I got grounded near Grand Caribe Resort

Yesterday was almost perfect weather to go hang out at Grand Caribe for their Sunday pool side party at Cowboy Doug’s pool bar and grill. I say almost as there was a bit of a breeze happening and technically it is winter here so the water was a bit cool. While Paul watched football on the big screen tv, Dennis & I went polar bear and made new friends.

It was not long before  Seleni and Madison came along and wanted to share our toys. They played with the hula hoops and the float rings and were very eager to have us pull them around the pool. As soon as Dennis worked out that the shallow fountain pool was warmer than the big pool kiddy rides stopped and lounge time was on. Looking back, I should have have stayed there and not volunteered to go to the store.

They say bad things happen in three’s well I can vouch for that one. Before our road trip, Dennis came upstairs to cook a chicken carcass for soup, got busy didn’t notice that the water had boiled away. Not long after I suffered from severe burnt toast and later in the afternoon I got my freak accident out of the way for 2012 [and hopefully longer].

Dennis and I were going to pick up smokes for Paul at the store and while driving there I turned to the side at the wrong time, Denis hit a bump and before I could stop it from happening I got spat out of the cart and onto the dirt road. It was pretty funny till I tried to get up and discovered my right foot was likely sprained. I also got my left finger and now I cannot do peace signs or flip anyone the bird for a while.  The silver lining to this dark storm cloud was…. when Paul found out he kissed my sore finger better and immediately proceeded to make sure I had food in front of me and ordered shrimp Quesadilla. He knows me so well good food = 🙂 tacogirl. Back at our lounge chairs, Dennis did a finger kiss to my knee and asked if Paul had kissed my booboo’s. He said “that is the first thing you do when a girl gets hurt”. I told him he is going to make someone a great boyfriend one day. I cannot even claim party foul on my golf cart accident, while I did have a white rum and cranberry juice in the cart with me, I was no where near drunk or even tipsy for that matter – chalking it up to centrifugal acceleration force and a dumb@ss accident 🙂

This unfortunate incident left me researching how stuntmen do it. My first Google search was ‘how to fall out of a moving golf cart’ I was not surprised that turned up some interesting stuff including a video of John falling out of a golf cart. I instantly got sidetracked watching videos of Jackass boys and their golf cart antics, this left me thankful that Johnny Knoxville or Bam Margera were not driving or my injuries would have been way worse. I wonder if the golf cart company charged for extra insurance when Johnny Knoxville was in San Pedro.

I also found some interesting stats (and the technical cart info below) on golf cart occupant ejections from Technology Associates Engineering experts website. Based on CPSC statistics, roughly 40% of golf cart accidents involve a person falling out of the car, and many of these accidents involve young children. In addition to ejection accidents, approximately 10% of golf cart accidents involve a rollover and statistics indicate that such accidents are roughly twice as likely to lead to injuries requiring a hospital stay as non-rollover accidents.

Passenger Ejections – One common scenario for a passenger ejection accident occurs when a cart, traveling near its maximum speed, is turned sharply to the left. During a sharp left turn, centrifugal acceleration forces tend to force the passenger to his right, which can lead to ejection. Sharp turns are less likely to lead to a driver ejection because the driver has the steering wheel to hold onto and can always anticipate when he is about to initiate a turn.

Golf carts are typically designed with rectangular or semicircular bars that rise up from each side of the car’s bench seat and are designed to serve as both handholds and hip restraints. One of the deficiencies of this design is that the location of the handhold (i.e. at the outboard edge of the seat) is also the fulcrum about which an ejected passenger will tend to rotate. Therefore, this type of handhold, even when used, does not provide the passenger sufficient leverage to prevent ejection. Another possible deficiency is that the side restraint is often not large enough to prevent ejections.

And so ends my story of how I grounded myself on Sunday Funday driving along the north Ambergris Caye road with Dennis. I would like to remind everyone to be careful when driving golf carts around town, especially if you have kids on them, and pay attention to the laws of gravity :). Off to make our morning juice and ice my foot.