Down but Never out with Jared Eberwein
“I can say I’ve never had this injury before or anything close to it. When it happened, I wasn’t sure quite what happened. I just knew that my elbow hurt pretty good, but I thought to myself that maybe it’ll be ok. It’s only hurting for obvious reasons. Which is from under rotating a backflip, basically falling out of the sky straight to my left side.
Palm, elbow, shoulder, and then head to finish it off. I don’t know where this sense of urge came from, but I was jumping this gap at the Jurupa skatepark. Not a gap I do often, nor a huge fan of, but for some reason I was sessioning it by myself. You sorta go pretty fast to jump it, seems to be the faster the better, however still not a great landing overall. The take off for the gap is using a hip that’s meant for the big bowl at Jurupa, so already the lip is angled and you have to be on top of things when going off the lips, especially if you decide to spin it.
I was jumping it, spinning it, and just kept jumping and going fast. Then a thought popped in my head, “I wonder if I could flip it?”. I just kept going at it, waiting for one of the hits to kind of go off like a light bulb. Like ah there it is, that felt like a perfect setup for a flip, haha.
I finally felt like it was time to just try it, so I did. I drop in with plenty of speed, feeling good, going up the lip and ready to pull back. I go off the lip, pull back for a flip and immediately realize that there is NOTHING there. What I mean by that, is I pulled back, definitely, but not nearly as hard as I should have, had I known or realized that beforehand. I had jumped the gap about 10-13 times before I sent the flip, never once did I doubt myself because of the lip being mellow. It didn’t even cross my mind that the take off was mellow… until I tried to flip it. Damn did it make me realize how mellow it was right away. Carrying on with the story, so I started flipping, and already in my head I knew it wasn’t going to work out. Although I held on, for some reason I don’t think I knew what to do. I don’t ever bail out of flips, so it didn’t cross my mind to eject mid flip and try to get to my feet and tuck and roll. I would say I don’t have much experience with bailing out of flips, although I know I have, and it went rather well. This one however, DID NOT.
I do sort of bail, because if I didn’t let go at the last minute like I did and tuck and roll, it would have been A LOT WORSE. I let go at the last possible moment, and get away pretty damn good given the circumstances, feeling a little banged up. Mostly being my elbow, and just to say my helmet did a good job for this fall of mine. I saw the ground coming at my face fast, I dipped my head a little bit harder, and got the helmet to strike the ground perfectly, saving my head.
After I stood around, walked around, moved my arm, I decided I definitely can’t ride anymore and went home. Luckily it was filmed, so I was able to watch as the backflip mess unfolded. I went home so I can get some ice on my elbow ASAP, and just do nothing but rest. Felt beat up forsure, but it’s all part of the territory. I slept it off, woke up the next day, elbow feeling worse, body overall feeling worse, but that’s to be expected with slamming on concrete. I was in question if my elbow might be a serious matter, so I decided I wanted to get an X-ray. I went to a local urgent care, explained the situation and that I needed an X-ray. I honestly believed that I was gonna be ok, but unfortunately I was surprised with a fracture on the radial head of my bone, left arm. It’s not a bad situation, and not an area for a full through break…I’m still not sure of my timeline, we’re just playing it by ear from x-ray to x-ray.”
-Jared Eberwein