Jumping forward

I was at a thing yesterday and some guys were jumping bikes over ramps and doing tricks. I ride motorbikes but not like these truly bonkers chaps who were jumping a distance of seventy five feet between ramps and reaching heights of forty five feet at their highest point. Powering a motorcycle towards a one metre wide ramp and flying that far and that high then landing on a five metre wide landing ramp is impressive...oh, and they were doing backflips and other such tricks in the air in between. Yeah, cool.

They're professionals, one was in the original Crusty Demons crew, a fully-bonkers bunch of chaps who did some fucken crazy shit on motorbikes, and the other was a young lad of twenty two. They put on a great show and drew a massive crowd of spectators.

After one of their shows I got to speak with the older of the two and it was great to hear about the fellow's journey from riding dirt bikes on his family farm as a kid, making his own ramps and doing jumps and tricks, to performing on the world stage...he's actually in the Guinness Book of World Records as the first guy to back-flip a Harley Davidson...his name is Kain Saul. Anyway, as you might imagine he's suffered some pretty serious injuries along the way and there he was going bonkers on his bike over an over. That's dedication, drive, persistence, grit and many other things besides. (Might be stupidity...but I prefer to call it passion).

We all face challenges in life some, seemingly, insurmountable, and it's really easy to give up...one just has to stop, but in stopping one removes any chance of success, the opportunity to learn through trial and error, failure itself, and to reach forward for things that, while incredibly difficult, often return such positive and amazing results, even if that result is self respect, confidence, satisfaction and a better understanding of oneself. It's usually the difficult things that bring the greatest rewards....but one has to stick it out, persist, work hard.

The chap flying through the air in the photo above didn't quit when things got tough and has reaped the rewards of that effort - paid a price for it too. The rest of us, well, we often don't need to put our wellbeing or lives on the line to gain those things, they can often be gained just by applying a little more effort, digging a little deeper and persisting when things get a little difficult. Sometimes stepping forward isn't enough and jumping forward is a better option.