As I scream, "Slow down! Slow down!" I realized that my good friend Ben is about to see his life flash before his eyes. He's in fourth gear on his all-terrain vehicle, going about forty-five miles an hour as he goes down a hill toward a huge mud puddle at the bottom. Knowing what's about to happen, I wave my arms downward in an attempt to make him slow down. Because of his speed he had no choice but to try. It hit the bottom of the hill and about a meter from the bottom the hole in the mud began. He hit the mud and traveled about four feet before flipping the ATV and flying over the handlebars, gracelessly, looking like a turtle flying through the air due to the backpack he was wearing and mud-filled helmet. I immediately ran to his aid, but once I heard his infectious laugh I knew everything was okay. I started walking back to my ATV so I could get his out. This was a great start to a fun filled weekend. Even though we dreaded every day before departure, we were ecstatic on the day of departure. Three weeks before the trip, I turned sixteen and received my driver's license. My friend Ben and I had been planning a trip since we were little, a trip where we could get away from home, go off-roading and just have fun. We knew there were two places we could go. A place in South Georgia called Durham Town or a place called Hatfield McCoy Trails in West Virginia. We chose Durham Town as it was closer to us and had their mud bogs at night. We had a busy week preparing for this weekend trip and making sure Durham Town was the place to go. If there was any preparation to be done for a trip, we made sure it happened. Weeks before we made a... piece of paper... just to hear each other talk. Once we returned to camp we set up the tent and ended the night. The next morning we built a fire and started the day again. Even though Ben and I thought we had done it all and knew everything about each other, we learned a lot by just being alone and taking care of ourselves while having fun. We learned how each of us handles angry situations, when we get stuck in the mud, and how we handle defeat when one wins a challenge or race over the other. I never thought a weekend could be filled with so much fun and freedom. Being away from parents and being alone with a friend doing what we love to do. I'd never been sore while driving, but on Sunday, on the dreaded drive home, I felt the beating we'd taken all weekend. It was a sense of battle dread from a story we could tell when we got home.