chipping it, by going head over wheels

"All you need is ignorance and confidence and success is sure." Mark Twain

Navy blue was the colour of my first bicycle, a sweet Raleigh Burner, the BMX was the craze back then and how I loved it. Even though at first I could not ride a 'big bike', let alone touch the ground sitting on it's seat and it had peddle brakes, a whole new ball game for me. It gave me the freedom to explore and a few 'roasty’s' (slang for the marks left on your body after losing some skin due to friction with the hard tarmac) to go with learning and I soon discovered the joy of jumping. 

Sugar cane was the major growing crop in my area; we lived on the edge of town close to the farm lands and there were huge fields of the stuff, when the wind blew it resembled green ocean ripples. During one summer holidays, my friends and I found the ideal spot next to one field to build our first BMX track with jumps and berms (banked corners) and we set about laying out plans. Which became quiet elaborate, until the first spade hit the hard, sun baked ground. Our summers were hot over 30 degrees Celsius with a 80 to 90 percent humidity and we had no shade, but we poured our sweat into the earth using our assortment of borrowed tools.

Those days ignorance was our best friend and we knew nothing of optimum angles for jumping, vertical velocity or generating the correct speed. School taught us none of that, and as far as we were concerned it was just a place that kept us from doing what we really wanted to be doing. Trial an error featured high on the list in these calculations and the hard digging, meant jumps only had a launch ramp and no run off for landing.

As usual I had to try go higher than everyone else, growing up in a family of four children makes you extremely competitive for that, elusive pat on the back. All I can remember is peddling my little heart out, I hit the jump at top speed and flew into the air. The angle was totally wrong for my speed, before I could do anything, I came down hard on my front wheel and my body speed overtook it, head over wheels I sailed. 

The dentist just shook his head in disagreement as I tried to explain, for sympathy, how I had chipped my extra large front tooth. That wouldn't be the last he saw of those always smiling front teeth and I think he knew it.