Saturday, August 14, 2010

Brent Banasiewicz Victory Lap - Portland DEW Tour



Porland, OR DEW Tour - BMX Dirt Jump Finals


Brent Banasiewicz (Bana-say-wits) already had the victory on lock after landing the first ever "cash roll" in competition. A cash roll is a 180 to backflip 180 out. This is his 3rd and final run. Watch the last hit, where he does the cash roll even bigger than he did it on his first run.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Day in the life...

I love my job. We get to do the most random stuff. Today Fuel TV's Thrillbillies came by to drive "half cars" around our parking lot and film for their show. I grabbed my Flip MinoHD video camera and caught a bit of the action. Double click the video to watch on YouTube, since my blog layout cuts of the edge of videos...




I'm off to Portland later this week for another stop of the DEW Tour. Portland is another city I've always wanted to visit. It's kind of a bummer I'll still be hobbling around on my peg leg, but at least this time I'll have a car...

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Summer Boom Crash



I've been doing my best to make the most of my summer. The kind folks up at Fred's Marine in Layton hooked us up with a rad wakeboarding boat:




It's a Tige (Pronounced - tye-guh) RZ2 and it rocks. I've taken it out a couple of times and there isn't much like a free $75,000 wakeboarding boat to make you love your job. The wake is killer, but where this thing really shines is wake surfing, which is something I'm probably going to be doing more of...



That's my good buddy and co-worker Cort surfing it up about a week ago, behind said wakeboarding boat. The reason that this isn't a picture of me wakesurfing is because shortly before this picture was taken I was wakeboarding and I landed funny after the most massive air you've ever seen and blew out the old knee. As soon as I hit the water I felt it go "pop" and thought "Crap, there goes my ACL."

So after some X-rays and an MRI, it turns out I was right, sorta.

I guess I got lucky and didn't actually sever my ACL, rather, it detached from the bone where it connects to the tibula. After the surgeon looked at my MRI he recommended that I not get surgery (What?!? A surgeon who doesn't want to cut?) Instead I'm locked into one of these puppies for the next 4 weeks:


That's not actually a picture of me, by the way.

Apparently my intact ACL is dangling right where it needs to be when my leg is straight, so there's a chance it will reattach itself on it's own. If that indeed ends up being the case, my knee should be as good as new and I will count myself as one of the luckiest people alive, as true ACL injuries have a tendency to be at least somewhat debilitating for the rest of your life.

Apparently an injury of my particular type is extremely rare in adults. My doctor is one of the two orthopedic specialists who handle all the injured University of Utah athletes (read: she is AWESOME) and she has never seen it in anyone older than 12.

So while this brace is extremely annoying, and keeps sliding down my leg, and is AWFUL to sleep with, I'll gladly wear it if it means a good-as-new knee sans the surgery. Here's to hoping. Next check up is August 30th.

Again thanks to Fred's Marine for hooking up the Rockwell Crew with this sick boat, even if it did ruin the rest of my summer...