Jumping ramps, or anything for that matter with bikes.
Geez, I also remember having a 20" Huffy that I was always painting or swapping parts from other bikes.
I saved up my money to buy the very first "mountain bike" - 10-speed Murray Baja. Saw in the JCP catalog, and had to have it. $189.00. Not small change back then. My parents told me to keep the Huffy if I was going to go out jumping ramps.
Now, back then, if you could find a piece of flat lumber, and a couple cinder blocks or bricks, you had a ramp. Set that ramp up right in front of a puddle in the mud, and you could jump it!!!
Did this once in a parking lot. We split the 1x6 in half, so we found some masking tape to tape it back together. Got the ramp set to something close to a 50 degree incline. Of course, it was always the challenge to see who was going to be the first one to try it.
I was riding the "Baja" and, against my parents advice to jump only the Huffy, and how stupid this idea of a 50 degree incline was to begin with (and my own lack of judgement) I volunteered to try it first.
I came down right on the front wheel, throwing me off the bike, taking out a taillight on a '76 Monte Carlo with my forehead before hitting the (chromed steel) bumper, and knocking myself out with a concussion.
Woke up under the car with a buddy standing next to me crying because he thought I was dead and he was going to get into trouble.
The front wheel of the bike looked almost like a taco shell.
I had a knot on my noggin' the size of a golf ball.
Spent the afternoon in the ER being questioned about child abuse because I told everyone I fell off the bike (NO, I wasn't jumping the Baja...Honest Mom, I wasn't)...
Wait until your father get's home...
