Almost 3 deaths and some turkey :-)

So finally on Friday when classes ended I got to go home. I don’t know why but I wanted to go home so badly. I had had enough of my classes and just wanted to relax and see my family. I had been counting down the days till I got to go home for almost 3 weeks before I actually got to go home. I got home and was able to see my family and friends, got to cut my hair, and got to sleep in my own bed. I spent the three days I had before I went to West Virginia seeing friends and catching up with everyone. On Tuesday afternoon we loaded up the two cars and headed up to WV. Took us a little over seven hours to get to my grandpa’s farm but we made it. Our cousins who live near us in Virginia were also on their way to the farm and arrived about thirty minutes we did. My uncle is a huge fan of ATVs and so he brought 4 of his 5 ATVs with him here so we could go riding. Because he brought his four ATVs and my grandpa has one himself, we had five for the 11 of us. Within ab hour of my uncle getting here, we were out riding. Jason, Jordan, my little brother, and I all jumped on 3 of the ATVs and rode off to the top of the mountain. We were flying all over the farm. We all haven’t been here in a few years and were so excited to get to go riding on the trails and everything. We flew up the mountain, found all the old trails, and were having a blast. I don’t know why, but I love riding and flying on and jumping the ATVs every chance I can. We made it through the first day with no injuries and decided we would build a fire up on the top of the mountain and all sit around it and talk. We started the fire around 6pm, once it was dark, and kept the fire going until my uncle and I returned to the houses around 4am. People slowly returned to the house and went to bed and by about 12am it was just my uncle, my cousin Jason, and I sitting around the fire. Jason went to sleep around 2am and like I said before my uncle and I talked for about another 2 hours just admiring the fire. The reason I stayed with my uncle was because he had had a few beers and recently he has purchased a 9mm handgun which he had on his side. Therefore I figured alcohol and a new gun were 2 things that did not mix. So I decided I would stay with him until I know he was in bed asleep and the gun was in his car. So anyways, we finally decided to head back to the farm and since he had been drinking I had suggested he just ride with me, but ofcourse he wanted to drive his own. So he did and I decided I would ride close behind to keep my eye on him. he ended up missing one of the trails we needed to take by like 5 ft because he turned late and ran straight into a stump. He immediately flipped over the handle bars and from behind all I could see where his feet in the air. I was worried he had slammed his face into the front of his ATV on the metal bars but luckily he stopped before hitting them. I think he hit it because he was going too fast for him to be able to react to the situations thrown at him. I decided I would take the lead and go slow and force him to go slow as well. We finally got back to the house in one piece and went to bed. At this point it was a little after 4 and I ended up being woken up for breakfast around 10am. I went over the other house and had breakfast with everyone. Immediately after my cousins and I were finished eating we jumped on the ATVs again and were off. We rode around all day until about lunch time when we came back to eat and then we were off again. All we basically did was ride all day. the next issue that was close to a disaster occurred after lunch when we went back to the top of the mountain. My little brother has been riding and driving ATVs every year we come up here and so when we were on the top he asked to ride our grandpa’s ATV. This is the one he always rides, so I had no problem with it. he was riding around and was being careful and so I decided I could ride around as well. I ended up taking my eyes off him for a few minutes and next time I look, he is rolling down the side of a valley and the ATV he was on is speeding down the hill by itself. I took off and went to him first and saw if he was ok. He said he was fine, so I sped down the valley to try to catch the other ATV, but by the time I could catch it it had hit a tree and had stopped by hitting a barb-wire fence. It was messed up. The tie-rod on the left front wheel was bent, the front was all scratched up, the boots on the front suspension were torn, and the rim of the left tire which ht the tree was all bent up. My brother said his arm hurt and said he was in a lot of pain, but he is always a baby when it comes to pain so I told him to suck it up and that he was fine. He rode with my back to the house and immediately we told my mom about the accident. A few minutes later my grandpa, uncle, and dad got home from their off-roading adventure and we told them. Everyone was first worried about my little brother and his arm and how it was swollen and bruised. My mom got all worried so she took him to the nearest hospital which was like an hour away where they x-rayed it and found that he had actually broken his arm in 3 places. He broke the larger bone in his forearm clean through and also snapped the smaller bone in the same forearm twice, once near his wrist and the other further down his arm. This was the second death frightening accident/incident. So after my brother accident and my uncle hitting a stump, we were down 2 ATVs. My dad ended up burning up the belt on one of the other ATVs because he was climbing hills with it in the high gear and so now we had to stop using that one too. Great, so now we were down 3 ATVs, and only had 2 left. This is where the final accident occurred leaving us with only on working ATV by the end of this trip. The final issue was on the last day my cousins were here, Friday. We had brought a cooler up to the top of the mountain and it was my uncle’s cooler. He was leaving soon, so around 3 he began to pack up his and asked my cousin Jason and I to run take the 2 working ATVs and go up to retrieve the cooler. The ATV my cousin was on was an 800 twin turbo and the ATV I was on was only a 350. So his flew down the trail and went way ahead of where I could see him. Finally I got to a point in which I should have been able to see him on the trail and didn’t. I stopped for a second to look around and I looked up a steep hill to the right a little. He had managed to ride up it, turn sideways, and roll the ATV over onto himself against a tree. I put mine in park and could hear him yelling for me. I ran up the hill best I could and rolled the ATV back up the hill to get it off of him. He got out and was ok. No blood, but he was a little banged up. He was so shaken up, he had me ride it back down the hill onto the trail. There we discovered that the side panels had fallen off, the rear seat was bent in half backwards, the throttle had snapped off, the seats were ripped open, the body was scratched, there was a deep scratch in the gas tank, the handle bars were bent and twisted, and the winch control had been bent down and sideways off the handlebars. This was a brand new ATV before this trip. My uncle had bought it only about a month before coming to WV. Because it was obvious that things were broken off it, I rode back and got his dad and told him how we wrecked and so he took the ATV and rode up to make sure his son was ok. I ran up the trail after them to get back and help anyway I could. I ended up riding up the mountain and getting the cooler and then coming back down to tow the ATV home with the ATV I was on. We loaded up all the ATVs on my uncle’s trailer and no one could believe that in not even 3 full days we managed to destroy 4 out of the 5 ATVs we had on this trip. Luckily no one was too badly injured, other than my brother breaking his arm. This trip was quite a memorable trip and one we will talk about for a while. I hope everyone else had a nice thanksgiving break, because I know besides the accidents I had one of the best thanksgivings I have had in a while. By the way, I am sorry I wrote so much; I just had to get the whole story in there. I even had to leave some minor details out so as not to make it too long. Anyway, see you all in class!