My father had a 250 Yamaha trail bike while I was still a kid. It sure looked like it would be more fun to ride than my bicycle or one of the horses at my grand father’s diary farm. That attraction was sharp enough to make me beg for permission to ride that small trail bike while I was still in Junior High.

It was easy to get away with doing that in the seventies here in New Mexico because I would never take it on the road. My father allowed me to take a ride around the alfalfa fields any time there was a party going on. I just had to learn how someone my size kick started it just to start riding around for fun.

It worked well and I started using it to run errands instead of rife my bike. Unfortunately I hadn’t learned every thing about balancing it so that one time when I rode it to the milk barn to get a bottle filled I lost control on the way home. My speed just got too slow to hold that milk bottle and keep balanced. On the horse trail about halfway home I dropped the motorcycle on to my left ankle and broke it.

That injury sure wasn’t too fierce for a young man to heal from. I didn’t even miss a day at school. I just had to limp out back to feed our chickens. That’s how I was able to get back on the motorcycle in my high school freshman year. At least by then my parents had bought me a motorcycle helmet.

The motorcycle riding was still getting done while I was too young to get a driver’s license. I just had to be careful and stick mostly to horse trails or irrigation ditches. Some of my friends and I could get together and ride down by the Rio Grande river. We just had to watch out and stay away from that white sand. I only had on friend ride his motorcycle into that one summer when the river was lowest. He sank down so deep we had to get his father to pull his ride out with their pickup truck.

Back then trail bike riding could be a lot of fun. We could get together and race around without any worry about getting some traffic ticket. It’s just that I was luck enough to have been given that motorcycle helmet. That’s because one afternoon I took a ride with one of my father’s best friends. We took some dirt roads west out of the Rio Grande valley to the sand hills that sit before the Rocky mountains.

There was no way some old guy was ever going to be a better motorcycle rider than myself. I raced along right behind that rider. We made up into the sand hills rather swiftly but it was an area I had never ridden that motorcycle through myself before.

We got on top of one of those sand hills and the other rider took a lead. He rode his motorcycle directly west towards the mountains. I sure wasn’t ever going to be left behind. I took off after him so he wouldn’t beat me to the far side of the hill. He was easily caught up with because he had slowed down on purpose. 

I found out exactly why that man had slowed down. When my motorcycle got beside his it was on the edge of a cliff. By then I was going too fast to ever slow down. My trail bike jumped right off that Cliff.

It’s just too bad Evil Knievel hadn’t been around training me. That way I could have leaned back and pulled the front end up. I just sailed down. The front end dropped down fastest. My shoulder and motorcycle helmet hit the ground at the same time. At least the helmet saved my skull. I just had to be taken to the hospital because of a broken shoulder bone.