It never hurts to have new ideas for working on bike handling skills. One skill mountain bikers often work on is riding narrow planks to improve their steering and mental focus. The penalty for falling off those features is sometimes a bit scary, especially if the beams are well up in the air.
For today’s Throwback Thursday, we have a couple of videos that force riders to use the same skills, but provide a much more comfortable landing should they fall off the narrow path. As a bonus, if you are looking for a new bike this year, the second video has some ideas for your new custom ride.
Staying High and Dry
The first is from a festival in Indonesia where riders try to ride the narrow path along a winding plank. If you watch the full clip, one of the brave bikers actually makes it the entire way through and there is also what appears to be a premature post-up as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIvX0s-ceHk
Cycle It Into the Water
The second video comes from the Dutch show “Te Land, Ter Zee En In De Lucht,” which is similar to the Red Bull Flugtag in that competitors make their own crafts to tackle competitions on land, at sea and in the air.
One of the competitions in the 1980s was “Fiets ‘m ‘r in,” (translation: Cycle it into the water) where instead of flying above the water, competitors used their custom bicycles to ride along a narrow beam, trying to make it from one piece of land to the other. Needless to say, there were a lot of interesting rides and amusing splash-downs.
The only real question we have left is which of these designs is going to make it to the 2019 North American Handmade Bike Show?
For more blasts from the past, see our Throwback Thursday archive.
