When we arrived at the lake, we unpacked all of our things and laid them out on the sand where my dad had already began to take a nap. My friends and I dragged our bikes out of the back of the truck, and set off on the road looking for places to get food. To my surprise, instead of just seeing an occasional convenience store and houses for miles, we had stumbled across a McDonald’s all by it’s lonesome in the middle of nowhere. We sat and ate there for what seemed like an hour, and had to stay there longer because we all had gotten cramps from riding with a full stomach.

It was about two thirty in the afternoon when we finally left, and we had more than enough daylight to spare. We headed off down this road that the McDonald’s was on, and just kept going until Kyle had an idea. “Guys, what if we just go back to the lake and make some jump or something? It’ a lot more fun than getting lost and being all sweaty.” “Yeah, what Kyle said.” I reply, and we head back towards the lake. At this point, we were completely lost and had no clue where to go, and there was barely any service so there was no way GPS was going to get us out of this one. I couldn’t even make a phone call, the service there was so bad it wouldn’t even try to go through. Since we had no clue where we are, I had the idea to start asking people where McDonald’s was. The first person we asked put us on the right track and we started heading there.

What I didn’t expect was to get there, and then realize I still had no clue how to get back from here. We just started going in the direction that we knew was the right way back to the lake. About half an hour later, I start seeing things that I remember from the car ride there, and it was easy to get back there from this point. All I had to do was look at signs. I started to think about how we were going to make this jump, and what it was going to look like. “Where are we going to get the wood?” Jared asks. “We could just go to the Home Depot, I saw one on the way to the lake. It’s only about like three miles away.” Kyle replies. “There we go, we already got this all sorted out” I say.

When we arrive back at the lake, my dad is fishing to the side of the beach, and we all run up to him and ask him to drive us to Home Depot. He asks us why we would want to go there, and we talk to him about the jump we were going to make out of plywood, and in the end he says yes. Most likely because he wants to try it out too. We all hop in the car after chaining our bikes up to a tree so they won’t get stolen, and head off. When we actually started looking around inside, we had no clue what sizes or types of wood we were going to want, or need, for that matter. We ended up just going with whatever looked right. I also picked up a hammer, some nails, and screws. My dad already had a screwdriver on him, so there was no need to buy one.

On the drive back to the lake, we started to discuss about how we’re going to build this thing, and how big it’s going to be. “We can only make it as big as the board right there, so just work off of that.” I say. “Is it going to be curved?” Kyle asked. I reply “Yeah, if you feel like doing that and sitting here for days waiting for it to set.” “Nevermind then, we’ll just make it completely straight.” Jared chimes in, “So, does anybody have any other ideas on how we’re going to build this thing?” “No.” Kyle and I say together in the most monotone voice possible, and we just start cracking up for absolutely no reason.

We get back to the lake and start piecing this together, making sure no nails are standing out of it, and it’s not bumpy or uneven anywhere. Once that’s all done, Jared volunteers to try it out first. We set it up on the grass outside of the lake, so he has a flat surface to land on. He flies at it, not even trying to be cautious, as this thing was a homemade hunk of plywood. With a look of determination on his face, he takes off, and lands somewhere ten feet away and skidding on the sand that was covering the pavement. He regains his balance, and puts on the biggest smile. Almost immediately, he runs back over to it and sets it up on the edge of the lake where there were no people swimming, and takes another try at it. This time, in the water. By this time he was all pumped up, and the adrenaline from the last jump still wasn’t out of his system. This time he pedals extra hard, and I honestly thought he was going to tip over on top of the thing. But I was wrong, and he literally flies off of the jump. He ditches the bike midair, about ten feet away from the shore, and does a cannonball in the water. He comes up laughing and cheering, “Kyle, you have to try this!”

There was no need to tell him twice, he was already on his bike waiting for Jared to get out of the way. “Get your bike out of the water!” Jared swims over to where the bike is, grabs it from about five feet underwater, and drags it to shore to dry. Kyle lines up with the jump, and slowly starts pedaling. I think he was a little scared to go off it, but he tried. Failed, but tried. He reaches the top of the ramp, going maybe fifteen miles per hour, and doesn’t even pull up on his bars. He falls face first into a big pile of rocks just below the waterline, and gashes his head clean open. At first, I thought he had cracked his skull. But after we realized it was just a really nasty cut, we drove him to the hospital and got him some stitches. Insurance is a very wonderful thing. Very. We drove Kyle home so he could deal with his injury, and Jared and I stayed with him for a while, then went back to the lake and made sure not to repeat what Kyle had just done. Neither him or I busted our heads open, so I say Kyle’s mistake taught us what not to do when hopping over a huge pile of rocks.