Keeping in tune with the X2 story, I have another to add to that. When I had my first 650SX I was out with a buddy at the time...he's not one anymore...we were out jumping the wake from his uncle's boat. While his aunt and uncle were out touring he and I went ripping around the little bays. I saw him not slowing down on approach and we narrowly missed each other on a hard carve to steer away from each other. Both of our skis very nearly tagged each other at the rear gunwale. We stopped for a second and I told him we need to keep our distance, I don't want to get hit. He said yeah, for sure. We get back to the wake jumping and I flew first. Last thing I remember was hearing the sound of the exhaust at full bore right in my face. I thought I took a bad landing and spilled off the back catching a blast of my own exhaust to the face. Nope.
Turned out he didn't listen to our previous conversation and was only a few feet behind me when I left the wake. I didn't spill, he landed on me. Gashed a tear in my handlepole pad cover and a 6 stitch gash just above my left ear and slightly back from my temple. Turns out it was his exhaust I heard at full bore in the face. I got back on my ski, somewhat phased/stunned thinking I just had a hard landing. I went back to riding and was going to give it time to shrug off. He gets up beside me and says "we got to get to shore now!" I said "I'm ok, keep going, just a little dizzy, it'll be fine". He said "no, we NEED to get back to shore NOW!" Just as he was saying that, my left ear started ringing. I thought I had blown my eardrum. All I knew at the time about blown eardrums was from what I saw in the movies and that they seemed to always bleed when they pop. I put my hand up to my ear, bring it down to have a look and my hand was pure red. I thought for sure I popped the drum. I get low in the tray, splash off the red, check again, nothing. Touch a little higher up...red. So at least the drum was ok, but once I saw that I was a little discouraged and rode straight back to the beach which was about a half mile away. I get there onto the sand, slide up and almost fall off in a bit of a stagger. At that point the concussion was setting in and I started getting groggy. A lady on the beach sees me and runs over to see what was wrong, sees the gash and calls her husband over. She takes me to her place and says I'm a nurse, my husband is an ambulance driver and her family at her house were all registered nurses too lol. I guess if it had to happen, that was the best time for it to happen, the strange thing was that for a house full of nurses and medic drivers, not one sterile cloth in the place...I had to use a cleaned painting cloth for an icepack lol.
The moral of the story, never stay close to your wingmen, give plenty of distance and never follow the same lines. You never know if one of your bros has taken a spill on the other side of the wave until you are in the air and have no way to avoid landing on them. I was put on light duty at work for 3 months and have only increased the frequency and severity of my migraines as a result of it. Concussions are accumulative, they do not heal fully so wear that helmet! At the time when that happened, wearing a helmet on a ski was unheard of. A few years later I traded my Kawi in on a Sea-Doo XP800...don't do that either! I rode it maybe 3 times over a 5 year period because it never ran right and then I sold it and went back to another 650sx to start. My first initiative was mod the crap out of it, then get the helmet. Now I never ride without my lid and it has saved me a plenty while I am still learning barrel rolls and other moves.
