It was the morning after Thanksgiving, 2006. The office where I worked was officially closed, but I figured I would shoot in for a few hours to catch up on a project I was working on. It was pretty clear but chilly here in the south Chicago suburbs, the mid forties or there about, so I geared up a little more than usual. I wore a heavy Alpine Starz jacked, Oxtar riding boots, Padded over-pants over jeans, my favorite Triumph Carbon gloves, and my Shoei RF900 helmet. I was taking it easy on the highway, just casually making my way into work. Traffic was pretty light, as most people have the day after Thanksgiving off, and it was already about 9:30 AM. Traffic was moving at a pretty normal 65MPH when I could see something was happening up ahead, everyone was slowing down and traffic was starting to bunch up a bit. I remember not even having to break much, but just let off the gas, the engine compression was more than enough; everyone had slowed to about 35MPH, nothing dramatic at all.
The next bits of information are pieced together from witnesses and accident reconstruction.
This was a three lane (each direction) divided highway, I was in the center lane. A woman in a minivan had been in the right lane, following closely behind someone, when traffic slowed, she jumped into the middle lane and hit me from behind at about 65MPH. The front of the van happened to line up in such a way that it knocked the bike perfectly from under me, with me winding up on her hood, and my bike ricocheting off the Lexus sport utility that had been in front of me. Well, you can guess what her reaction was to having a new passenger appear on her hood, she set the hooks, sending me via air-mail to the back of the Lexus that my bike had just visited. Ironically, I must have passed over my bike in mid air, which had bounced off the Lexus and was now on its way back to revisit the minivan. The Lexus at this point is also setting the hooks, in response the various motorcycles and riders that are bouncing off its tailgate. I, from what I have been told, at this point am stuck to the back of the Lexus, kept there by the forces of extreme breaking, when she does finally come to a stop, I fall to the ground behind her, luckily, not getting hit yet again by the van that kicked this whole party off.
Flash forward about 30 minutes; this is when I am awakened by the sound of the paramedics bashing the legs of the gurney on the rear of the ambulance as they load me in. At this point, I can only remember leaving my driveway. The paramedic is, along with his two friends are having a hell of a time cutting my $600 Jacket off, the over-pants apparently offered little resistance. I ask him what happened, and he simply says, “You crashed your motorcycle man”, while reaching over to mop blood off my face. In response the blood wiping, I ask “Didn’t I have a helmet on?”, he chuckles and says “we wouldn’t be talking if you didn’t, you face just got a little cut up”.
As it turns out, the Lexus had a spoiler that protruded from the back of the roofline, which I face planted against, blowing out my visor and cutting up my nose a bit. Other than that, my left wrist was pretty well shattered, broken in 13 places, and I compression fracture in one vertebrae. So believe it or not, I almost walked away from this mess. The wrist required a plate that will be with me forever, and the back can have its moments but for the most part everything has worked out. Is there a moral to this story? Well, the gear saved my life, according to the doctors there were two potentially fatal head blows that my helmet handled. The rest of the gear did a stellar job too, and paid the ultimate price, death by surgical scissors, except the boots, I was conscious before they tackled those.
The pictures tell the rest of the story. I like how you can make out the outline of my upper torso on the hood of the van. The Triple was a fantastic bike, and I might even pick up another at some point, but I have to say, the Custom Thruxton that got bike of the month is very interesting…
There are more pictures, if you are interested
here
Be Safe,
JMR
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