I never thought I would be in the same situation my grandpa had been in; Although, my experience wasn’t as drastic. He was in the hospital for a few days with a split open skull and some minor brain trauma. His injuries were all caused from simply riding over a small hill too fast on an ATV.  My accident was somewhat different to his. Once my shock was over I was able to stand and left with very little injury. When my machine flipped I was lucky enough to guide it away. When his machine went over it hit him in his head, sadly, the four wheeler didn’t show him any more mercy than it had me.

The machine ended up flipping on top of him, crushing him underneath. I’m not sure how long he laid on the ground for, but someone found him and rushed him to the emergency room. After I was told the news that he was in the hospital I was scared to death that he wouldn’t survive, but I was also scared for the safety of my own riding. I also learned that life is more dangerous than we think. We need to be careful with what we do and how we do it. Life can be taken from us in the blink of an eye and some people take that for granted.

The day started out wonderful with golden sunbeams showering the earth from the blue sky. I was outside, like usual, with my mom and brothers when I received a text message from my friend. She had wanted me to come and spend the night at her house and when I asked my mom, I already knew the answer. An hour later I was in the car cruising down the road to my friends house. We talked for hours and it had become late afternoon when she asked if I wanted to go four wheeling. I didn’t think anything of it since I’ve been riding these machines all my life.

My friend, her dad, and I all started down the street on our ATV's. We were taking it nice and easy down the road, but the moment we hit the trails we were on our own. Getting to the clearing was not that simple with all the mud from a recent rainfall. There were a great deal of plants causing the trails to be partially hidden and difficult to see. On top of the overabundant amount of plants there were bugs. They would fly at our faces making us cringe when they would get caught in our mouths. After getting lost a few times we finally made it to the clearing.

I had never been to this clearing before and I didn’t know if I was ever going to come here again, so I planned on making the best of it. We started out slow to get used to the area, and once it was familiar we picked up the pace. We would race over the hills and take the corners a little sharper then we should have. Creating a cloud of dust that covered the whole area. Once settled we would start back up again.

As we went around and around in the same circular pattern, I always caught myself side glancing a steep hill we hadn’t gone up yet. We hadn’t gone up the hill because of the size. It was extremely steep and was infested with overgrown plants. If someone were to drive through that they’d be crazy. My friends dad was up for the challenge and went up the hill, succeeding in climbing the beast. I wanted to face the hill as well and I started making my way to it.

Driving up to the hill gave me anxiety. There was something about it that gave me the chills, but I was determined. I got prepared to ride up and I took a deep breath. I hit the gas and stood up to lean forward to give me more leverage on the ATV. That was all I could do to try to make it to the top. Sadly, I never got up that hill. In the blink of an eye the machine was falling backwards. I fell off the back while the four wheeler kept falling. I was fortunate enough to have my legs up and ready to catch the machine. It was coming with so much force that I had to push it away from me so I could roll away. Thankfully, my only injury was a bruised tailbone.

My kind of accident is hard to get away from, and I was just lucky that day. This experience has created my new fear of four wheeler's. I haven’t ridden one since then and I don’t plan on riding one either. I definitely learned to take life more seriously and not treat it like some toy I threw around as a kid. It also showed me that these machines are extremely dangerous if not treated with care. Some riders will fly around on them and they think nothing will happen to them. One of these days, something will and from my knowledge of ATV’s I’ve realized that not everything is fun and games. It can start out that way, but sometimes the games will crash and burn.