Why Would You Do A BMX Trick

Have you seen BMX Trick riders? If you have then you probably have held your breath in amazement watching as these young daredevils perform unimaginable feats of skill and daring; BMX stands for Bicycle Moto Cross. Many use the bike for transportation, but for many it was created for one purpose alone, 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 the practice of people in their right mind? Would you allow your teenage son to challenge death? Would you take your son's bike away from him? Would he find another way to express his lack of fear is he did not have his BMX bike?

Perhaps video games have something to do with teens resorting to their bikes to tempt fate. Those on the bikes may have gotten tired of all the blood and violence depicted in today's computerized video games and have decided to experience the thrill and excitement they see on the screen.

In some cultures boys in Africa look forward to jumping off a sixty foot tower with a vine tied to their ankle. The vine is long enough to break their fall inches from the ground. Sometimes though the vine is a few feet too long and the boy hits the ground. The boy waits thirteen years to perform this feat of manhood.

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.