Mark Flynn, Jon Murphy and I ride together on a regular basis. The three of us are good, but not exceptional riders. We can't do track stands, wheelies, bunny hops, or hop turns (see comments at bottom), but we have mastered the art of log jumping. And, we owe it all to David T.Blake, who you can contact at dblake@keck.ucsf.edu. I posted on the rec.bicycles.off-road newsgroup, asking for advice on log jumping.

I got many great replies but Dave's input seemed to put everything in perspective. He made it crystal clear that the body must be "forward" on the approach and lift-off. That makes the difference between success and failure.We setup practice logs of various sizes and started our practice sessions. The first few sessions, we were still banging the chainring into the logs because we were so uncomfortable with placing the body weight forward. Once we bought into this body forward concept, everything just fell into place and we were on our way.

Here is a summary of the steps as presented to us by Dave Blake

A. The Approach: Body forward with shoulders above the handlebars. Press down firmly to load the suspension/tires.

B.The Lift-off: Lift the front wheel with the arms, do NOT move the body back from its very forward position. On bigger logs, the stem should be close to your sternum as the front wheel hits the top of the log.

C. The Thrust/Launch:As soon as the front wheel hits the top of the log, hop up and forward, thrusting the handlebars forward and down with a twisting action. The hopping action should lift the rear wheel so the bike is "level" as it starts to pass over the log. The bike should pass thru your legs so that when the front wheel starts down the back side of the log, your weight is all the way back behind the seat.

D. The Landing:Arms should be fully outstretched and the body fully behind the seat. Hold the front wheel straight and stay off the brakes. The rear wheel will follow.We also found that lowering the seat is a good idea during the learning process, as that makes it easier for the seat to pass thru your legs as you prepare for the landing.

When i wrote this in the fall of 1999, we could not track stand or "hop" or do wheelies. Since then, with the help of our 14 year old friends, we have learned to do a half way decent track stand and hop. We now have a page for these trail worthy tricks (dumb bike tricks link from the home page). :-)