Bikes, Blades and Blood

Adventures with cousin Chad -

1990 – Claremore, OK 00:00 hours (after midnight)

While spending the night at cousin Chad’s house, he suggests riding bikes. I am eight years old and not familiar with hand breaks. He gives me the crappy old bike with brake lines running all about. We make a few laps around the neighborhood and on one of the final laps decided to see how fast we can go down a huge hill. (I’ve been back since; it is roughly a 10% grade.) As I peddled with the fury of a determined nine year old, the front wheel became intertwined with the brake lines, turned abruptly left and slammed both me and the bike to the ground. A bloody mess on the concrete and a Terminator face would be discovered after I regained consciousness. It’s funny how Chad is always involved in carnage.

1993(ish) - Houston, TX Marina/Resort (after midnight) 

Night number one at the Houston hotel, Dad and little sis are asleep we ask mom if we can go skate. I think our pitch included how safe it would be because there are fewer cars. Either we were that good or she was tired of hearing us ask, permission granted. Only moments before our convincing performance Chad had mentioned how he never used his brake and that really it gets in the way more than helping. In-line skates only have one brake and it is usually on the right skate, Chad decided to remove this single safety device to improve performance. We skated down the hall and into the elevator. We took it down to the parking garage basement and took off like we owned the place. Between cars around pillars and up the loading ramps all was good with the world. As we surfaced to the ground floor parking, our next obstacle was the down ramp back into the basement. It must have been after midnight at this point. Who could possibly be pulling out of the garage at this hour? On our first attempt down the ramp a Mercedes came flying around the corner and nearly took us both out. Brakes or no brakes getting hit by a car would have ruined the night.

Ultimately our mission was to find the fitness center located at the top of a steep hill. Sidewalks lined the drives and we stayed mostly on the road until we found the facility and the apex of this rather large somewhat intimidating slope. As we turned back down heading for the hotel Chad took off first. He started gaining speed almost immediately. I could hear the click clack of every section of sidewalk he crossed over as I followed behind him, riding my brake. It played out like this, cars were coming up the hill on our left and to the right a two foot tall row of upright logs blocking the marina waters twenty feet below. Chad (a brilliant mathematician and engineer) had only made a few miscalculations but they proved vital. As he hit top speed with no exit plan, the sidewalk ended with no ramp. Only a curb followed by a gap and another curb. His feeble attempt to jump off the curb worked, until he landed. His skates came out from under him and I stood in horror. We were going to be in so much trouble.

He quickly popped back up and we assessed the damage. It suffered a few nicks and scrapes and one spot in particular looked like a small rock might have been lodged under the skin. I asked if he was going to put the brake back on his skate, he hit me in the arm and said yes. I gracefully skated back as he dragged one leg behind slightly. We entered the room and announced to my mother what had happened. As it turns out the small rock under the skin was about the size of a kernel of popcorn but it was indeed stuck in his knee. Mom removed the rock and began looking for some rubbing alcohol to clean out the wound. Dad and Hayley continued to sleep. Mom couldn’t find any rubbing alcohol but did have ear drops. (Ear drops are basically pure alcohol.) Chad held his knee up sitting on the edge of the bathtub. When mom squeezed the bottle a small stream of liquid shot into the open wound and Chad screamed out worse than we he wrecked. Everyone was now awake. I never saw Chad on skates after that, I wonder if he still has them?

We've got a lot of years left, what trouble might we get into next? Warrior Dash was a good start, maybe I need to get some rollerblades for the summer?

Warrior Dash Tulsa 2011 Cousin Chad