Old guys jump day

One of the guys we occasionally ride with is selling his jump bike, which caused some reminiscing of 'back in the day' when we used to go out to jump parks and BMX tracks to make fools of ourselves in front of the local youth. That lead to a visit to the Blue Nurses jump park in Ashgrove for one last session - there's a pump track there as well, so it's a good mixed-ability venue and you don't even need to get your wheels off the ground.

We got there at around 9 in the morning on a humid, overcast day and for a while we had the park to ourselves

 There are a few different lines to hit - the big tabletop proved to be a draw for safely re-educating the body & mind and the pump track was hard work but fun

 The push up is an integral part of any jump session

 As is plenty of sitting around 'checking out the lines'

 However it didn't take long to figure out that the big line was a bit beyond us

 with a large margin for error if it went wrong

I was on my trail bike with XC race forks and a lightweight 16 spoke front wheel so had decided to keep my wheels on the ground and work on my cornering instead. That didn't last, although the forks started creaking alarmingly near the end (the next few pics from Fly)

Gordy brought some trail-riding style to the party

There's a middle trio of jumps at the park that are all rollable and that most of us had jumped before, but which we'd been avoiding talking about or even looking at for most of the day. After a 6 year old rolled wobblingly but successfully over them on a pink bike with a basket (seriously!) we gave her a huge round of applause and, after she'd left, decided it was time to give it a go. I wasn't happy with the sounds my forks were making so borrowed a bike

and after a few trial rolls both Dave & I managed to get some air - it's a lot more intimidating on the shorter jumps than a big tabletop because if you get it wrong you have much further to fall and another jump to run into the front of shortly afterwards.

No photos of me on them, so you'll need to take my word for it!

I thought we'd spend an hour or so there, most of which would be spent lurking in the shade talking. But after more than a couple of hours of rolling around fairly constantly my head was throbbing from the sun and my body was aching, so despite wanting more I called it a day before the injury-inviting declaration of 'one last run'.

I think that jump bike may no longer be for sale...