It was mid-August and I was sitting in a basement that smelled of must and was extremely stuffy; all I was thinking was that I needed to get out of there. My friend was with me, and we both enjoyed riding bikes, so we decided to ride bikes on the trails at the park in my neighborhood. Outside we only had one normal bike, the other was an old bike with a banana seat on it. Neither my friend nor I wanted to ride the bike with the banana seat, so we did a coin toss. I lost the coin toss so I had to ride the trashy bike that could barely even go straight. My friend, Dilan, thought we should play at the park after riding the trails, which was fine as long as we got home in time for dinner. We left to depart on our adventure on the trails in the woods by the park.

At the very beginning of the trail there’s a steep hill that makes you go exceptionally fast and ends with a sharp left turn. While riding this hill, if you didn’t slow down and turn fast enough you would crash. I had complete confidence that I wouldn’t crash, because I had ridden these trails plenty of times before this and hadn’t had a problem. This time would be different. My brakes and steering broke at the same time. I wasn’t scared, even though looking back now I should have been. I’d never been hurt before in my life and I didn’t think today would be the day. I hit a little lip of dirt right before I went into the woods and it launched me about 2 feet off the ground.

In the air I had the idea to jump off the bike so the bike wouldn’t crush my legs in the fall. When I jumped off the bike I went even higher and my body turned sideways. I started to turn so I could land on my shoulder/side rather than straight on my face. At this point I couldn’t see the tree. My head hit just before I hit the ground. I woke up a few minutes later, not knowing where I was. My head felt as if someone was banging it on the ground over and over. I thought my head would be bleeding but I went to feel it and there was nothing but a huge lump.
I felt super sick to my stomach and couldn’t stand for a long while. Once I found my balance and got up, I went to find Dilan. He was riding ahead of me so he was waiting for me at the playground. He looked confused, so I explained to him what had happened and he agreed to go home early. My head hurt so bad that I couldn’t ride my bike back to my house, instead I walked. I live a 5 minute walk away from the park, but it felt like 5 hours. When I got home, I didn’t know what to do or how to treat my injury. I decided to sleep it off, but later I found out that wasn’t a great idea.