I've toyed with the idea of writing a book on the adventures that me, and this boy had growing up, but I'm afraid it would mirror Pat McMannas, and his writings of his adventures. Since I'm far from a writer(book worthy anyway), I thought I might post some of our adventures here.
I met Leonard when my grandparents bought a house next to his parents when I was about 12 years old. He was younger than me(8 at the time), but being that there were no other kids around, we became instant friends, and shared all kinds of adventures every time I was around.
He wasn't exactly dumb, but his total lack of fear sometimes made it seem that way! He was game for anything, and would try anything on just a mere dare. Of course, being older, and lacking the morals that would later become important to me, I was constantly putting him up to doing outrageous acts, sometimes even risking his, and my lives in the proccess. We're both still alive, with only scars now to show for our youthful ignorance, so now we can sit back, and laugh about the hundreds of crazy things we tried as kids, and young adults.
Here's my first story...
Somehow that first year, we came into possesion of an old motorcycle frame. It had everything but a motor. Both of us coming from dirt poor families, and having no bicycles to ride, we thought this was the greatest thing in the world! It had good tires, brakes, shocks, a seat, and everything! A real Cadilac compared to our current ride, which was an old beat up mini-bike frame with no brakes or seat!
We'd proudly drive for miles on our new ride, and ventured off on many fishing trips, having the greatest time in the world. We never even cared that it didn't have a motor. Who needed a motor anyway! We'd push it to the top of a hill, and feel the breeze blowing in our hair down the other side. On some hills(mountains here), we reached some truely impressive speeds! It got to the point that the local drivers watched for us in the curves, as we had a bad habit of cutting to the inside so we would'nt have to hit the brakes, and lose our speed, which a lot of times would carry us over the next smaller hill.
One day we were watching a show on TV about dirt bike racing, and decided we'd be pretty good at that ourselves. We decided to push our "Dirt Bike" to the top of the mountain behind the house, and ride it back home. This was a long haul, and if we were keeping our speed up, we'd have a good 2 or 3 miles worth of hair raising ride all the way back to the house! We struck out towards our objective feeling pretty thrilled about the whole thing.
A couple hours later found us at the very crest of the mountain looking down the long, curvey, and very steep fire trail. We weren't looking in fear, but total anticipation of the awsome ride we were about to experience. We debated a little about who'd pilot this rocket off the mountain, and I won(rock, paper scissors I think), the decision. We saddled up, Leonard grabbed the bar across the back of the seat, and we kicked off.
Our first few hundred yards were awsome! We made it through the curves with ease, sliding around them sideways, and recovering from the turns just in time to keep from plunging to our deaths over the side of the rocky mountain. We jumped the high spots in the road, sometimes flying for great distances before professionally touching down on the back wheel, and forcing the front end down in time to go into the next curve, whooping, and hollering the whole way. What a blast!
We managed to make it all the way down the mountain, about a mile, without a single mishap. What we forgot was the 90 degree turn we'd have to make at the bottom where the fire trail ran into another road that skirted a fenced in field. At this place, the fire trail humped up, and dropped off into the next road. It was the makings of a terrible wreck, and boy did we find that out quick!
As we entered the 40 yard straight stretch approaching the 90 degree turn, we both realised our mistake. We locked down the brakes, but as we were likely doing 35-40 mph or better, the slick leaves that carpeted the steep trail seemed like they actually caused us to speed up!
We shot across the other road, high in the air, and took out the top two strands of barbed wire on the fence with the front tire. This caused us to flip over in mid-air, and go crashing head over heels through the locust trees that lined this side of the field. Needless to say, after several flips, and smacking quite a few trees, we were tore up pretty badly. We came to rest several yards out in the field laying on our backs a couple feet apart.
Leonard rolled over and said in a very shook up voice; "This wreck was a lot better than the guys on TV"!
We made that trip quite a few times after that, but we learned to slow it down, and ease around that particular turn!
