"Andy, you're gonna biff!"

Andy Prescott… wipeout? Not a chance: he was stoked. He glanced back at Tres.

"No way, dude!"

"Andy-look out!"

He turned back, and his heart almost stopped.

Uh-oh.

Just ahead, three white-haired women stood huddled together right in the middle of the trail.

For Christ's sake, not a tea party on a back trail!

Andy was going too fast to stop in time and there wasn't enough room on the narrow trail to go around them: to his left was the sheer rock wall of the escarpment; to his right the abyss of the ravine. If he plowed into the senior citizens at that speed, he'd kill them for sure. But if he veered off the trail, he'd fly down the ravine and kill himself.

The women saw him-he tried to wave them off the trail-but they stood frozen in place, like deer caught in headlights, terrified at the bike and rider hurtling at them at high speed. One screamed. She looked like his mother.

Andy said, "Aw, shit," cut the handlebars hard to the right just a split second before impact, and rode straight off the trail-and the Earth. He caught big air. He was now flying through the blue sky and enjoying an incredible panoramic view from high above the greenbelt, suddenly free of all worldly constraints, and he experienced an awesome nirvanic sensation… until gravity clicked in.

He dropped fast.

He looked down and saw the Earth rushing toward him. He pushed down on the pedals and pulled up on the bars as if doing a wheelie so the bike's rear tire would hit the ground first; he had a momentary vision of actually riding the bike down the ravine. But that vision proved fleeting when the back tire caught a gnarly stump immediately upon reentry, which yanked the front tire down abruptly, which threw him forward over the handlebars, which sent him endo; he executed several flawless albeit involuntary three-sixties before crashing through tree limbs and landing on his CamelBak. But the ride wasn't over. He bounced hard, and his momentum took him tumbling like a rag doll down the ravine and through thick juniper bushes and across the lower trail. He heard Tres' voice from above-"Andy!" — just before he hit the water of Sculpture Falls.