I tried researching how it became a thing. Who's bright idea was it to put bicycle wheels on a scooter and say "I want to zoom down a mountain on this"? I really have no idea when or how it happened. The only thing I could find is that there are races and even a world championship for these big scooters, also known as footbikes.
Of course, I was like, "well, cool! This looks fun." However, I did not know exactly how tough they were to handle. It's not like riding a bicycle.
Let me back up a bit. This was an activity that I was provided with by Czech Tourism on the blogger FAM trip I did in the Jeseniky Mountains of the Czech Republic. You can Czech out some of my other videos from this trip here and here. After spending the night in a TV transmitter tower at the top of a mountain, we went to the next mountain over where there is a reservoir dug out of the peak to produce hydroelectric power. From there, we picked out our death scooters to get us down this mountain. But it was nice that they were in bright and happy colors to make you feel better about your life decision. Just be sure to pick one out that has functioning brakes because one of our group had one where they barely worked. Oh, and then they give you a little pamphlet with emergency numbers on them and then say "have fun".
So, I was on my happy little way on my two wheels trying to capture some footage of the experience... with a GoPro stick in my hand... this was my first mistake. I soon found out that there is no room on these things for anything less than full concentration and both hands on the handlebars and both brakes being utilized.
So I wiped out.
Me flying through the air apparently accepting the fate I walked right into
It could have been A LOT worse, but yeah... I could quickly pick myself back up and keep going and that's what I did, receiving tissues and Polysporin along the way. Also visiting the medic's office once I got to the bottom where they applied some sort of second skin type thing that was a really pretty blue-green color that didn't wash off. So I had sort of a temporary tattoo.
I guess, the moral of this story is to test out a new toy before using one of your hands to film the experience. The more you know...
Would you ride a scooter down a mountain?
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