By Scott Cole
It’s break time at the Family School. The families had a scheduled picnic at Chenango Valley State Park and the Boy Scouts were the early to help out. Their job was to set up the barbecue grills and equipment for the students coming in to enjoy. Part of the equipment that needed to get set up was the mountain bikes that were rented. The boys spent part of the previous evening biking on some of the trails with Joe Rogalavich. He then told the boys to bike down the trail to the pavilion where the picnic would be and he would meet them there with the grills. He asked me to accompany them.
This would be my first time mountain biking. This is awesome and fun. I started to peddle and bike. One of the kids told me to use the back brake when going down hill. I started to go a little fast and so I hit the back break. It didn’t do anything. I went faster and faster. The hill’s ledge was coming up. I was worried I was about to become a human pinball against the trees. I’m going to go over and ……….ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Apparently, I hit a root. This root caused me to flip over the side of my bike tumbling face first into a log. The bike then landed on top of me. I was bleeding a lot and cut my lip up pretty bad. I had a piece of tree bark shoved between my teeth, to which one kid thought I split my tooth. My jaw hurt a lot, but other than that, I was fine.
After a few minutes, I checked myself out. I realized that I was fine. Nothing was broken, I could walk ok. Sure, I had a headache and my face hurt, but there was nothing major. I began to crack jokes and had a great sense of humor about the incident. I told the story over and over again to people I met at the picnic.
Why did I do this? Well, I had a choice to make. I could either be angry and bitter about this or I could use this incident to make a positive memory for my Scouts. I could let it ruin my day and the day of others or I could go on with my day. I was hurt slightly, but nothing major. Why make a big deal of it? I had a similar experience years before at college when a friend of mine and I were fooling around and I was knocked out of a ground level pane glass window.
Instead of the Scouts freaking out, they were laughing and having a good time after they saw I was in good spirits. The trip was saved! We all had a good time and enjoyed a fun, although gruesome, memory.
That evening, as the Scouts were biking, I stayed back (wisely) to tend to the fire they made. I looked at where I hit. Had I gone three feet further, I would have gone down a hill at about a 20-30 degree angle straight down with lots of fun trees in the way. I see my minor injury as proof that God loves me. He allowed me to bang my face up instead of having me break an arm or leg or neck or worse. He had me eat a piece of humble pie (and tree bark) and teach a lesson to my Scouts about being careful (I also want to thank God for inventing the bicycle helmet). God was looking out for me that day, just as He does everyday. Who knows how many accidents he has prevented me from getting into…and knowing how clumsy I am, this is not hard to believe.
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