Thursday, December 6, 2007

Sig Obj

There is a broken quad rack in my garage. The quad rack is very beat up, and is useless. We moved into our new house during my 8th grade year, and stayed at my grandpa’s house, while he was still alive, during 7th grade, so I would guess that is was about the summer before 6th grade, and school had just let out for summer. Our pool was open and the weather was nice outside. My friend, Chase, and I went cruising around on one of my family’s quads in our back woods, which had awesome quad and dirt bike trails. Anyway, we went “off-roading” in a sense because we had left the trails. Behind the trails, in the back woods, there is a somewhat shallow stream in which was about a foot or two deep. Chase and I decided we wanted to cross the stream and go riding over by Wantage Avenue. The banks of the stream were somewhat steep, and some had lips on them that your tires would get caught on, and cause you to flip over. I decided to give it a try and tried riding up one of the banks which had a lip. It was a very bad move. We had made it all the way to the top of the bank, and then terror struck both of us. The quad flipped up at a 90 degree angle, and somehow did not land on us. Both, Chase and I, fell off, him first because he was riding on the back of the quad. Then I landed on him, which softened my fall. As Chase fell onto the rocks at the bottom of the stream, the back rack of the quad fell off due to some corrosion, and screws falling out. The rack was mangled. Chase and I did not know what to do, we had just had a near death experience, and the back rack of the quad had broken off, and we felt that it was our fault, and that it had fallen off. We panicked, and thought that we would get in a lot of trouble and never be allowed to ride a quad again. After e pushed the quad back over onto its tires, we tried to fix the rack, and make it look like it had never fallen off. Right after we finished our satisfactory job, we turned the quad around and drove back to my house, which was not a far ride at all. Once we had arrived back to my house, my dad noticed right away that the rack did not look right, and questioned us on why it looked different than what it did before. We told him the story of what happened and he understood, and was happy we were okay. Neither Chase nor I got in trouble for the broken rack, because it was neither of our faults. Soon after my dad questioned us on the rack, he too it off and put it into the garage hoping to maybe repair it and put it back on the quad sooner or later. Years have passed, and we have moved from place to place, and we still have the mangled rack from the quad. It sits right in our garage between my dad’s Acura and my Honda. I walk past it every day, and it reminds me that I need to live life to the fullest, and that there is no guarantee that I will be back tomorrow. That rack symbolizes how close to death or serious injury I really was, and that I am lucky to still be here today.

2 comments:

Soulja Boy said...

It's amazing how similar our essays really are considering we had no idea what each other was writing about. You are lucky as well that the quad didn't fall on you because you could've been seriously hurt. I learned a lot about you from your quad rack and you did a good job tieing it into your story. Also your story was interesting and kept my attention. Well congratulations on surviving and being as lucky as me. Good paper.

Papa Bear said...

Nice job. Your dad probably didn't get mad at you because you told him the truth and you were already scared out of your mind. I bet you never tried riding up that again.