Mountain biking, concussion and evolution

On Sunday I took the family to a mountain bike park. Our eldest son (I'll use his nickname 'Mud', given to him by my wife after he insisted on traipsing the stuff through the house after every ride) was celebrating his birthday and taking a friend along.

Mud got into downhill racing about a year ago and, as time passes, is 'becoming one with his bike'. My youngest son (no nickname yet) is following in his tyre tracks.

As they are dependent on an adult to drive them to the various sites it makes sense for everyone to pack their bikes and do some mountain biking at the same time. That's what we did on Sunday. We got to the park, unpacked the bikes, the boys disappeared up the hill and were soon jumping the jumps, berming the berms and generally having a good time.

My wife and I did some of the routes. We started out by 'rolling' them. Rolling is where you take a route slowly so you don't get airborne or out of control at any stage (it also means that any falls are almost in slow motion). On some routes, because they're so steep, rolling means desperately squeezing the brake and hoping that the heat radiating from your disk brake will not melt your ankles.

I rolled the same route a couple of times.

Then I started loosening my grip on the brakes and experiencing the thrill that can only really be achieved by doing stupid things at stupid speeds.

The first time I got air time (both wheels off the ground ... I know! Awesome dude! Fist pump, pull fists apart wiggling fingers and making a noise like bacon frying.) it took me by surprise, and I will admit did cause a moment of panic but after thudding back down to earth it was all quite exhilarating.

And so I started getting more air time. I must stress that when I say I got air time it is a very different air time compared to that that the boys get. The boys get airborne, twist the bike to the left and right, take a selfie and post it on facebook before gracefully returning to earth.

My air time is such that if you blink you'd miss it ... but it is still airtime!!

Anyway, what I'm trying to tell you is that as the day progressed so my confidence level increased and so did my speed. Mud decided to give me some instruction and I launched myself down a route with him on my tail shouting instructions at me. (Don't tell him but he got a bit boring after a while, it was always, let go the brakes and put your weight back.) I got through the berm part of the route, got over the first few jumps and was heading for the section of the route that has two consecutive jumps.

I hit the first jump, which I landed and was going into the second jump when I woke up in the car.

When I say woke up, I had actually been 'awake' all the time (well except for 10 seconds which we'll cover later) but it is the first memory that I have after the memory that I was entering the second jump. According to Mud I landed the jump badly, my weight was too far forward (Told you to move your weight back dad!) and I went over the handle bars, hit my head (Serious note here: thankfully I was wearing a helmet.), lost consciousness for about 10 seconds and came too not knowing what was going on.

I ended up spending 9 hours in hospital. Over a period of about 2 hours my memory returned although I do have a gap of about 15 minutes that is probably lost to me forever.

But having 9 hours to spend in hospital with nothing to do it did leave me time to think. And it got me to thinking about the point of concussion.

I think I've spotted a flaw in the whole evolution and survival thing that humans have going. Humans have developed various ways to help them and future humans survive. So let's look at the following examples and see how the human body and mind helps ensure that humans survive.

Two ancient men see a lion (I don't know if they'd actually been named lions at that stage but as I can't be bothered to research what lions were called in those days we'll use the modern name) and think, mmmm, food. They sneak up on it and try kill it with their flint tipped spears. The lion is not killed and one primitive man becomes the lions lunch while the other escapes. He returns to the camp and tells the story. Everyone develops a fear of lions and no one tries to make lunch out of one which saves many more humans. Conclusion: fear is good for survival.

Many, many years later a not so ancient human discovers fire. He's really proud of it and lights a fire for the family in the middle of the cave. Everyone is amazed but the wife is delighted! Wait until she tells that nosy b*tch two caves down who's always bragging about the time her husband killed two birds with one stone from his catapult, the way she carries on you'd think that he'll be famous forever. Anyway, as  people see fire for the first time they want to touch this amazing thing and as a result suffer varying degrees of burn. As a result of that pain they stop touching fire and so their chances of survival increase. Conclusion: pain is good for survival.

Fast forward many, many more years, lions are actually called lions, fire has been tamed to the extent that it is bottled in small plastic containers of liquid and can be released on command by flicking a thumb in top of that container, or even more magical, it has been dried out and is stored on top of a small stick of wood that is dragged against a rough surface in order to release it (sadly though for the wife, the husband of ‘that b*tch two caves down’ is remembered more than her fire inventing husband). Of course there is still Bear Grylls who scoffs at such advances and insists on lighting fires the same way that not so ancient man did, but he has a thing for sifting through all sorts of animal poo on TV so his behaviour is not likely to catch on.

So, in that era of tamed fire and lions being called lions we have not so good mountain biking human. He crashes on a downhill run and gets concussed. He wakes up with absolutely no memory of what happened. Evolution fail! Not so good mountain biking human has learnt nothing from what should have been an evolutionary style warning about mountain biking maybe not being so good for his survival.

And my theory about this fail was proved right because yesterday that same not so good mountain biking man was back on that route ... although admittedly he was rolling it but that was thanks to the cracked rib he suffered ... so it was pain and not concussion that taught him the lesson :-)