The last few days have been very hectic;
Our clinic at New Town on Saturday went very well; we had about 35 people learn how to snowkite. The wind was perfect and it was warm enough to go without gloves. Judy Yessilth put us up for the night, which was very welcome. I got to go out with the photographers and see the snowkiters. Sam had had a very tough day as the river had little snow on top of the glare ice. It was difficult to kite on that terrain and all of the athletes were soaking wet.
Sunday morning I rode out with Jim Grijalva to try and locate the athletes; we decided to wait for them in New Town. As soon as we rode into town I recieved a phone call from Paul telling me that Sam was injured and we needed to come out and find them. I didn't have internet connection to check the GPS, but Paul told me that they were about a mile east of where we had seen them the night before. The wind was so strong that they were being blown downwind without using kites, just standing on their boards with their arms stretched out. Ellis, Blake, Jim, and I searched for Sam, eventually brining the SUV down onto the ice, which was rather scary. We finally found them, Sam was in a tremendous amount of pain, his shoulder was dislocated. We got him into a different vehicle and I drove him to the Emergency Room in Williston. We waited for a considerable amount of time before the doctor put his shoulder back in. He will not have full range of motion or muscle control for weeks because of the stretched tendons and ligaments, and possible nerve damage. He will be traveling with the education crew and the photography crew for the time being.
Paul and Jason have made incredible progress today; they are almost to Garrison and going strong. I have acquired a pretty terrible chest cold that I am attempting to fight off so that I don't have to miss any events. We stayed at the Lewis and Clark Museum in Washburn last night, which was a lot of fun. We will be continuing on to Wilton tonight.