The Cabin

When  was a kid, I never did what my parents told me to do. If they told me not to do something, what would I do? I would do the exact opposite. I also had a knack for convincing people to let me do things, and to do things for me.

One memory from my childhood is the time I crashed my four wheeler. It happened at my cabin when I was seven, so about nine years ago. My family bought a cabin the day my little sister was born. My dad and his two brothers thought it would be nice to have a family cabin, so they all pitched in for a cabin by Strawberry Reservoir. They signed the papers the very day my sister was born.

My family has always loved the outdoors, so it was no surprise that we owned four wheelers. We still have the four wheeler that I crashed, and it works fine, despite the dents in the racks. At the time, we had two green Yamaha 400’s.

My dad had invited his friend and his family up to stay the weekend at our cabin. My dad’s friend loved horses, and even brought up a few of his own. He took his two oldest sons and my dad horseback riding on a trail a mile or two from the highway, leaving his wife, my mom, my sisters and his youngest son behind with me.

While my sisters were keeping our moms occupied, my friend Trent and I decided to go four wheeling. He had never ridden a four wheeler before, and I had never driven one without my dad sitting behind me, ready to take control. Like all young boys, we thought it would be fun to race. We would race on the trails around my cabin, and on the dirt road. The trails were bumpy, so we couldn’t go that fast and quickly gave up, switching our racetrack for the smoother dirt road.

Trent drew a line through the dirt. He said that this would be our starting line. Because he was older than me by a few years, I had to listen to him. We decided that the firehouse by the gate would be our finish line, and the winner would get to pretend to drive the old fire truck. This was a great prize, because that was one of our favorite things to do. A couple years back we had found where they keep the helmets and jackets. Being so small, we couldn’t wear the heavy jackets, but we could get the helmets to stay on.

As soon as Trent said “GO!” we hit the gas and went as fast as we could. Trent was older and braver, so he was going faster. As we approached the curve, he slowed down, but I sped up. My front tire hit his back tire, and I was flipped into the air. Luckily I was wearing my helmet, but that didn’t help my body when I hit the ground. For about three seconds I didn’t move, and then the four wheeler landed a couple inches from my face. I screamed and shot back into the bushes and just lay there, not moving, not saying anything, even though Trent was calling my name, trying to see if I was okay.

He eventually found me, and helped me onto the back of his four wheeler. When we got back to the cabin, our moms yelled at us until they saw how hurt I was, and that we had only brought back one four wheeler. They then carried us into the house, and we sat on the couch, telling them the story of how I crashed. Trent did most of the talking because I couldn’t get my thoughts together. When my dad got home, he went back and rolled the four wheeler back on its wheels, and drove it to the cabin as his friend brought the horses behind. Needless to say, I was grounded from driving the four wheelers for quite some time after that.