bike riding in England

When I was between the ages of 7 -9, my family lived on Lakenheath Air Force Base in England. For me, England was a great place to live. I loved everything about it: the fish and chips; the schools in Quonset huts; jamming all of us (5 children and 2 parents) into my dad's MG and going places; the round abouts; the accents, which I tried to imitate; going to the movie theatre on base (saw the very first Batman movie there) and following the episodic saga of either the Lone Ranger or some other cowboy. I loved going to the barbershop; going to Wales once and the beach there (I'm pretty sure I got burnt to a red roasted crisp that day); going to Stone Henge and running around the huge blocks of rock, coming round the corner and bopping heads with my younger brother. It was all fun.

Going to school there was a lot of fun too, for various reasons. I was good at everything in school, even recess and the games that went on there: tether ball, marbles, monkey bars and tag. My older brother loaned me three marbles at the beginning of third grade. I got pretty good at marbles, both the game of chase and shooting marbles from the circle. By the time we left England, I had hundreds of marbles earned in competition. My shooting style was palm down, different than most of the other players who shot with their palm up (see picture above) or at a right angle to the ground. With my palm down, I had good accuracy and could make the marble stick in the circle after it had hit another marble out (which continued my turn).

The route to school was from our apartment, past the American Post Office (the APO), past the British Post Office (the BPO or more accurately pronounced Bee-poh, more on this in a later post), along a sidewalk beside a second set of apartments and then to the Quonset hut where my class was. Going to school and coming home on my bike was a lot of fun and my friends and I usually raced both ways.

During one of the school years, there was construction going on near the APO and because of that, there appeared several large piles of dirt. Most were quickly removed and cleaned up but one remained for several weeks. My friends and I, who also watched British motocross on TV, took full advantage of the situation, the dirt pile becoming our own personal launch ramp. We all became quite good at getting up a head of steam, pedaling as fast as we could, zipping up one side of the ramp, catching "big" air, landing on the other side of the pile and riding down. Coming home from school became a competition to see who would be the first to get to the ramp and get the biggest air.

On a day very much like many that had gone before, we ran out of the classroom at the bell, jumped on our bikes and raced for the jump. We all worked hard and pedaled as fast as we could. That day, I was the fastest, saw the jump and pushed even harder to get a really high jump. I zoomed up the front of the dirt pile, ready for a great jump. As I reached the top and pushed off, I looked below to see that the other half of the pile had been removed while we were in school. I hung on in amazement as my bike and I went upside down (picture below is how it felt - for a second), landing on my back on what was left of the far side of the dirt pile. All the other bikers had seen my ascent and disappearance and came around the pile quickly but cautiously to see if I was okay. I think I cut my hand but I was okay. The best part of it all was the great story my friends all told the rest of the class the next day.

Until the next one, have a good one. KipK