Painful Accident on the River

[NightTrain]

Most of you know my wife is recovering from an aneurysm surgery... she's coming along nicely, but it's been over a year now. I stick close to home, but I sneak away to the cabin when she's doing well.

I had a very bad accident on my snowmachine about 3 weeks ago, and it was nasty all around.

My brother and I were buzzing up the river, just a half mile below the cabin and I spotted a great shortcut to straighten out the trail. I signaled to him to wait on the trail, and I ramped up to about 30 mph to bust this inviting little shortcut open and improve the trail for freighting.

I'm standing up, sled's running strong in the powerband, snow conditions and temp are great. All systems go.

Suddenly, in front of me, the river opened up out of nowhere - it was hidden behind a slight rise in snow and had been invisible. If I'd have been 20' to either side I would have seen it, but that small rise blended in perfectly and the flat light sealed the illusion from my vantage point.

It was too late to abort; I was committed. I can water skip no problem, but the real problem here is that the far side had a 3' vertical ice shelf. And the water was running black, fast and deep - a terrible inescapable death sentence.

I hit the water and pulled as hard as I could while revving my sled for everything she had. My sled responded beautifully, redlined at over 8,000 RPMs, and Jim said I shot a monster rooster tail of water as I maneuvered. I was able to get the right ski over the ice ledge, but the left one didn't quite make it. But because of the momentum I had, and the angle of the rest of the sled, the composite ski flexed and popped over the top. I was probably doing about 40 MPH at this point, and we continued over the ice shelf.

Then the rear suspension hit, and that's when we started doing cartwheels above the glare ice on the far side. Front Endo's are always ugly, especially with speed.

My sled somehow did several revolutions and came to rest right-side up, still idling.

I came down on my head, saw stars a few times as my head came around for another good whack on the ice, and rag-dolled to a stop headfirst in a snowbank. It's impossible to know how many endos I did, but it was a lot. And violent.

I could hear Jim yelling at me, hoping I was still alive, but I'd had the wind knocked out of me and couldn't respond or even get on my knees. Finally the full-body aching pain subsided a bit and I waved at him to let him know I was all right, and crawled over to my sled to shut it off.

The top of my head hurt, so I pulled off my helmet and discovered that my glasses had somehow gotten rammed to the top of the inside of my helmet, on top of my head. It's a perfectly fitting helmet, I have no idea how that happened. I had a bloody nose; so somehow it had something to do with the mysterious glasses migration under my helmet.

Anyway, after about 10 or 15 minutes I was able to stand up, Jim came around the long way and we inspected my sled. I'd crushed the lower A-arm on the left side, so it was leaning left about 12". That doesn't sound like a lot, but that's huge. Especially after getting the snot beat out of you, and you're faced with a 20 mile ride back to the trucks.

I wanted to get to the cabin, being my stubborn self, and relax until tomorrow to ride out. Jim overruled me, pointing out that I had about 30 minutes before the shock wore off and that's when the real pain would set in.

I couldn't argue with that logic, so we set off. About 20 minutes later, I was having a hell of a time continuing. My sled was a real bitch to control and every ripple in the trail made me groan with pain. We had to stop many times so I could catch my breath and let the pain subside a bit.

But we made it, and I've been pretty much bedridden ever since. My back is a lot better... but Shar and I were the gimpiest couple ever!

Usually we try to rotate our catastrophic injuries so the other can put us back together, but this time we both laid in bed and moaned. And not the Funzies kind of moaning, either.

Anyway, my sled was completely undamaged except for that lower A-arm. I was worried because there's a lot of front suspension components and steering connecting to that arm, and you won't know until you put on the new one if all those other things marry up again. Everything did, much to my relief... I'd been dreading several thousand in repairs. $240 and she's good as new again!

I'm healed up about as well as you'd think a 50 year old with my mileage would after taking a beating like that.


Didn't get a pic of my machine with the bent A-Arm on it, but here's a pic of replacing it :20210129_100949.jpg

And... a pic of approximately 10 minutes before this all went down.
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