We are back to visiting the skate(scooter)park every day after school and, often, at least once on a weekend day.
John Michael remains dedicated to improving and he certainly is doing so. He will, generally, work on one trick for the 90 minutes of after school time we have. I thought I’d include a series of him learning the “Superman”. When he completes this, he will lift his scooter while he is in the air and grab the deck (he’s got this part down), push the scooter in front of him while he is flying forward, then land on the deck and continue on. Not easy.
One day a few weeks ago, a professional rider was there practicing one trick – amazing. Check out the photo and see the muscularity this involves. Then the video. The crowd went nuts when he successfully landed this. He was also great with the scooter kids. He talked to them and signed their scooters!
kc, John Michael, Mary Pat and I drove up to Mammoth Lakes  at the end of August. Peg and Chuck flew in for a few days and then Billy joined us for the end of the week. It was unfortunate that Peg and Chuck were not able to be there during Billy’s time. We had a great time riding in the bike park (except for a few falls), in the local area, touring the area and playing dominos.
We had beautiful weather and, except for one day, few people on the mountain. Some of us visited Mono Lake and saw its unique features with the Sierra range in the background.
John Michael did some epic rides, really pushing himself. He learned a lot from Billy and did his best to match his cousin, who he thinks is the greatest. Â It surprised me when John Michael said he wanted to do a ropes course which was in the central area of the Mammoth Lakes bike park. He has always, previously rejected height-related activities. The course was VERY difficult for someone his height and he was terrified at points (not as much as Aunt Peg and Mom, however), but he persevered and completed it. There is a video series at the bottom.
Peg had a pretty bad spill on the Off The Top trail and bruised and scraped her knee and elbow. I fell on the same trail two days later, suffered less severe physically, but broke my bike, permanently.
It was terrific to spend time with Peg, Chuck & Billy riding bikes, eating good food, drinking local beer and playing dominos!
I’ll put two different image galleries in this post, photos and videos.
Thanks to Peg for sending me some of her photos.
The videos will be below the photos.
On the ride back from the Mammoth lakes, John Michael pulled off one of the greatest bikes saves of all time – check out his reaction! https://vimeo.com/293847287/313512b904
Here John Michael leads Billy, kc and me down the Off the Top trail, the highest starting and longest trail in the park. https://vimeo.com/295060388/a38b52cc9b
On one particularly difficult day, John Michael was struggling with the effort, but pulled-up on the trail and would not proceed unless he could try the difficult side trail Billy had taken! https://vimeo.com/293850097/1c4c8e0865
John Michael was getting itchy about scooters and wanting something new. Instead, we decided to customize one of his current scooters, the Lucky.
We bought this when his Madd Gear scooter’s fork broke. The fork on the Lucky broke about three weeks later – he is taking huge jumps that scooters of this level (pretty damn good!) just are not built to handle. The Scooter Farm, where he bought the Lucky, gave us a more robust fork. (Later Madd Gear also sent us a better fork.)
Anyway, the Lucky was pretty beat up and covered with partially scratched-off stickers and looked terrible.
John Michael and I bought spray paint from Home Depot and then “we” got the stickers off, disassembled it, sanded it down, cleaned it with solvents, sprayed the various parts and reassembled it.
He’s pretty happy, I like it, the kids at the park are totally impressed.
