MOTO LIFE

Week 1.

Brain Storm

Motorcross - how I started to where I see myself in the future
Foot Injury - the situation, how it happened when I will be fully healed
Family - how I am involved, how I help and commit to my family
Choose a Concept

In a non-fiction narrative, one may change but not their goals, a timeline story.
Week 2.

Develop Main Character

Ryker Ammons, beginning started in 2010 in Washington State
Week 3.

Create a Detailed Outline of the Plot

In the beginning- I will answer the question of “How was I introduced to the sport?”, and when I became most involved as a child. I will introduce my family and friends, explaining their input and effect on me.
Near the middle- The story will show how my life outside of motocross affected my performance, like school, friends, relationships, grades, etc. I will also start to ease into my major injury.
Towards the end, My injury will be dropped, and we will have to take the reader through my appointments, the stress, the habits I had to change, and the things taken from me for so long. “I thought it would end my career”. I will show the recovery and where I see myself in the near and far future.
Week 4.

Break down the story into Key Scenes or Chapters

Chapter One- Introducing myself, and my family (Ryker, Reece, Rae, and Rick)
Chapter Two-” How was I introduced to the dirtbike?” 
Chapter Three- My life outside (School, friends, relationships, grades)
Chapter Four- Races, tracks, etc (when it was all normal, what was it like for you?)
Chapter Five- The crash (where were you, what did you plan on doing, how did it happen, what did it feel like?)
Chapter Six- The hospital, stress, and change (the rush, the pain, where you go first, how your daily tasks changed when you were sent home, the surgeries, the doctors, the medication)
Chapter Seven- Recovery and Future (are you getting better, when do you see yourself fully healed, where do you see yourself when you are healed)

Week 5.

Further Develop Characters, Including Backstory and Motivations

Ryker- A witty 17-year-old, with a great passion for racing dirtbikes, he had a severe injury almost ended his career. He has motivation from his family members and close friends. He has been riding since he was three years old.
Reece- Rykers younger brother, a supporting child who follows after his brother's passions. Reece has been riding as long as he has known and wants to be just like Ryker. 
Rick and Rae- The supporting parents of these children, who are there for them as much as they can be. Rae, the school's lunch lady and everyones favorite, is a passionate and motivating spirit. On the other hand, Rick is strict and keeps the boys in line, making sure they are doing what they need to do, to become better.
Serafina- A developmental character for Ryker, whom he meets later, but makes a large impact on the way he develops as a person. 

Refine the Outline based on Character Development

We meet Ryker and his parents. The reader will learn how Rick put ryker into his hobby, and how Ryker immediately fell in love with it. Through trial and error, we will see how Ryker becomes better and has his downfalls. The story will show how big of an impact Reece's birth had on this family. Ryker and his family will be traveling, while he has elementary school breaks.
Ryker has become a teenager, better at the sport than ever. He is very involved with sports and school along with his passion for dirtbikes. These distractions start to take Ryker down a different path, doing dumb high school stuff with kids his age. This is where Ryker meets Sera. This is where he has his major injury, causing a jump and breaking his entire left foot.
By this point, we are reading about Ryker's experience of the crash, and how the surgeries were going. Ryker goes through recovery for months on end, switching between casts, boots, metal screws, crutches, all you can think of. A year later he is still waiting for the final surgeries. 

Week 6.

Finalize the Outline

Set Specific Writing Goals

I will sit down twice a week to write this story.

My name is Ryker Ammons. I was born in 2006, in Mount Vernon, Washington, to a couple looking to start a family.  I grew up in a loving home with my parents. Rick and Rae Ammons, my mom and dad, are the reason I am so invested in my sports today. My mom is the ‘life of the party’ type of woman, she is always sharing joy and is always pushing me to do my best. My dad, Rick, is a strong and strict man. He is always teaching me new things on my bike and how to work on the bike itself. I was a wild boy who loved playing with toy dirt bikes in the flower beds while my mom did yard work. When I was 3, my mom opened a daycare and watched five kids in our home all day. I had someone to play with at all times. This same year, my dad got me into riding four-wheelers, even though I was little I loved riding with my dad through fields and dunes. Before I was born, both my parents rode four-wheelers in the woods, and my dad grew up riding dirt bikes in the woods with his friends. My parents have always helped me grow into things that I liked, like basketball and baseball, but I still liked riding dirt bikes more than anything else. The next year, when my fourth birthday came around, my dad bought me my first dirt bike, and I loved it (to say the least). I didn't need the training wheels for very long, I had great balance already from riding normal bikes when I was much younger. In 2011, my baby brother Reece was born, and when he was about 6 months old, he got a power wheel 4-wheeler, just like I had when I was his age. I was only five, as much as I was grateful to have a baby brother, I was also so jealous. But thats besides the point, because I loved teaching Reece how to ride, holding on, and watching him run around in my riding gear. I am five years older than him, so he looks up to me and wants to do everything just like me, or better, which will never happen.

You may be asking, “How did you get introduced to motocross anyway?” or maybe you are thinking “Why did you stick with it”. Well, like I said before, my parents were very involved in that type of stuff of course, ill follow in their footsteps. I always found racing and the adrenaline of it all so ambitiously exciting. The crowds, the people, the excitement, I loved it all. This was before racing myself, where all I was able to do was watch the professionals do their job, and man did they do it well. As soon as I watched my first pro supercross race, I told myself, “That will be me one day, one day I will be so good that I inspire others just like these talented men”. These racers were my role models, and other than my dad they taught me all I need to know about racing.

My dad had always grown up riding dirt bikes and four-wheelers when he was young too, so to no surprise he did the same with me. Rick did a lot of trail riding and stuck through it as an adult, and his friends still loved trail riding even after creating families and starting their own lives. My dad had friends with kids my age, since I was the first born I was one of the older kids, so they started me out riding four-wheelers. But I already talked about that, its not too important anyways. My dads friends would turn down the throttle on the four-wheelers, tie a rope on the back, and hook the other end to their four-wheelers. So if any of us got out of control, they could hit the brakes and stop us kids from crashing or getting hurt. I was introduced to dirt bikes the same way, they trained us on 4-wheelers and regular bikes, before we stepped onto the real thing. When I started getting better and more sturdy on a dirt bike, I liked it much more than four-wheelers and stuck with it. My dad started teaching me about track riding and trail riding and how different they both are, but I enjoyed both. Racing is a lot different compared to trail riding, and some people don't understand the difference between them. Track riding requires you to have a lot of different skills. Like how important it is to know what speed you need to go for different jumps, your body positioning in the air after you go off the jump. Then theres whoops, that are a bunch of small jumps super close together in a straight away, for these you need to stay steady on the throttle all the way through them, one touch of to much throttle could send you flying off the back of the bike, and a little to less throttle could send you over the front of your bike, and let me tell you now, it’s not the best feeling getting thrown off your dirtbike. You also need to know that there are more people in your way than just yourself and that a single mistake could get yourself and everyone else near you hurt. That one tiny mistake could cause you to take someone out, knocking them off their bike or even off the track completely. Even tho a part of racing is to take others out so you can win or even just get passed them to move up a placement, personally I still feel really bad if I do it because I worry I could hurt someone or even worse I could mess up and hurt myself. Racing on a track with a bunch of others, causes the dirt to create rutts. Rutts are lines dug into the dirt on the track that form when riders ride over the same line over and over. They can cause the dirtbike to be jerked around and be thrown over if you don’t come into them with a good amount of speed, or if you come into them un even it can cause you to do a thing called crossrutting, crossrutting is where one of your tires is in the rut and your other tire is out of the rut, causing your balance to be offcentered and your bike will get less traction. 

Now on the other hand,trail riding is more terrain, slowing yourself down to go down hill or speeding yourself up to go up the hill. At certain points you want to stand up and sit down to even out your balance in certain areas, going down hill your standing up most of the time and squeezing your bike with your legs so your back end of your bike doesn’t slide out, now going up hill is different, at the beginning you want to be sitting down to get more traction coming up to the hill climb but as you get higher you want to stand up and lean forward so you can keep your front end from coming up and throwing you off the back of the bike. Then theres also trying to avoid rocks and logs, which can throw you into a tree or off the trail. There isn’t much you can do to avoid bigger rocks in the middle of trails, they kind of just pop up out of no where and sometimes you will get lucky and just go right over them and sometimes they will get you causing your front tire to slide out. On the other hand logs are pretty easy to counter in my opinion, all you have to do is keep your speed and pop your front end up and you will go right over them. For both trail and track riding, balance is key always, this is very important. When racing or trail riding, you need to know when to be on or off your seat, or what position you need to be in while on the bike. For example, you should keep weight towards the front of your dirtbike when your starting a race so when you go your front end doesn’t come up but there are times where your front end will come up and all you have to do to bring it down is barely tap your clutch. But if you take a corner, its reccommended to sit, but as you progress you will start to notice that standing half way through the corner then sitting on the way out will get you a lot more traction and will be a lot easier to carry your speed throughout the whole corner. Trail riding will help you on the track for racing, so it is good to do both because of the different kinds of mud, dirt, and rain, you need to prepare for. My dad started me racing at the Hanagan Race Track in Bellingham Washington when I was six years old,  I wasn't very good, but I had to remember it was just my first year. I wasn’t confident in myself at all, so I didn't do anything I wasn’t comfortable with so it seemed to pointless. After that I stuck with trail riding for a while because thats where I had started, thats what I knew. My dad and I went trail riding almost every weekend, and it became something we did as a family aswell, the more and more I rode trails the more confident I got on the track. My brother, Reece, never really got into trail riding and had always liked tracks better. Reece like the orderly and safe space on the track. So our dad started taking us to do more racing, and that led me to where I am today.

Later as I grew into myself and went to school, learning all different types of things about the world honestly helped me with racing, how to calm myself, socialize and how to focus. My grades have always been bad, but I loved being around people and learning things about them, things they enjoyed or what their hobbies were. Racing has never come between me and my schooling, but they both taught me to open my mind and combine both structures. School teaches me a lot about struggles, like stress, confidence in yourself, and how to focus on things I may not find interesting. But everything I learn off the track, belongs on the track as well. You make a lot of friends at races, and even though you race against each other, you still lift people. When me and my friends race against eachother alot of the times we will try to take eachother out and mess around but when were serious racing we won’t target eachother and theres times where we will kind of team on kids and oinch them together so we can get around them. Racing is just like having a different family that watches out for and helps each other. I have school friends now and race friends, even some of my friends from school race, but we all end up knowing each other in such a small area. some of my school friends come to my races for their pears to. I have built great friendships and have learned lessons much greater then myself. Now that I'm older, I get to go trail riding with my friends and not take my dad, and we are building the same kind of friendship my dad had with his friends. I’m not saying I don’t go with my dad still but he is getting older and doesn’t have a lot of time to ride with me when he works all the time.

The best part of being older and independent, is knowing that I still get to spend time with my parents and brother. My brother Reece is doing just as well as I was at his age,  he still looks up to me and wants to get fast and have confidence in himself. My parents pay for this hobby, support us, and always say to be safe and have fun. They don't care if we win or lose, just as long as we are safe and do not ride over our heads because every track you ride is different. I’m getting to the point of racing where winning or good placements do matter tho so my dad pushes me to be better everytime we go riding and i’m glad he pushes me because it’s always good to get out of your confort zone.

 Every time you ride a track, all jumps are different; sometimes they are smooth, muddy, wet, and ruts form from all the riding. One thing you need to have on track is confidence in yourself and the understanding that you have to follow through with what you're going to do. Muddy tracks are the worst to race because so many ruts form and slide around, and they get packed in your wheels. I love sunny days to race, but it always causes too much dust, and they have to wet the track to keep down the dust. When you go to different areas to ride, you don't know what the dirt is going to feel like under your tires. Before you race, you always get to take your time and walk around the tracks and look for good lines and look out for the muddiest spots,you also get to  take a few laps around on your bike before you race. with all the different age groups or bike sizes, ruts always start forming. When I start a race, I'm in my head and always ready, and I don't always get the whole shot, but I keep up, and if I crash, I always get up and keep going and not give up. I try hard and do my best, but if I don't win, I'm not hard on myself just as long as I do my best.

My dad and I go out to one of his buddies' houses to ride at least a couple times a week if I’m not racing, this track is one of my favorite tracks to practice on, the ruts are always perfect, the dirt is never too dry or too lose, it’s always good no matter the weather really, it absorbs the rain very well so it’s ridable all year round unlike lot of other tracks. On a normal day like always, my little brother Reece wanted to go up there and ride for a little bit, but I wanted to go somewhere else and ride, lets just say he ended up getting his way like always. As we get there my brother and I start getting ready and we are still arguing about who chooses the place to ride at next time because he always tends to get his way no matter the situation, I was frustrated, I got on my bike and rode out to the track still a little pissed off about the situation with my brother, I begin to ride over my head a little bit because I’m still upset about the situation, my dad stops me and is talking to me about a certain jump on the track, this jump was rutted up to the top of the face and was big, I rode a couple more laps trying to figure this jump out, how much speed I needed, my body position I should be in, what gear I need to be in before I go off the jump, I was studying the jump. A couple more laps I go around trying to completely commit before I try to hit this jump, eventually I get on the gas as hard as I can right out of the corner, I go off the jump, and everything blurs into a rush of adrenaline and excitement.

 Then, a sudden jolt. Everything goes dark. When I regain consciousness, it’s a dim room filled with beeping machines. You realize you’re in a hospital bed. Moments later the doctors walk in, they begin telling me that I had a bad incident and they start listing off the bones I had broken in my foot. First was my Talus, which was the main bone in the lower part of my ankle joint, Calcaneus, also known as the heel bone, and the largest bone in the foot, Cuboid, this is the main bone in the middle of your foot. That is not all but those are the main bones that the doctors are concerned about. The next morning after lots of pain and absolutely no sleep, they began to prepare me to go into my first surgery, as they pushed me through these halls it felt like I’m in an underground hideout or something, or maybe I was just high off the medication they were giving me, i’m not sure which one it was. As were in the surgery room they put a weird thing over my nose and all I remember is them telling me to count to five and then I woke up in the hospital bed. After I woke up the doctors came into my room and began telling me what they did. For the first surgery, they said my Cuboid was crushed into pieces, Cuboid was the bone in the middle of your foot, so what they did was take the remaining pieces of it out and they put a metal plate in where the bone was supposed to be. A few hours go by and I am finally able to go home for a week or so before my next surgery. The car ride back was very painful, every single bump we hit hurt really bad. When we got home I was in terrible pain, no medication they gave me helped and all I wanted to do was sleep but I couldn’t even sleep because of how bad the pain was. After hours of laying in bed sobbing because of how much pain I was in, it had finally gone away, I fell asleep really fast and it was so relieving. Hours go by and suddenly I wake up in the middle of the night, realizing all the pain is starting to come back, once again hours go by and the pain finally goes away again. This routine of pain was happening all day and all week long, by the time I started to feel better, I had to go in for another surgery. I had gotten into my wheelchair from my bed, and moments later I started to feel light-headed like I was gonna pass out, I got into the living room where I was about to go out the door, and suddenly I got really tight feeling, and then everything went black. Moments later I woke up and there were medics surrounding me, they said I passed out due to dehydration from the medication I was taking. After we figured everything out we began to head towards Harbor View Hospital. Arriving at the hospital where my surgery will take place, my mom and I go sign in and moments later they come to get me to prepare me to go in for surgery. They began to explain to me what they were going to be doing in this surgery,  this surgery they were gonna be fixing my Calcaneus, which is my heal bone, also the biggest bone in the foot. At this point, I’m hoping this is gonna be the last surgery I’ll be having. As the doctors were pushing me out of the hospital room in my wheelchair, my mom was still sitting there waiting for me, as we were sitting there they were explaining the plan to my mom, the plan was that from now on we would do checkups every month until they think I will be ready to get my cast removed and get a walking boot on. As my mom and I were on the way back from Harbor View I kept complaining to her how every bump we hit would hurt my foot bad. As we get home I get out of the car and my mom pushes the wheelchair around to me, now this is the hard part, my mom has to help me up and I have to hop up a couple of stairs to the front door of our house, as I get to the top my mom helps me back in my wheelchair and I instantly go back to my room to take a nap. As I’m trying to fall asleep my foot is just throbbing and I can’t seem to fall asleep anymore, hours go by and the pain slowly starts to go away, and I can finally nap in peace.

The next few days went the same way, I had a lot of pain for hours on hours then it just slowly went away, it was the worst pain I’ve ever felt, I can’t even explain how bad it was. As days go by and checkups at the hospital come around, all of the pain is mostly gone, my mom and I get to the hospital and go to check in for my checkup. After an hour of waiting my doctor finally came to bring me into a room, as he was cutting my cast off he thought about putting another one on after he looked at my foot, he got the cast off and we went into the x-ray room to see if I need to have the cast on longer or if he can give me a boot. After waiting for the x-rays they finally came back and they were looking pretty good so I’m getting a boot and use crutches. By the time I got used to the boot, I was able to stop using the crutches. About 2 weeks later I had my last check up and no longer had to use the boot. I then started physical therapy for 6 months but my foot still can't bend or stretch like it had before the accident. After physical therapy ended I had another appointment with my Dr. and he decided he would take one of the metal plates out of my foot to loosen it up in the hope of getting better mobility. During this time of my life, I have learned to have a lot of patience in myself to be able to heal the way my body needs. 

When I first started riding at the age of 3 years old I was a little daredevil and never thought I would have hurt myself this bad. My dad always told me to not ride over my head because one day you will have a bad reck and you’ll be sorry. I did have a lot of help during this time in my life and was thankful for my parents, friends, and girlfriend. My girlfriend Sera helped me out a lot with getting me things I needed and helped me out when I needed to get down to the lakes to fish. I realized I had to rely on so many people to do the things I was used to doing on my own. I couldn't drive places for a while but when I did I never left without someone with me because I always needed someone to hand me my crutches drag my fishing gear and chair to the lake, and pump gas. During this time it brought me and Sera closer together, became fishing partners and best friends  My parents were there for me as well to keep my spirits up so I wouldn't become depressed. I don't even know how I would have made this journey of my life without my parents and girlfriend. My family is my biggest support system in my life and so grateful to have them. When I was healing and knew I wasn't able to race for a year I didn't know how I was going to entertain myself because I get bored easily so that's when I picked up fishing and started going every day.  I still went to the race tracks and watched my younger brother race while I couldn't and I can say  I was not happy and missed it so much. When my Dr. said I could start riding again Dr. said no jumping or racing just ease back in. I did a trail ride so I could get my balance back and mobility so when I was released to start racing again  I wouldn't be too weak and not be able to hold on to my bike on the track. As time passed I kept on riding trails getting more comfortable and trying to get my balance back before the race season started, 3 days a week I would ride trails, not counting the weekends. My first race is coming around and I am more nervous than I have ever been, not once in my life have I been scared to ride a dirtbike. As I get on the track for my first couple of practice laps I'm taking it slow and trying to get used to the feeling of jumping again, every time I would come up to the face of a jump I would get PTSD and it scared me bad, but every lap I would feel better jumping and feel a lot more confident going off the jumps. My race is up next and sure enough, my nerves come back and I'm just as scared as I was, I’m not sure why they are bothering me when I just got comfortable again, I’m now on the line with 42 riders, the flagger throws up the ten-second sign, the ten-second sign means the gate will randomly drop within 10 seconds, the gate drops and sure enough I get a good start, I’m in 3rd place, a lap goes by and I passed the guy in 2nd place, by the time I passed the 2nd place guy the 1st place guy was long gone and I had no hope in catching up too him, as I’m coming around a blind corner I see he’s laying on the ground, he had crashed before the jump so by the time he got up I flew right past him, I was now in first, I come around the last lap and the checkered flag goes up, I just won my first race back from my injury. I get back to my camp where I park my bike and my friends and parents run up to me and hug me and yell, they were just as excited as I was.