Bitten
“Is that bad?” I said to Large Harry, the local BMX hard-nut legend as I sat on the back of our cheap car rental usa on my first tour. Large Harry took a screwdriver and shoved it in the gash in my skin, and he prodded it about. Blood and sweat dribbled out and dripped on to the dirt. The gash had opened up, so two flaps of skin flapped about in the breeze that came through the trees.
“No, it’s fine, stop complaining you woos!” said Harry, “I’ve had much worse!”
Large Harry had had much worse – doing much worse was one of the things he did best (he didn’t do many things best so it was understandable he didn’t want to lose out on this accolade). Now, because of that he didn’t do sympathy. But being as this was the first time I had crashed and torn in to my leg with a pedal (and only thirteen years of age and not used to the manly world of BMX yet), I was in dire need of some.
All because of the pedals–they were made by Odyssey and the grip on them was called Shark Bite.
And it was a Shark Bite.
Normal pedals had pins. Shark Bites were made of razor sharp metal teeth, great for gripping with, but also perfect as lethal weapons. But it didn’t matter what anyone said to me, I loved those pedals. When they were good they were amazing–but when they were bad they were really quite evil!
I ran those pedals for three long summers and three hideous BMX interrupting winters. At the end of it I buried them in the garden, which is probably where they still are. “Goodbye my evil friends,” I said. “We had good times, didn’t we?”
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