I’m starting a new series for our front page blog. I call it rlAchievements. I shouldn’t have to explain what it is a parody of. It pertains to anything that I have done in my life that I consider an achievement, thus “rlAchievement”. This will become a regular sort of post I will do from time to time, recalling my days of yore. Without further ado, I present my first entry to my rlAchievments.

This was one of those moments that I received a concussion.

As far as I remember, it was a sunny day and I was a just a kid (around 11 or 12). I remember being with some of my friends and we were riding our bikes through a Publix parking lot. As we were riding, we couldn’t help but notice that off to the side of the parking lot, near a MacDonald’s, there was a very cool looking vert ramp all alone. For those of you who are not familiar with what a “vert ramp” is, it’s a ramp that goes from the ground level to face directly upwards.

We sat there for some time looking at it and talking about how cool it would be to see someone go up it. We couldn’t just leave without seeing the ramp in action. Everyone looked at me and began saying “do it man, I know you can”. And being the wimp that I am I tried to explain to them about how I don’t know if it’s a good idea. Eventually I broke down and got a good 20 feet away from the awesome ramp. I just told myself “dude, you’ve done scarier things, just go as fast as you can and you’ll be ok.” I’ve seen pros do it, of course I can pull this mofo off. I told myself I was a pro and that speed is all I really needed to survive.

The ramp came at me almost as instantly as I could feel myself letting go of the bike in the air. The bike flew foreward in a spin backward slowly as my body began falling backward. All I remember is seeing a clear sky and feeling a lot of wind before I hit the pavement on my back and head.

Moments after the world stopped it’s dark familiar swirl of upcomming puking sessions, I could hear voices and see that I’m surrounded by my worried friends. The only thing I could think of was “Darn, I suck so bad.” My friends and I sat around for a while talking about it. Once the hardcore part of the concussion set in, I left home to barf in the toilet many a time and wanted to kill myself because of the resulting migraine. My bike turned out to be ok.

Let this be a lesson to you: If you ever see a vert ramp you know you cannot jump, go for it; because you’ll have lots of pride over the fact that you went for it later.