I used to go to Puerto Rico and stayed at a summer camp over spring break during mission trips in high school (does that even make sense?). Anyway, There, they had a water slide - you'd go down 20 feet or so, then stand up and "skate" on the ground for 20 feet or so over plywood boards covered in plastic sheeting.

Andy went down, and stopped at the bottom of the slide. I yelled at him to get out of the way, and he turned to look at me, so I went. By the time I hit the bottom, he still was sitting there, so I grabbed the side of the board to keep from hitting him. Got a 2" long splinter all the way through my left middle finger. I pulled it out, and went about my day. Well, a few months later, I still had a few lumps in my hand, so I went to the surgeon, and there were 4 cysts in there that had covered mini-splinters that broke off as I pulled out the splinter. 5 hours of surgery and three cut nerves (as the cysts were wrapped around them), and my hand was splinter-free again. I still don't have any feeling in most of that finger.



Long story short - don't do something stupid, and if you are going to ride a bike that can potentially catastrophically fail very quickly (like an aluminum frame), perhaps you'd be better served buying a Cannondale or something.