| What is your favorite BMX Trick? If you watch this exciting sport, you know that the teens who perform these remarkable feats of daring and skill, have no fear. BMX is short for Bicycle Moto Cross. The bike was made as a means of transportation. But BMX makes their bike for trick riding. There are national BMX championships and the sport grows in popularity each year. BMX riders are usually in their teens, no doubt too young to realize their own mortality. When you watch these spirited youth do somersaults on their bikes with abandon, you have to know that they do not think about death or even injury. Instead they think about outdoing the last guy to fly down the ramp, or the last fellow to spin in the air while standing on the bicycle seat. This is not a sport for the feint of heart. One brave soul shown on an internet video on a popular social media site, launches off a ramp and soars through the air from one three story building to the next. He must clear a distance of at least eighty feet between the two buildings in order to avoid a three story fall. Is this rational? Should there be a law against it; would you let your teenage son try this feat? People have challenged death ever since the wheel was invented. And if teens did not have BMX bikes to challenge death and disaster with, they would find another vehicle for their excitement. Maybe the video games are to blame. The video games today are filled with blood, gore, and violence. Perhaps the kids who play these games are acting out what they see on their computer screens. But teens have been looking for thrills and excitement long before video games were invented. In come cultures in Africa boys are required to leap off sixty foot towers with a vine tied to his ankle that is long enough to stop his fall inches before he hits the ground. Sometimes the vine is a few feet to long and the boy slams against the ground. It only takes one jump for the boy to realize he is now a man. Perhaps we should have the same kind of ritual for these teenagers who need to prove their manhood by riding a little bike through the air. But until then, BMX will continue to make bikes and teenage boys will ride them through the air in order to prove they are BMX champions. BMX trick riders continue to amaze watchers who have seen the strength of the young athletes. A street BMX version is available for general riding, but it may also be used to try feats of daring. |
