A warm September Saturday afternoon and I was mid-project and needed to make yet another trip to the hardware store for some critical gizmo. I broke the rules (my rules) and took off on my bike without putting on a riding jacket. You know the drill...short ride, hot weather...
The exact sequence of events is unclear and disputed but the outcome was that I collided with the rear end of a car that had stopped short in front of me. I summersaulted over the bike and the car and ended up (briefly) unconscious in the middle of the road. I was later to find out that my bike had ended up upside down (balanced on the seat and handlebars) at the side of the road. The picture at the left doesn't do justice to the damage.
The bike was totaled. I had only minor injuries including some modest road rash, a broken finger and two badly jammed shoulders. I was taken to the hospital by ambulance and released several hours later after extensive xrays and a lot of tsk-ing.
In Massachusetts (as in many states) if you hit someone from behind, you are automatically at fault. My side of the story is that I was following this car at a safe distance and traveling within the speed limit when I noticed it was slowing. I glanced over my right shoulder to see if I could safely pass on the right. When I looked back the car was dead stopped in front of me. Collision inevitable. When I later talked to the police who attended the scene they suggested that the car that I hit was shopping yard sales and had stopped when it spotted one on the left side of the road we were traveling along. I suspect that his sighting of the yard sale was last minute and he stopped rather quickly...I don't know if he had turn signals on or not. It hardly matters except that my insurance premiums jumped significantly because I was technically at fault.
The fallout from the event was that my shoulders and neck were junk for the better part of a year. I had a hard time looking over my shoulder and when I did, it was painful. I was also afraid of traveling in either car or on a bike. Since I didn't have a bike at the moment, that was no problem. The fear of riding in a car took months to abate.
About month after the accident I decided it was time to get another bike and located a good used bike in Florida. I had my son Jason check it out (it was close to where he lived). I haggled with the seller and ultimately hopped a plane to Florida for a short visit with my family and to pick up the bike.
Riding an unfamiliar bike 2000+miles so soon after the crash might not have been a good idea, but it seemed okay to me at the time. All that "get back on the horse after you've been thrown" bullshit seemed compelling to me then. My body was quite sore from the accident and I was eating ibuprofin for the entire trip. There was some bad weather along the way, but essentially the trip was uneventful and I got back to Cape Cod none the worse for wear.
I rode relatively little that fall and winter. I spent time tweaking the bike with a new seat and a better windscreen. Come spring I rode some more, but every time on the bike I had to deal with my lack of confidence...even fear about being on the bike. I rode very, very cautiously and was more hyper-vigilant than usual about all kinds of road hazards. Slowly, slowly the confidence returned and the fear abated. I think it's safe to say that even though I've put on about 20,000 miles since the accident, it is never forgotten completely. At this point (almost three years later) I feel that I'm a better rider because of the accident. It's an awful way to get to be a better rider, but the reality of motorcycling is that there are a lot of ways to get into trouble on a bike. The more you really, really understand that, the safer you are likely to be.
All of this is prelude to my next series of posts which chronicle my 6,992 mile trip during the summer of 2007. Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment