I love to jump my mountain bike, it's my favorite part of riding. I could never ride with headphones, because I love to hear the silence when my tires leave the dirt. I guess it used to be silence, now it's my hub going RZZZZZ. If you jump big enough you actually feel like you've taken a land vehicle and briefly made it into a flying machine. Now you need to pilot it safely back to earth using only momentum and two huge gyroscopes. I started out riding XC. Then I turned my back on it for a long time. The only climbs I would do were from the bottom of the dirt jump line, back to the top. As I neared forty, I knew there was no fitness to be found on the XL line, so I begged XC to take me back. Luckily singletrack doesn't hold a grudge. Last season I heard from several riders who told me they'd like to jump, but they really don't know how to do it. They feel like they freeze up when their tires leave the ground, and jumping just hasn't had a place in ...