bunny hop

An interesting thing happened Monday while biking home from dropping the rent off. I suddenly came across a deep pothole traveling at hi speeds. (I was going at high speed, not the pothole.) I must not have been paying attention, because usually I would see these things in advance, and swerve out of the way. Not having time to take evasive action, I popped the front tire up, to minimize the jolting and potential damage. That’s when the strange thing happened. Instead of just my front tire coming up, my rear wheel also followed, allowing me to clear the menacing hole with my back tire just barely glancing off the opposite edge. I had just inadvertently done my first bunny hop.

Despite having some mountain biking experience, this was always one thing I could never get the hang of, despite practicing. Granted, I think the road bike makes it a little easier, being lighter and having drop bars whose shape provide significantly more torque to lift the rear. Regardless, I was very excited and starting practicing, realizing that I could easily jump the rear wheel at will. I now see how the fix speed riders are able to do those skid stops. Neither of my tires touched a manhole on the rest of the way home, until I suddenly got a rear wheel flat. Looked like a pinch, two large pin holes a ½ cm apart, no sharp objects in the tire, most likely caused by jumping with an improperly inflated tube. The next day though, coming back from work, I flawlessly jumped over a bunch of garbage in the bike lane without even thinking about it, and that was with a laptop and panniers weighing down the back.

As visions of parallel curb hops, and skid stops dance through my head………