Spectacular 4-wheeler Acrobatics

***WARNING*** this is a long read

Quite awhile ago I mentioned I would share some of my personal stupid stories with all of you. I think today I will do just that and share my 4-wheeler adventure from high school.

For those of you who don’t know me personally, I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie. Unfortunately getting the high of adrenaline for me is best achieved by fast moving vehicles. Just to be specific, it doesn’t have to have some form of propulsion. I have manage to get bicycles going much faster than what is safe using just my legs and the assistance of gravity (maybe using more gravity and the assistance of my legs?).

So, of course over time the speed attainable on a bicycle was less and less thrilling. Although I had a few accidents I was young and my body snapped back much too quickly for me to actually learn my lesson. I moved on to bigger and better things. Cars!

Now, the stories I have from the stupid (very stupid) things I’ve done in my car are for another time (I could probably write a whole book from them). But this is about the next step…. a 4-wheeled vehicle that exposes your body to the elements, goes fast, goes almost everywhere and is very dangerous (if you’re like me).

When my cousin got the 4-wheeler all I could think about was when I would get to ride it. As often as I could I would ride it. But, that wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to be limited to a back yard or a dirt road. I wanted to explore the jumps, fields & hills of our little town.

Riding is fun, but riding alone gets boring really quickly. So a really good friend of mine from high school borrowed a 4-wheeler from one of our friends and I borrowed my cousin’s. We headed out early in the morning so we could go 4-wheeling all day. Oh, if we only had known what was in store for us.

At one part of the day I took the 4-wheeler as fast as I could off a jump that launched it so high I thought I was going to fly off. Then it landed so hard the side of my jaw smashed into the handle bars. Wow, that was painful but I was young and dumb, it would take more than that to stop my adventure.

When we had enough fun we wanted to bring more people in on the fun. Our girlfriends! What could be better than showing off our utter stupidity?!

My friend’s girlfriend couldn’t come so instead he brought his sister. Once my girlfriend (well, we were getting back together after we had been caught goofing around… :wink:) arrived we headed out. We showed off our ridiculous acrobatics on the jumps, hills & dirt roads. We ended up at what we called “the beet dump”.

The beet dump is basically just a giant, flat, open field that sugar beets are dumped each season. Of course there weren’t any beets there so it was just open space to play. At one point when spinning cookies in the dirt I rolled the 4-wheeler when it caught enough traction. I jumped off just in time so it didn’t roll over me (awesomely stupid acrobatics again :roll:).

The day came to a grinding halt when my friend and I were racing from one end to the other on opposite sides. The two girls were standing in the middle so we wouldn’t get too close. When you’re going fast on a 4-wheeler in a dirt field after a long day, your eyes get watery, dusty, etc. and the last thing you would expect is for someone to be running into the path of the 4-wheeler.

Exactly what I didn’t expect is what happened. My girlfriend was running across the path of the 4-wheeler, but I thought for sure she would continue running out of the way. When she stopped I knew something bad was about to happen. I cranked the handle bars hard to the left with all my might and hit the brakes (the big mistake). The wheels locked up and instead of actually turning, I slid right into her..

To make a long story short, we both ended up in the hospital with injuries (hers were much worse than mine) and everyone scratching their heads wondering how in the world the accident had happened. They were that confused and they thought she was on the 4-wheeler with me.

Think about how confused they were when I told them that she wasn’t. How do you manage to hit someone in the middle of a field? Of course at the time my memories were fresh and I knew exactly what happened. Years later though my memories of the event has faded and I will forever wonder how I manage such a tragedy. Somehow my friend and his sister didn’t see it happen and my girlfriend forgot nearly the entire day because of her concussion.

Her injuries: fractured skull in 3 places, fractured eye socket in 2 places, broken nose, shattered wrist, broken fibula (non-weight bearing bone in the lower leg), 4″ laceration between the hairline and forehead, fractured hip and severe concussion.

My injuries: sprained ankle, my chin was split open from side to side and my left vocal cord was severed from its controlling muscles (my voice box was hit really hard).

After being checked out and stitched up at the local hospital (aka: death valley) I was life flighted to Utah to have a specialist fix my vocal cord (the life flight was because my throat could have swollen up suffocating me).

She was moved to the Boise hospital after she was stabilized and stayed there for almost 2 weeks.

That was the first time I realized just how expensive stupidity was and just how dangerous “toys” can be. You can imagine how this story ended with angry parents and big bills. I was 17 at that time and 4 years later we have gotten back together! We have no hard feelings and are very very happy together.