Well as all of you know, I love to ATV. On my last ride of our stay I went with a couple of friends to an area that I had discovered last week. As we headed up the trail I noticed a trail way out in the distance that looked like it headed right up the end of Gooseberry Mesa. We headed up the trail with me in the lead. It started out pretty good but became very steep as we traveled on. At this point it was still in fairly good shape, just steep. Just a little further I came to a dog leg to the right and until you got to that point you could not see what was up a head. Well, as I rounded the trail I gazed up the trail and about 25 yards up the hill, I observed a large rock right in the middle of the trail. I could not tell for sure from that distance if we could get over the rock. I knew we did not have enough room to go around the rock because the trail was narrowing at that point. To play it safe, I stopped on the left up hill side of the trail to give me more room to turn around and head back down the hill. As I turned my head to see if I had enough room to back up,the right front tire broke off the ledge and it slipped into the rut. This caused the left rear tire to come off the ground and the momentum rolled the ATV right over on it's side. As it started to roll, I stuck my right leg out and pushed off so I would not get pinned under the ATV. As I came off I hit the ground with my rear end and rolled and jumped up quickly in case the ATV kept rolling toward me. Lucky for me it did not. Had it rolled completely over it most likely would have gone off the cliff. As you can see in the picture below, we were quite high at this point and it would have rolled all the way to the bottom of the gorge.
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| Looking over the edge of the trail. |
As you can see, it just rolled over on it's side. It took all three of us to push it back up rite again.
We played it safe at this point and did some trail maintenance.
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| Just around this dog leg is where I tipped over. As you can see, we were getting close to the top of the mountain. |
It was one of the shortest ATV rides I have ever made. We only traveled just over 4 miles when this happened. After the mishap, my right knee felt like it was popping out of it's socket when I put all my weight on it. I rode back down to the truck and my friends drove the ATV up on the truck for me. When I got home Carol took me to Instacare and I was treated.
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| Carol snapped a quick picture before they released me. |
It does not appear to be any serious injury to the knee. I have to ware a knee brace and use a cane for now. We leave Hurricane tomorrow for Provo, UT. I should be back to full speed in two weeks. I am just taking it easy for the time being and using this as an eye opener. I just realized that I am not a spring chicken anymore and it takes me much more time to heal from an injury. It also seems that it is so much easier to get hurt in the first place.
Just for the record, the above photo is not me. It was a photo I found on the internet as a joke.
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| OK, here is a real picture. Doesn't look so bad now! |
For the time being, I am on restriction from ATV riding. In fact to play it safe I took our ATV up to camp and stored it in the garage so I would not be tempted. We will be here in Provo for somewhere between three weeks and a month. We will then start our 2nd summer Mission at Mutual Dell and our 4th consecutive Service Mission for the Church.
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