KEEP YOUR HANDS INSIDE THE RIG! And dont under any circumstance hold onto the roll cage, if you have one.

Yesterday morning out at TDS one of my close friends was injured because of a dumb mistake. He was playing around in some of the trenches with his drivers side tires up high on one of the walls. He made the mistake of having his hand on the cage when the tire suddenly slipped causing the rig to transition rather violently to the driver side and smack the cage against the trench wall, with his hand in between the two. Needless to say the results were not pretty. I wasn't present at the time but I was told he passed out just about immediately from the pain and shock, and was very out of it when he came to. The buggy still has a lot of blood in it even after someone cleaned up the worst of it. He ended up being treated in camp by the paramedics, then transported to the hospital in Banning where they did x-rays and determined that his hand was too damaged for them to work on there. He then got an ambulance ride to Loma Linda where a number of pins were inserted in his hand, and his palm was sewn up.

When the the cage crushed his hand it kinda popped, and tore most of his palm open, also breaking 3 bones. He got out of the hospital this afternoon and is doing ok now, but will not have much if any use of his hand for quite a while.

This is the worst kind of reminder you can have of your bad habits, and this kind of stuff should never happen. He was a VERY experienced wheeler and knew better. In fact he was the first person I ever rode on a trail with before I got my first rig, and guess what the first thing he told me was? Dont grab the cage! Just goes to show, no matter how experienced you are you can still get hurt just by not paying attention for a second.

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Dallas