Sunday, May 8, 2016

Today is Also Anniversary of the Surprisingly Non-Lethal Bike Crash

Happy Mother's Day has been conveyed to the ones who can hear my voice so I will direct my primary fascination to why do I remain in a non-dead (undead) state after that glorious day twenty-five years ago.  The memory is clear because it still hurts and my shoulder doesn't work properly.

I remember it every time I hear a Harley.  I have no case against Harleys but I have a monster of a case on idiots in cages who cannot control or manage their vehicles.  It was only dumb luck or Divine Providence which kept me alive in that one.  The car came from my blind side and I saw nothing more than a purple flash and then SMACK!

Note:  he was driving Rhode Island style which means if you want to turn left then jump it as soon as the light changes and screw anyone who gets hit (i.e. me).  If you see tags on a vehicle from anywhere in New England, steer far clear of it as it seems to be a standard up there.

(Ed:  these people have never been on a race track)

No possible way.  They would be dead in the first lap.




That I landed so close to the car shows how hard I hit it and the windshield was smashed by my shoulder while it, in turn, smashed me.  There's my seriously-smashed Harley but it got its own as it looks like it did significant damage to the car.    My girl was totalled, tho, and she was such an excellent machine.  Someone said it even bent the motor but how is that even possible (larfs).

This was all such a bitch for the guy who was driving who I could hear ranting and raving about how I ruined his day.  Gee, sorry about your luck, mister, but fuck you very much.

No idea if I totaled the car but I sure put a fuckload of hurt on it.

As to where is my helmet, I wasn't wearing one.


The two women to each side of me were off-work nurses or angels, as you wish.  They appeared from nowhere almost as soon as I hit the ground and the one closest to me knew not to let me fall asleep.  No need for details but very bad if you sleep.  She spoke to me in a soothing voice and she had no reason to do this beyond the love in her heart.  I was too smashed to learn the names of either of them and they disappeared after the medics arrived.

Bless you, ladies, wherever you are.


I was still dressed at this point but that didn't last because the medics cut  off my clothes to triage the damage.  Any remaining bashfulness left after the military (i.e. not much) was definitely gone after that joyous moment.  The photographer is unknown as well and was not a reporter but was someone who just happened to be there.


Oh, you're thinking they gave me pain meds?  Um, nope, that's now how it goes, Dagwood.  If there is even suspicion of a head injury, you get zero pain medication and that's not being over-cautious because certain types of injuries of that nature will result in swelling around the brain.  To detect that, the doctors need to observe you and then they can likely stop it.  Otherwise, you are an ex-biker, you will not survive that.


When they wheeled me into the emergency room on a gurney, five or six trauma team doctors surrounded me and started working before the gurney even stopped rolling.  One of them sliced me in the guttywuts to insert a drainage tube and I don't even recall it hurting because, at that point, it just didn't make that much difference.  The excellence of the way that trauma team went through its drills was a marvel.




This looks like it was some while after the crash.  For quite a while the orthopod tried using a really heavy cast to pull the bones, broken in several places, back into proper position so they would heal.

That didn't work so the next move was surgery and that went for, I believe, four or five hours.  In the recovery room, one of the nurses asked me if I wanted morphine and I figured, never tried it and the price is right so why not.

Extremely bad idea.

She came back some while later and asked if I would like some more and I thought, why not as the other didn't seem to do much.

Now it's a compound bad idea.

Opiates don't seem to give any particular buzz if you're really smashed so it was all the more pleasing to discover the long-term benefit of narcotics: about three that morning I was puking my guts up from it and I never even got a buzz (larfs).



A major delight during this period was when I was bolted to the floor in the wheelchair because I had so much difficulty getting out of it.  My brother-in-law, the G-Man, drove me to multiple places that way and was really special about it.

My pelvis was broken in multiple places as well.  Take one guess what hit the gas tank, li'l boobies.

If there is any question on how I wound up with all this skin cancer, the pic should resolve it.


This will close with something actually funny about all of this.  While lying in the hospital bed, with my legs as far apart due to the nature of the injury, I was well-prepared for when the daddy doctor did his rounds with a number of baby doctors in tow to observe.

Perhaps I should clarify the state of the family jewels at the moment.  There was livid black bruising from one knee to the other and everywhere in-between.  That wasn't so much the problem except the area in-between swelled roughly to the size of grapefruit.  If you don't think your li'l pardners can swell that much, I can only tell you do NOT find this out for yourself the hard way.  If you're definitely going to hit then come up on the pegs.  That likely means you will launch to a greater distance but, assuming you survive, the jewels, at least, should be relatively undamaged.


There are multiple problems with having purple grapefruit balls but one of them is they are a fascination to doctors because they can't really believe it is possible either.

Curiosity got the better of one of the baby doctors so he lifted up the far end of the sheet and the vista more than fulfilled his expectations because there was a gasp of HOLY SHIT!

There are many things one may wish to hear when smashed all to hell in a hospital bed and holy shit is not on that list.

We suspect that baby doctor was taken by the daddy doctor for another pass at bedside manner as he didn't quite get it the first time.


I broke the First Biker Law:  don't let the fuckers hit you.

Note:  there is no other law.

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