Be it ever so humble... more people die in Southeastern Kentucky on ATV's than anywhere else in the nation. You can read about it here.
I have been riding ATV's since I could walk. We have always had them on the farm, and we would go on all sorts of trail rides and camping trips with the 4 wheelers. I even had my own as a kid, before I got too girly and all.
On Memorial Day, like any other free summer weekend, my dad wanted to go riding. So, he and my cousin and his pals went on a trail ride in the mountains. They rode something like 50 miles that day, and ran into some people along the way. All was well until the last couple they ran into on the trail needed *some* assistance.
They were a newly wed couple: this gentlemen was taking his wife on her first-ever atv ride. He was driving, and dad noticed that this guy had also had a bit too much to drink. This guy tried to dare my father to do some bogus trick into a river. My dad is no fool. He told him that it was not a good idea. The drunk did it anyway, and ended up throwing his wife off of the ATV, and damn near dying underneath his flipped 4-wheeler, which was at that point both crushing him and holding him under the shallow flowing river.
Since my dad is huge and pretty much king of the world, he went into fight or flight (just as he did when he once ripped off the door of a car with his bare hands to get my mum's stolen purse back... among other crazy occasions where he has gone Hulk). My cousin described dad's response to the situation: "He jumped off the 4-wheeler into the river, where he picked up that idiots 4-wheeler and threw it to the side of the river so he could scoop that guy out of the water...all by himself."
So dad gets this guy on solid ground, where he's breathing and all of his vitals are good EXCEPT for the fact that the skin covering 1/4 of his head, including one of his ears, had been scraped from his skull and was hanging on only by a small connecting piece. Dad described the side of his head as, "peeled like an orange." A large portion of his skull was exposed. He said that he was bleeding profusely, and his whole face was covered in blood like some B horror movie. Dad had to tie this guy's "ear flap" back in it's place with someone's t-shirt. The whole time this guy's wife, who had never been on a 4-wheeler before, was going hysterical - balling and screaming. What a mess! This guy was taken by helicopter to the hospital in Knoxville, TN because his head trauma was too serious for the local-yocal docs that were nearest to the trail.
So yeah, this is the most recent ballin' thing that my dad has done. There are more, and I might blog about them just because they are so f'n crazy. Wear your helmets, kids.
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