Expecting the unexpected- Kaelin Friedenson

With everything we do there is are always manny possible outcomes, some are positive and some are negative. Usually before you are about to do something you can guess what the outcome may be and try to calculate the percentages of each of each outcome happening. Now the reason I tell you this is because earlier this week there was a situation that happened where the outcome was totally unexpected and very negative on something that has been done many times by numbers of people including myself. 

Here is what happened. We were padding up to one of the most well-known and safest jump rock on the Ottawa river call BFR (big friendly rock). I’ve been jumping and doing flips off this rock for years just like many other people had and I was really stoked to finally come back here to jump off it again. When I got on the rock, I decided to do a backflip 360. I did it and landed perfectly. I repeated this jump and many other flips that i’ve done before landing on my feet every time until, I didn’t. 

 It started out just like every other time I jumped off except for the landing. When I jumped, I did a back flip 720 then straightened out to land on my feet just like every other time, except this time instead of landing on my feet I landed flat on my back. When I hit the water I felt one of most brutal pains in my life, then everything went black. The next thing I remember I was floating way down stream into the next little rapid as my friend and coaches dragged me to shore. My back and neck really hurt, and I was pretty scared to move, not knowing what was wrong with me. My friends helped me to the road where an ambulance picked me up and brought me to the hospital. In the hospital they took X-rays and Cat scans and slowly the results came back and luckily nothing was broken,  however many of my muscles were pulled, so the doctor told me I was off they water for a few days. Luckily it wasn’t as bad as it could have been but it is a good lesson that anything could happen no mater how many times you have done it before. 

Stoked to be on the water tomorrow, probably not going to be doing flips of this rock in a while.