2014 Season

    Hello fellow bloggers. Sorry about the lame blog posts lately, I have been patiently waiting for this snow to melt so I can get out and do some riding. Hopefully I can figure out how to get some of my helmet cam footage onto here somehow so you guys can see what it's like to ride. Also, I will try to upload some of my friends' pictures and videos of our riding on here too. Maybe next week I can get some of that stuff up on here, but we'll see.

    Until the spring gets here, I've been spending a lot of time getting my bikes ready. One of the big jobs I'm doing is rebuilding the engine on one of them. Technically I'm not rebuilding the whole thing, just the top part of it. That is a part of regular maintenance for two strokes, which is what I ride. Dirt bikes have either two stroke or four stroke engines. The difference between the two is that the four stroke makes a complete revolution of the engine in four strokes of the piston, the two stroke does it in two. with that being said, two strokes make twice the power. For example, a 250cc four stroke makes about the same power as a 125cc two stroke, which is what I ride. Two strokes are mostly made for racing because the engine makes all its power at full throttle. Four strokes have smooth power throughout the whole engine. What I'm rebuilding is called the top end, which consists of the cylinder, the piston, and the rings that wrap around the piston to scrape the oil off the side walls off the cylinder. All I have to do is replace the piston and rings, but some people decide to get a new cylinder also. Other people do the entire motor. usually, you don't have to rebuild the bottom part of the motor unless something goes wrong with it. So thats basically what Ive been up to. I will post some pics of the disassembled engine when I get it taken apart and I will explain why you have to replace these parts often.

My Crash

     Every sport has its dark side. There are many violent injuries involved in sports, especially hockey and football. I have gotten some pretty bad injuries in hockey, but my dirt bike crash in 2010 was probably my worst injury of my life so far. I was not racing that day, I was up in New Hampshire with my dad and some of his friends and my friends. The trails we were riding on were nice dirt trails. They were mostly straight and went for miles. When it was time to take a pretty sharp right turn, it happened. I was going too fast to take the turn, so I decided to slam on the back brake which only made it worse because all it did was made me slide and lose complete control of the bike. I was doing about 40, so my reaction time was very slow.
   
   
When I lost control, I slid off the trail into the woods and bounced off a tree. The worst part was that my leg hit the tree first, then the dirt bike slid with me and crushed my leg up against the tree. I ended up breaking my tibia, which is the shin bone. Thankfully, I didn't hit the tree with my leg any higher up, because if it did, i would have shattered my femur. Also, if I was not leading the group of riders, nobody would have found me in the woods because i would have got left behind, and I sure as heck couldn't walk out of the woods. For the first two minutes after my crash, I was very surprised that I was not in pain. But then I realized I was in shock. My dad and his friends could not find me right away because I was so far in the woods, but when they found me, I was buried in the tree. They had to call an ambulance into the trails to get me because I could not move, and that took so long because we were so far in the woods.
   

     When I finally got to the hospital I had to go under immediate surgery because the bone was basically sticking out of my leg. I ended up having to get two surgeries to get my bone back into place, and 2 pins to hold the bones together. Also, I needed 18 stitches on my other knee because I smashed it off a rock. I had to be in a wheelchair for about 3 weeks before I could walk on crutches. I had the cast on for about 9 weeks, and after that I still had to use the crutches for another month. Thankfully, I am now fully healed. Sometimes I will get minor pain in my knee but not too bad. The second the doctor told me I could ride again I went out for another weekend trip. I am obviously a little more cautious now but even a bad injury is not going to stop me from doing what I love.