Well, after being here for 107 days, and only 44 days to go, we all decided it was time to step it up a gear. Ems, Carol and Mel are hitting the blue kickers, barrel jump, boxes and also starting to get grabs. Dom, Stu and me have started hitting the reds on a frequent basis, to the point where the blues are no longer a challenge, until I try and spin off them. After hitting the red, we decided to look at the black, as it seemed like the natural progression, this still did not make it into the season targets as it looks amazingly intimidating, and the only people hitting it seemed to be the guys pulling an array of aerial trickery…I have no idea about names but I am sure there was probably a cork mctwist rodeo 540 cab in there somewhere….

Dom kindly suggested hitting the Chappelle Park red jumps on monday, so we did, and it scared me, it got my heart going more than the Arrare Park red jumps, so I hit all 3 in rythme and all was good… until tuesday, when Dom said about looking at the black jump in the Arrare Park…I laughed…but to humour him, I took a dummy run up to the jump, to be met with what looked like a wall, not a jump, the launch ramp was huge and a long way out of my ability, or so I thought… I ducked out and just looked at the jump in awe of its size. I took another dummy run at it to see what kind of speed I needed. Someone told me to just go straight at it… so I plucked up the courage, as did Dom and we both hit it…hearts pounding more than ever before!

I went a little too fast for my first run and had no idea what to do with all the time I had in the air, so I thought I would flap a little bit as you can see in the video, I have never jumped anything that size before and I think it is pretty obvious I need a wee bit of practice. I need to bend my knees more on landing and not just give up…so with a little less speed I managed to land the next 2 runs at the black jump. I still cannot really believe I did it…