By little you mean ten feet tall correct. I learned what ever you do hold on to the bike. Those hurt to land on with your balls in the water
I had two notable fuckups on that front.
Fuckup #1:
We had two hills adjacent to our backyard that butted up against some unincorporated property that would later become a subdivision.
The two hills were named "Little hill" and "Big hill".
They formed something like a plateau over a big stretch of land in front of them which we called "paradise place" in Whitehouse, TX circa 1995.
The crest of little hill was ~5ft above the terrain of "paradise place" AKA the subdivision, which was mostly flat except for the sewer system which was also a fun ride full of brown recluse and probably other shit I didn't care much about at the time.
Big hill was a good 10ft or so taller than little hill.
I'd been jumping little hill for several years before I ever attempted to mess with big hill. I racked my nuts numerous times on little hill, but the first time I hit big hill I went full-pedal on that motherfucker all the way from the top of the old folks' driveway which was an EVEN TALLER hill something like 100 yards away.
Here's this ~8 year old kid on a new huffy that's just a tad too big for him pedaling as fast as he can toward this hill that on the launch side was not substantial, but a decent ramp that'd get you airborne, followed by a good drop of something like 15 feet to the flat land below it.
I hit that motherfucker and what seemed like forever later, I landed on both wheels at the same time, and the fuckin' pedals broke. Never been racked so bad before or since, but up until my wife got the first ultrasound that showed that she was unquestionably pregnant, I was pretty concerned I might not have been able to get the job done because of that choice I made way back when.
Fuckup #2
Same new huffy, with the pedals from my old bike now on it, I decided to launch again from the neighbor's driveway off of big hill which now had a hastily yet sturdily crafted ramp that was ~5 feet long and something like 4ft high right before the crest of big hill. A substantial gain on altitude.
I'd gotten pretty good at landing jumps off of big hill by this time and wasn't really concerned about anything. I'd also test-jumped the scrap ramp we built a few times and knew it was solid.
I hit that motherfucker, and damn if shit didn't get weird... I separated from the bike and managed to land my left knee on the rear axle bolt. The strangest part about it was, it didn't even hurt all that bad. It started bleeding pretty well after while, but I was able to keep it hidden from my parents. Didn't even get yelled at.
The scar is still pretty visible 20 something years later.
The only water launches I got to enjoy were into creek beds. Lake time was all about fishing.
