I know this is becoming something of a (bad) habit, but let me take a moment to apologize yet again for a complete lack of posts for the last several weeks. I can only say that between the crash, trying to recover from the crash, my fiancee's medical issues, selling my house, packing all of our stuff (while I was minimally ambulatory and my fiancee was still recovering from surgery), and moving 60 miles, I've been a little overwhelmed. I'll talk a bit about all this in upcoming posts and then hopefully get back to the more normal posts about motorcycles, geeky stuff, etc.
The Crash
On Saturday, May 3rd, while attending the annual Ducs Along the Blue Ridge rally hosted by US Desmo, myself and another rider were involved in a crash with a large pickup truck in the vicinity of Sparta, NC. I personally have no memory of the crash or the events that lead up to it so this story is what I've pieced together from various sources. I was the 3rd rider in line in a group of five. The leading two riders were quite a bit faster than I and had cleared off into the distance a bit. Another rider was riding with me, and the fifth rider was quite a bit farther back. Myself and the other rider with me were in what I'm told was a blind, decreasing-radius right hander when both of us hit the side of the pickup truck which was coming through the turn from the other direction. According to the driver of the pickup, I impacted at an oblique angle between the driver door and the driver's side front wheel. My helmet allegedly took out his driver's side rear-view mirror and window before I glanced off and subsequently went down. The other rider apparently hit the truck farther back before crashing himself.
The Injuries
As a result of the impact with the truck and the crash, I had a partial degloving of my left knee, a deep, approximately 3-inch long gash on my left forearm, and quite a few colorful bruises. The degloving is a less ugly way of saying that the skin on my left knee was ripped open to the point that my knee joint was visible to anyone who cared to look. I ended up having three separate surgeries to clean and close the knee wound and the surgeons ultimately had to do a skin graft to get it closed up, taking a strip of skin about and inch and a half wide and 6 inches long off the outside of my left thigh. I was also later told that I had what appeared to be a very small bruise on my spleen. Fortunately, that injury, if injury it was, never presented any problems.
The other rider fared a bit worse than me, as he ended up with a fairly major concussion, a broken left collarbone, several broken ribs on the left side, and a spleen that was damaged badly enough to require removal. He's much better now but he's still struggling with the collarbone. It's not healing like it should and they now suspect he has some nerve damage in that shoulder as well.
The Cause
What ultimately caused this altercation is open to debate and interpretation. Unfortunately, only three people saw the incident: myself, the other rider, and the truck driver. Of those three, only one has any recollection of what actually happened: the truck driver. Given that the court case is still unresolved at this point I'm not going to say any more about the cause for the time being. I certainly have my theories but I feel like I need to wait until the court proceedings are done before I voice them publicly.
The Aftermath
Physically, for me the aftermath is that my left knee is still stiff, doesn't have a full range of motion, aches a lot, and sports a large, gnarly scar worthy of one of the fabled Dr. Frankenstein's creations. Additionally, I have a marked lack of strength in my left leg in general because it was completely immobilized for 6 weeks. The wound to my left arm causes me much less problems, but I do have issues with it as well. I think most of those issues have less to do with the gash in my arm and more to do with the general abuse my arm took. I have a lot of strange twinges and aches in my left hand, wrist, and elbow that I didn't have before.
Other than my beloved Multistrada being completely destroyed (and I only had liability on it so it's a write-off), the non-physical ramifications have been fairly minor so far, thankfully. It's cost me some money obviously, but my medical costs were mostly covered by my company's wonderful insurance. My employers were great as always and gave me the time I needed to heal.
Motorcycling and Me
I ended up selling my 1098S back in June with the plan of waiting a few months before I bought another bike. This seemed sensible since I couldn't bend my knee enough to ride it anyway. As fate would have it I tripped across a 2008 Ducati Monster S4RS Tricolore about 2 weeks later. The Tricolore is a special edition top-of-the-line Monster and each bike of the 400 to be produced is numbered. The bike I found is number 14 of 400. Me being me, I couldn't resist it and bought it immediately.
The bike has been sitting in my garage for a few weeks now with me unable to ride it. I finally got enough flexibility and strength in my leg that I was able to put about 20 miles on it one evening last week. I got a few more miles on it this past weekend. It was a sublime pleasure to ride again. I knew I missed it but I didn't realize quite how much until I was able do it again.
And finally...
I'm finally starting to feel like everything is getting back on track. I've rejoined twitter, I'm hoping to get back to blogging on a regular basis, I'm riding again, and everything seems to be going pretty well. Look for more regular updates from here out!
Technorati Tags: Motorcycles
The Crash
On Saturday, May 3rd, while attending the annual Ducs Along the Blue Ridge rally hosted by US Desmo, myself and another rider were involved in a crash with a large pickup truck in the vicinity of Sparta, NC. I personally have no memory of the crash or the events that lead up to it so this story is what I've pieced together from various sources. I was the 3rd rider in line in a group of five. The leading two riders were quite a bit faster than I and had cleared off into the distance a bit. Another rider was riding with me, and the fifth rider was quite a bit farther back. Myself and the other rider with me were in what I'm told was a blind, decreasing-radius right hander when both of us hit the side of the pickup truck which was coming through the turn from the other direction. According to the driver of the pickup, I impacted at an oblique angle between the driver door and the driver's side front wheel. My helmet allegedly took out his driver's side rear-view mirror and window before I glanced off and subsequently went down. The other rider apparently hit the truck farther back before crashing himself.
The Injuries
As a result of the impact with the truck and the crash, I had a partial degloving of my left knee, a deep, approximately 3-inch long gash on my left forearm, and quite a few colorful bruises. The degloving is a less ugly way of saying that the skin on my left knee was ripped open to the point that my knee joint was visible to anyone who cared to look. I ended up having three separate surgeries to clean and close the knee wound and the surgeons ultimately had to do a skin graft to get it closed up, taking a strip of skin about and inch and a half wide and 6 inches long off the outside of my left thigh. I was also later told that I had what appeared to be a very small bruise on my spleen. Fortunately, that injury, if injury it was, never presented any problems.
The other rider fared a bit worse than me, as he ended up with a fairly major concussion, a broken left collarbone, several broken ribs on the left side, and a spleen that was damaged badly enough to require removal. He's much better now but he's still struggling with the collarbone. It's not healing like it should and they now suspect he has some nerve damage in that shoulder as well.
The Cause
What ultimately caused this altercation is open to debate and interpretation. Unfortunately, only three people saw the incident: myself, the other rider, and the truck driver. Of those three, only one has any recollection of what actually happened: the truck driver. Given that the court case is still unresolved at this point I'm not going to say any more about the cause for the time being. I certainly have my theories but I feel like I need to wait until the court proceedings are done before I voice them publicly.
The Aftermath
Physically, for me the aftermath is that my left knee is still stiff, doesn't have a full range of motion, aches a lot, and sports a large, gnarly scar worthy of one of the fabled Dr. Frankenstein's creations. Additionally, I have a marked lack of strength in my left leg in general because it was completely immobilized for 6 weeks. The wound to my left arm causes me much less problems, but I do have issues with it as well. I think most of those issues have less to do with the gash in my arm and more to do with the general abuse my arm took. I have a lot of strange twinges and aches in my left hand, wrist, and elbow that I didn't have before.
Other than my beloved Multistrada being completely destroyed (and I only had liability on it so it's a write-off), the non-physical ramifications have been fairly minor so far, thankfully. It's cost me some money obviously, but my medical costs were mostly covered by my company's wonderful insurance. My employers were great as always and gave me the time I needed to heal.
Motorcycling and Me
I ended up selling my 1098S back in June with the plan of waiting a few months before I bought another bike. This seemed sensible since I couldn't bend my knee enough to ride it anyway. As fate would have it I tripped across a 2008 Ducati Monster S4RS Tricolore about 2 weeks later. The Tricolore is a special edition top-of-the-line Monster and each bike of the 400 to be produced is numbered. The bike I found is number 14 of 400. Me being me, I couldn't resist it and bought it immediately.
The bike has been sitting in my garage for a few weeks now with me unable to ride it. I finally got enough flexibility and strength in my leg that I was able to put about 20 miles on it one evening last week. I got a few more miles on it this past weekend. It was a sublime pleasure to ride again. I knew I missed it but I didn't realize quite how much until I was able do it again.
And finally...
I'm finally starting to feel like everything is getting back on track. I've rejoined twitter, I'm hoping to get back to blogging on a regular basis, I'm riding again, and everything seems to be going pretty well. Look for more regular updates from here out!
Technorati Tags: Motorcycles
2 comments:
Welcome back Noel, and good luck with getting back to regular riding. The accident sounds like a nasty one and naturally such things take a long time to get over. It sounds like you are pretty much there though - let us know how you get on through your blog.
Thanks for the good wishes Rob, and I'll definitely keep the posts coming. I'm probably back to 85% and I'll keep posting as things change. Keep up the good work yourself, your blog was one of the things keeping me sane when I couldn't get off the couch by myself!
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