Razor Scooters are the Devil ...

I don't require a bike to bust myself up .. I can pretty destroy myself with whatever is at hand. In this case it happened to be one of those damn Razor Scooters. It was about eight years ago I'd say and they had just come out so they were something I hadn't messed with. When I first saw the thing I thought it looked pretty lame but boredom can make almost anything look fun.

Some friends and I headed up to a paint shop that my friend's car was at. I was pretty big into cars a decade ago or so. Ouch. That really seems so long ago haha. But anyway.. we would trick out our cars and go to races and shows. Was a good time to run with a pretty good group of people and just hang out and BS about cars and what not. This was before Fast and the Furious. Then every little kid went to Pep Boys and put a muffler on their Mom's car and thought they could race. Just in case you didn't know this .. Yellow graphics increase your horsepower, Red increases Torque. And you don't even want to know what some flames can do!

But anyway back to the story. We were waiting for the painter to arrive. The guy was a good painter but was pretty much the biggest joker you would ever hope not to meet (that appears to be a standard practice for anyone you works on/with cars ). So there we sat .. after an hour or so I started to get restless. I'm not very good at just sitting around, there had to be something to do! So I start to investigate my surroundings. Looking for something to occupy me. In the back of a friends car I found it. A Razor Scooter. Again, I never really got into them but as I had nothing else to do... it was go time. So I start to ride the thing around in circles in front of the shop. That then lead to be trying to pull some "tricks" off. I use to skate ( as in skateboard ) so I was mixing some skate tricks like shove its with some bike stuff like tailwhips. But those things are SMALL.. and it was getting boring so I looked for something to try. ..... ... MISTAKE!

The shop was on it's own road, just it and way at the bottom was a construction site. I say bottom because it's also on a hill, a pretty big hill. So off I go, I start walking to the top of the hill. My friend Jay yells after me "Dude, where are you going?" to which I respond "Up to ride down the hill". " Are you serious? On that thing?" "Yeah, why not?" "That's a big ass hill" and of course I spout some famous last words "How fast can i really go on this thing?" Well, I was about to find out and now I have an audience. All my friends having heard Jay and I talking about the hill ride now come out to the street to watch it. I don't consider myself a stupid person, but when I look back, why do I do so many stupid things? So I go up to the top and it was a big ol hill. But for some reason I was convinced that that Razor just didn't have that much speed in it. Wow, was I soooooo wrong. I drop in, or push off or just start riding. Whatever you prefer. It only took me ten feet to realize I was dead. I reached terminal velocity somewhere between five and ten feet down the hill and now my brain starts to think, how to I stop this thing. Hmmmm that probably would have been a good thing to figure out before I went all Roger Ramjet down this hill.

If you are familiar with the Razor Scooter you know there aren't many options when it comes to stopping. You stop by using it's "brake", and by "brake" I mean the curved piece of metal that hovers over the back wheel. I look down at it and think there is no way I'm pushing that thing! I'll most likely lock the wheel up lose control and face plant which isn't the best option on a roughly paved asphalt road. WHOOOOOOSSSHHHHHHH I fly by my friends like a bat out of hell.. I think I might have been screaming but I'm not really sure... if it wasn't out load I sure as hell was inside my head! Because now it was getting hairy, like it could get any worse aye? But oh yes it could. The road ahead wasn't fully paved as it went down into the construction site. It got more rough and then turned into dirt and rocks... lots and lots of rocks.

Right here is when I come up with my amazing plan to stop this crazy thing! That o so wonderful plan consisted of me taking my left foot off and trying to slowly apply it to the ground this causing friction and bringing me to an easy gradual stop. That was the plan in my head, but that was not how the plan unfolded in real life. I didn't have much road left so I quickly set my "fabulous" plan into action. I pulled my left foot off of the scooter platform (trying to ignore the flames that were shooting off the wheels) and began to slowly lower my foot towards the ground. All seemed to be going according to plan until, my foot actually touched the ground. There was no gradual slowing, there was only my first step of three that led me into the pain cave. As soon as my foot touched I was no longer riding the scooter I was now running at an incredible speed. I can't say for sure but it felt as if I was going about 30 mph (50 kph for all you Europeans who aren't reading this) and as you probably know a human can not run 30 mph or even 50 kph. But I did! For three giant steps.

BOOM left foot down. POOF Razor Scooter spins out of existence. BOOM right foot down. WOW I think I've covered about eight feet in that one stride, look at me GO! BOOM left foot down. OH NO about ten feet covered on that one step and now I know my right foot just isn't going fast enough. BOOOOOOOF (that's a boom and poof if you were wondering) that's the sound of my right foot coming up short and me going down Wile E Coyote style. It was more then just the sound, I hit the dirt and gravel and all my friends saw was me disappear into a huge cloud of dust, death and destruction. I rolled another fifteen feet ending up on my back and just looking up. No shit, I'm still alive.

I couldn't see anything but I heard tons of heavy foot falls getting closer. Then I hear Jay, "dude .. dude .. hey man are you ok?" I sat up laughing, which was quite a stun to my friends as they had now formed a circle around me and probably thought me dead or at least knocked out. In my head all I could picture was Wile E falling off a cliff and erupting into a cloud of smoke, fully accepting what he knew was to come. That was me. And I knew I had to look pretty much the same. My laughing lightened the mood and everyone was pretty much amazed at my speed and the amount of ground I covered in three footsteps. I started to get up and as I put my hands down to stand up now I felt some pain. I looked at the palms of my hands to realize I didn't really have much of my palms left. Most of the skin had been torn off and now was replaced by dirt and gravel. Hmmm.. not good. Blood was running pretty freely as well and since the shop wasn't open I wasn't too sure of what I was going to do.

Jay remembered the putt putt golf course that was up the road so that was going to be our first try. We had some rags in the back of some one's car so I wrapped my hands in them and jumped in Jay's car. It didn't take long for us to get there and we went blasting in to find two teenage girls working the counter. I wasn't really sure what to do so I just held up my bloody palms and asked can I use your bathroom? The look on their face was priceless. They didn't say a word just pointed in the direction of their bathrooms.

We made a bee line for the facilities and when we got in there I hesitated. I turn to Jay and say "man this is going hurt". Jay responds with "Of course it is, but stick them in there and get it done." He turns on the water and I put my hands under the water, making me yell out and probably cry a little bit. I'll admit it, that shit hurt. "OWWWWW" .. "OWWW that hurts" Then we stop, and look right at each other, imagine what someone outside this bathroom would be thinking. If you heard that coming out of a bathroom you are about to enter! We bust out laughing, I finish cleaning my hands and dig out as much of the gravel as I can. They are starting to numb over so it's not hurting too bad now. I dry them up as much as I can and we walking out to the front counter. The girls are still just staring at us, until one gets the courage to ask "Are you ok?"

"Yeah, sure, no problem...
Wouldn't happen to have a band aid would you?