Jerry Moffatt - Revelations by Jerry Moffatt

Author:Jerry Moffatt [Moffatt, Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Autobiography, Biography, Climbing, Mountaineering, Sports, Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9781906148409
Google: AKisAwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00796E3K6
Publisher: Vertebrate Digital
Published: 2011-09-30T23:00:00+00:00

NINE

Out of the Fire

Professor Feldmaier looked at me through his enormous glasses.

‘I am hopeful, Jerry, very hopeful.’

Feldmaier’s office in the Olympic hospital in Munich was bright, its white walls covered in medical certificates, white shelves carefully filled with textbooks and folders, and a white desk with my file on it. I was wearing a T-shirt and we both looked down at the long scars, still with their scabbed-up stitches, that ran down the outside of my elbows.

‘But these are early stages still. Of course you must do rehabilitation exercises, which I have already detailed and you will come here to the hospital to do them on the days I have told you. But it is also very important that you take it easy and relax. I’m sure you can find some way of doing that.’

I had recently bought myself a Suzuki GSXR1100, the fastest production bike available at the time. It was a beautiful machine, red and black, and it went like a rocket. Since buying it, I had been riding constantly through the beautiful countryside on the outskirts of Munich, getting better, faster and more confident all the time.

I shook the professor’s hand and thanked him for all his help.

‘Yes, Professor, I’m sure I can find something to do.’

It was now coming into summer and the sun seemed to shine every day. On the outskirts of Munich, a long road wound steeply up a hill known as Kesselberg. The Kesselberg road was the best I have ever ridden on and there was a great biking scene there. Every evening, sixty, seventy, even a hundred bikers would gather and race up and down. The road switched back and forward for five and a half miles, hairpin running into hairpin. There was a long, sweeping bend where everyone would gather, park their bikes and sit on the hill behind in the evening sunshine to watch riders go by. It was perfectly cambered, with a cross on the verge where a biker had been killed taking the bend. It always had flowers on it. And it was here I got my knee down for the first time.

Getting your knee down is a way of keeping more control and stability over the bike when cornering at high speed. You must get your feet up on the foot rests and slide right down on the side of the bike. You actually hook the inside of your knee over the seat and hang off that. The other knee, being so low down, is actually on the road. It’s an incredible feeling and the first time you do it is a kind of rite of passage. I had been psyching for this for a while.

Modern leather suits have integral kneepads for protection, but at the time, these were still specialist equipment. I had been in touch with the makers of the Fire rock boots who sponsored me and they sent over two pads of the hardwearing boot rubber. Having taped these pads onto my suit, I was ready.

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