Today my mom and I were going to drop my sister off at her gymnastics practice. I needed something to do while my mom went to a meeting. So I suggested a skate park called North Coast Free Ride.

On weekdays there are mostly beginners there so I was not going to be embarrassed by falling a lot. I went right out to the corner ramp and started jumping off it. After a while I saw the square ramp and I thought I could make it over on my first try. But as I started going up the ramp I started to find out that it was much more of a challenge and right before I got to the top of the ramp I landed on the thing that no guy wants to land on. The owner Levey came over and said, "You should start on easier jumps and work your way up. It is like the saying you must crawl before you walk."

I took his advice and went back to some simpler jumps. As I was doing those jumps I started to become afraid of the square ramp. Plus I was worried that I would hurt myself very badly. After a little while I went up to a friend of mine who I met at the skate park and asked what was it like jumping the box ramp. He told me it was a piece of cake and he learned it the first time he came to North Coast Free Ride. He showed me how it was done and just like him I had the hang of it right off the bat. But after a little while the unthinkable happened. I jumped and missed the ramp and hurt my ankle very badly. It started to bleed a little bit then it got worse so I had to stop riding for about fifteen minutes. When I got back on my bike I was much more careful about not missing the ramp again. After an hour of working on jumping the ramp, my mom arrived and said she needed some pictures to show her friends on Facebook. Once all that was over, Levey walked over to my mom and told her how amazed he was because I hit and landed every ramp there plus it was my first time there. So I left with confidence because I knew that when I returned I would not be afraid of falling off or missing the square ramp.