I posted this status message yesterday:

Just came from Maarat; love the part when I endo’ed and Paul caught my bike instead of me; priorities nga naman kse di ba? ;)

I hadn’t realized that amusing as it was, some of the more scrutinizing readers/bikers might wonder “how the hell does one even get into a situation where one is able to be ‘caught’ after flying off his bike in the first place?” Good point, so here’s the lowdown of what happened…

We were basically going down a single-track path towards the Nursery.¹ I was following Bruno, who was going down at a fairly quick pace. That was well and good, except for the fact that it was my first time taking that route; I hadn’t anticipated the sudden changes in steepness and lack of traction² at some parts. Given I was trailing too close to Bruno, I would soon find out that I didn’t have the luxury of slowing down as gradually as I would’ve wanted to.

It was quite unnerving because I was conscious enough to let up on the brakes to keep from flying off the bars, but the incline would just increase my speed dramatically whenever I would disengage long enough to let my rear hit the ground again.

In hindsight, I guess I probably should’ve just tried skidding all the way with my rear brakes, but I think I would have washed out given the loose dirt. In any case, it was plain and simple; I was going too fast on an incline I’ve never ridden before – an arrogant mistake I hope to remember never to repeat.

Anyways, so I was probably able to feel my rear tires lift about 3 times, and recover before I finally realized that I really had to stop. So I just tried an emergency dismount during that “last lift” of the rear wheels. The trouble was, it all happened at a steep incline as well. So while I didn’t quite “fly over the handle” in the strictest sense, I dismounted with enough momentum to have me “flying” alongside my bike – approaching Paul; who had “stationed” himself to take a picture of us going down.³ The bike was closer to him, so that’s what he “caught.”

And there you have it, the situation which allowed someone to be able to “catch” anything during a downhill run. A bit terrifying for sure,⁴ but immensely enjoyable trail ride.