I remember hearing that saying for the first time in my Motorcycle Safety Foundation Course. One of the instructors told us that, only to say that he thought the saying was full of shit. He apparently had been riding for 20 years and had never laid down his bike. Not in the garage, not in a crash, not in a parking lot. So he said.
I don’t know if he was telling the truth, but I do know this, I am definitely in the former catagory. I’ve laid down every motorcycle I’ved owned. Whether it was in the garage, parking lot, doing a U turn on a severe uphill, or getting hit by a car, I’ve laid down my bike. Am I an unsafe rider? Not at all. Each one of the incidents happened as a result of another party hitting ME. (Seriously, I will create a section with my crash experiences so you will know I’m telling the truth…or at least an excuse) This most recent one, however, was the worst.
Three months ago, I was riding down a well travelled, well paved road near the house. It was a backroad that had its share of twists and turns and straights that ran through somewhat small towns. I had been riding back home from lunch in San Francisco and was about six miles from my house. This road has pullouts for slower traffic to go into when there are speedier vehicles behind.
So the scene is set. I’m riding behind a big truck. I’ve just caught up to it, but nowhere near it. The truck flashes it’s right hand turn signal and pulls over…well over into the large shoulder. The truck is showing brake lights as to let me pass. As I make the pass, the truck speeds up and is now side by side with me and moving into my lane. This begins to push me into the opposing traffic lane, as the truck would have hit me if I stood my ground in my lane. As I realized that I may either get hit by the truck or continue riding in the opposing lane risking a head-on collision due to the blind turns on this curvy road, I decided that I needed to get out of trouble. I did so by speeding up to pass the truck in the middle of a somewhat sharp turn. In the process of speeding up and passing the truck, the truck hits my rear tire and I cannot maintain my lean in the turn. My path has straightened out in the middle of the turn…right into a metal beam guardrail.
The guardrail is there to prevent vehicles from flying into a ditch abut 25′ down in case they missed the turn. The guardrail did its job perfectly when I hit it. The Kawasaki Z750S didn’t fly into the ditch, but I did. Upon hitting the guardrail, I was thrown headfirst off the bike at about 30 mph and I flipped and tumbled like a rag doll 25′ down and about 25′ away from the site of the impact.
Luckily, I remained conscious and checked myself for injury to any body parts. Spine good, neck good. I try to stand up…nothing doing. There was a a hot flash of pain in my right foot and I knew there was something wrong. It was something that I hadn’t felt before, with the additional familiar feeling of fresh blood seeping out of a wound (I was kid once, and I had lots of kid accidents resulting in blood loss!). After realizing that something was severely wrong with my foot, I look down to make sure it’s actually still attached to my leg. Yup.
After a half assed sigh of relief, I realized that I can’t bend my left leg without a significant amount of pain from my knee. No warm blood feeling. Just major pain. I figured a tear of some sort. Turns out I was right. Partial tear in my medial collateral ligament (MCL).
The big injury was the right foot, though. Somehow the crash caused my ankle to dislocate, two bones in my foot (4th and 5th metatarsals) to dislocate, and a major laceration on the top of my foot. Nothing that a couple pins can’t fix!
So after a few months in a cast and crutches, my gigantic wound on my foot has healed up, but I’m still working on walking without a limp. My right ankle and left knee still don’t have the range of motion that they should, but I’m in physical therapy working on them. My foot and ankle are still swollen beyond belief, so I literally have a “cankle”. That should go away with time, too, though. It better…
The driver of the truck? Hit and run. The sign of a true coward. I could’ve been dead, and he/she just left, and that person caused the accident! No use getting too upset about it anymore…
I hope this is the last time I “lay my bike down”. If I ever do again, then I hope it’s like the people in the Craig’s list ads that say, “Small scratch on the tank because my wife dropped it in garage when she was trying to move it”. (sidenote: that seems like such bullshit when I read that in Craig’s list)
I did go for a ride through the mountains with Sarah already. We went two up on Hwy 1 North to Pescadaro to Sky Londa to Saratoga and looped back taking Summit Rd to Old San Jose/Soquel Road. Only 112 miles, but about four hours of mountain twisties.
I was a little tentative at first, considering I couldn’t even walk properly, but Sarah and I both had to ride. Yes…we had to.
For now, the motorcycle adventures aren’t quite what they were, but this is just temporary. It is winter anyways, right?
Don’t forget all the comments from people like, “I bet your wife was so mad at you,” or “I bet she won’t let you ride a motorcycle again.” Those comments drove me crazy. I remember asking you when you were in the hospital, “Please tell me we will still be riding after this?” and you answered, “Of course!!”