to get into videotaping action sports. On this particular Sunday we had headed to a local Florida East coast trail (sorry, the locals have asked me not to publish the name) to catch some video of me and some other characters doing some jumps.

On the way out the door that morning, I grabbed my pressure suit, not so much with the intention of wearing it, but rather to have along in case my truck seat happened to run into something it couldn’t handle.

When we got to the trail and were in the middle of gearing up, I looked at the suit and figured, “What the hell, it’s not doing me any good sitting here.”

Just like that I geared up for the big hits by slipping my pressure suit on below my tee. We took a quick loop through the trail, bypassing a majority of the jumps and drops until coming up to the hit that I was holding out for. It was about a 6-7 foot drop off onto a slight tranny that I had hit over and over again on my previous ride in the area. This time, the locals had made some modifications that kept you from getting the horizontal distance that I was really looking forward to. I hit it once and thought, that was weak, I can hit this so much harder than that.

While I was getting ready to hit it again, a 12 year old on a BMX bike came blazing through and had a full on yard sale on the step-down right where we were filming. I guess he went a lot farther than he planned on and hit some sugar sand one-handed. To make matters worse he slid directly into a tree! Head First! No helmet! With a little bit of help, he got to his feet and spent the next few minutes rubbing the goose egg out of his dome. Fortunately, save for the new lump, he seemed non-the-worse for wear. After he got his feet under him, I reassuringly tapped the top of my helmet a few times and spoke the age-old adage, “safety first” to the fellows in attendance. I fear my advice was promptly ignored. As it turns out, our BMX buddy was about to get a first hand lesson the easy way.

Once the BMXer was safely off the trail, I rode up, circled back and came flying in to try and get the long distance huck that I had been looking for and ended up wadding myself up at the end of the drop. I know I made a lot of errors so save me the riding critique but the important thing is that my safety gear did its job!

As I came down, I rolled and threw my forearm up over my face taking the brunt of the impact on the shoulder pad and side of my helmet. I did end up dislocating my collarbone and taking a little some soft-tissue damage around my shoulder blade but this is nothing to what would have happened to my body without the gear.

I hit on my shoulder so hard that I have blood blisters in the shape of the waffle pattern in the padding on my pressure suit. Without the suit I would have most likely broken my collarbone and/or dislocated my entire shoulder. My helmet has a set of dings from the shell rock that it hit as well as some serious abrasion from sliding three or four feet over the hard packed sand. This would have translated to some road rash on my face as well as a possible concussion.

The best part about it all is that for the next 5 minutes I kept hearing comments coming from the helmet-less kids out there about how bad that would have hurt without a helmet or safety gear. I can only hope that their having witnessed my getting up and walking away from getting spanked will encourage them to go out and get their own safety gear, and perhaps even more importantly, have the presence of mind to wear it.

I’ll tell all of you the same as I told the kids on the trail that day; bike helmets and safety gear may not look cool, but it looks a hell of a lot cooler than being stuck in a wheelchair urinating, defecating and drooling on yourself because of a closed head injury! Wear your gear and keep it real!

And here’s a treat for those of you who’ve followed along and want to see the soil-sample for your self (don’t forget I told you that I ride with some amateur videographers.)

By the way, I welcome questions, comments or should you happen to be looking for more information about Florida mountain biking, drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do. I’m also available for product reviews. E-Mail