A Loop-out
Before I start, a small amount of background information is needed. You can wheelie a dirt bike, in fact sometime in your life you have probably seen someone wheelie something in two wheels. It is dangerous and could, and probably will, lead to injuries. When you pull a bike up to do a wheelie, you “blip” the gas in order to pull the front wheel up, and tap the brake for the front wheel to go down. You have a very small balance point to be able to balance your bike in to be able to keep it up without losing balance or falling out of the wheelie. A loop-out is when you blip the throttle too hard and you go over backwards onto your back and the bike does whatever it pleases with no rider to control it anymore. Resulting in damage to both you and your bike.
Mason’s Loop-out
I want to jump right in with a detailed story about Mason’s incident. Mason is not a very experienced rider. I have tried to teach him as much as possible because I have been around Dirt Bikes my whole life, and would consider myself a pretty skilled rider. Riding takes a lot of skill to master, but one of the greatest skills to have on a dirt bike is mental composure. These machines have a ton of jerking power distributed straight to the ground. When you are in the moment, you can panic very easily causing you pain, most of the time a lot of it. So Mason is out on a jolly joyride and he decides he wants to do a wheelie. Nothing that shouldn’t be a walk in the park for him at this point. Mason pulls the front end up, he falls out of balance point quickly, so he has to act fast to pull the front tire up again back into balance point.
I must make a small note for the reader. This tool pictured to my right is the rear brake fixture on a dirt bike. The tool that makes you not slide down the road on your back. Anyway, one piece of information I passed down was that when wheelie-ing, you must always keep a mental note of where this is in comparison to your foot, because you need to be able to hit that to not loop out and slide down the road on your back.
As I was saying, Mason has fell out of balance point. So he blips the throttle to bring his tire up. The problem was he didn’t so much “blip” the throttle as much as he just absolutely “gripped” the throttle. The bike shoots upward and now he went from way below balance point to way above balance point in like point 4826 seconds. So just like I told Mason not to do, he panics. The normal rider would have hit the brakes, like I told Mason to do, but he had no idea where is lever was because he panicked so hard his feet blew off the pegs, just like I told him not to do. The bike never stopped rotating and Mason stained the pavement with the back of his helmet and jersey. I Mason’s bike is starring in ghost rider as it is riding down the street looking for its master. Mason managed to collect his thoughts, tears, and bike and return home with minor scratches on his back and major wounds to his dignity. His bike suffered a small crack in the back fender which costs about 20 dollars to replace. This is Mason’s Loop-out story.
Full Throttle or No Throttle 