The Bike Geek: The art of crashing

Hello fellow Mountain Bikers! Sorry I have not posted my “weekly” post but a system issue prevented me from posting my awesome articles.

Anyhow, we all know that crashing is part of mountain biking, it is not a question of if but when is it that you will crash. Now, some crashes are totally unavoidable, some “just happen” and the rest are “what the fuck was he thinking”.

A couple of weekends ago, we all decided to grab our Cyclocross bikes and headed to the world famous Fullerton Loop and we took a buddy who kicked our ass on the Cyclocross race but had never ridden the loop on a Cx bike. We figured he should be fine, Cyclocross bikes are just skinny rigid 29rs, right?

The loop was a little rutted from all the rain, but with careful line selection, it was totally doable on a Cx bike. So we thought… So lets get into the art of crashing, if you know you are going to beef it, we usually try to do the “roll” and have our shoulders take the brunt of the impact:

We definitely do not recommend using a tree to slow down or clinging to a fence going 20 mph…. What the fuck was he thinking, right? The aftermath of this stunt was a fat lip, a lacerated finger, a fractured pinky and a very pissed off wife and did I mention that we missed Lady Gaga’s Superbowl performance? WTF.

We were also ill prepared to deal with this type of injuries on the trail, luckily Art carries a first aid kit with him in his car. We will make sure that we carry a Brave Soldier Crash Pack next time.

Anyhow, our buddy will be fine but unfortunately his bike was not OK. 🙁