The Great Fall

There are many hobbies and interests I have in life. Sports, piano, movies, family, friends, outdoors, etc. One of these interests I have just happens to be longboarding. I became interested in Longboarding a few months before my mission in 2001. After I got home I moved up to Rexburg, Idaho with some buddies and got more into it. I ended up getting my own so that I could get around town and go down some gnarly hills. All my friends including myself had a longboard and we would find some good, wide streets to ride down. One time I was riding down a pretty steep hill (which was way fun), and was coming to a flat road which made me slow down a bit. This lady just happened to have her sprinklers going in her front yard which was making the whole road wet as well. I was riding down this street at a reasonable speed making some quick longboard turns and ended up falling back because of the wet road and landing on my wrist. I thought it was just sprained or bruised or something like that. 8 months later I noticed that it still hurt every time I would play basketball or football. I decided to go get it checked out finally. Next thing I know, I'm having surgery and they're putting a screw in my wrist.

Well, to add to this amazing folly I was up at the cabin in Vivian Park up Provo canyon over Memorial Day weekend. There is a trail that goes from Vivian Park all the way down the canyon. I have ridden this trail many times on my longboard as it's a pretty easy ride and not too steep. It ended up being a ride that, well, also ended up in surgery. I feel dumb admitting that I was riding on a flat surface not going amazingly fast, but I ended up taking a pretty bad spill on that flat surface. I knew immediately that I had broken my right arm. It was some of the worst pain I had ever felt. I had to walk all the way back down the canyon in order to take a visit to the hospital. I was surprised that I didn't black out because I was so dizzy and light headed walking down because of my arm. At first glance from the X-Ray machine it looked like I had a simple radial head fracture since I couldn't even remotely move my arm for an x-ray at the time. Later on that week they took more x-rays and realized that not only was it fractured but that the bone was completely detached from the socket. That might explain why it hurt so bad all that time. My bone had been coming in and out of socket every time I had been moving it. I ended up going into surgery the next day and having 3 screws put in my right elbow. Surprisingly enough, I have not had to take 1 pain pill. I guess once the bone is back where it's supposed to be it ends up feeling a lot better. Not all the way better though, I still have physical therapy to go through which is never fun in the least. Perfect timing for something like this to happen as it's my favorite time of year (summer). Well, hopefully these next few months go well and I'll be back to new. Gotta love longboarding!!!









Fun rides like this down Mesa Falls in Idaho won't be happening ever again. Dang!