One month ago today, I came off the Rooster. Amazing, how much time has passed.
Thankfully, the news from my most recent doctor's visit is positive. The bones in my wrist are healing well, and have stayed in the geometry and locations achieved in surgery. This is great relief. Although I'm not out of the woods completely, as my nurse put it, I can "see the edge of the woods." I'll take that. The latest x-rays tell the tale, and reveal how much metal I'm carrying these days.
In another four weeks, if things continue on their current trajectory, I should be able to use my wrist without any sling or brace or cast. I'm looking forward to being able to doing all kinds of prosaic things that I've taken for granted in my many years of two handedness. Typing with ten fingers. Folding clothes. Doing dishes. Holding hands with my lover. And eventually, riding again.
I'm doing physical therapy in earnest now -- although nothing weight-bearing, as that could instantly set me back at this stage in my recovery. Instead, I'm working on flexibility, trying to regain full function in my fingers and optimal post-accident function in my wrist. It remains to be seen what range of motion I'll regain, but happily I'm at a point in my recovery where big strides can be -- and are being -- made.
Emotionally, the journey has been more complex. As Julie can tell you, I've been on quite a roller coaster. Well, a coaster with two topographies: smooth sailing and sudden, dramatic dips. It's been so strange to experience the sudden bursts of tears, upswells of relief, and a thousand moments of reliving the accident -- or at least the fragments available to me -- puzzling after the missing pieces. Tonight, over dinner, Julie and I celebrated life.
The bike faired worse. After more inspection of it and introspection about my own needs, I gave the okay on Thursday to cash it out. The Iron Rooster is totaled. Although the exact cause of the crash may never be known, it almost certainly involved the tail assembly making contact with the back tire. How and why remain mysterious. The mechanics at Motoprimo -- folks who were incredibly patient with my ten thousand questions and efforts to find a satisfactory explanation -- simply asked "was someone following too closely, because it looks like you were hit from behind?" The gashes on the rear tire and bent metal below the license plate suggest something dramatic happened to the back-end, but I'll probably never know what.
Farewell little Rooster, and rest in peace.
Iron Rooster
May 25, 2007 - May 16, 2008
7,495 miles - 15,143 miles
Monday, June 16, 2008
One you walk away from
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Facing the Monster*
Image: Power Sports Network
Thursday I got the call: Motoprimo's estimate for repairing the bike was in excess of $8,000, which means that the Iron Rooster is totaled. While the folks at Progressive wait for me to decide whether to take the check for the bike's value or attempt to salvage it, the Rooster sits in a Lakeville stable of broken cycles.
The last of Julie's possessions came off the moving truck on Friday afternoon, with the brawny kindness of friends Eric, Jayme and Shawn, my parents and brother Jesse. In recounting the crash story after emptying the truck, Shawn -- pilot, avid rider, and ex-motocross guy -- constructed a plausible account of the accident: If the rear tire locked at speed because of some mechanical trouble, the back end would immediately swing out to one side or the other. When the rear tire locks, you generally don't want to unlock it, or you risk a more dangerous highside crash. Rather, the way to ride out a sudden rear tire lock is to immediately turn the handlebars into the skid, keep pressure on the rear brake and wait until the bike stops. At speed, this means sliding with the rear tire perpendicular to the direction of travel. Tricky, to say the least. (Shawn has walked away from just such a skid.)
He speculated that the rear tire locked, perhaps due to the chain breaking and wrapping around the wheel, kicking the back of the bike out and sending me skidding toward the left edge of the road. At some point (perhaps when leaving the road), the bike dumped, pitched forward, making contact with the ground high on the left side and launching me off the saddle. Instinctively, I reached out with my left hand the stop my fall and, pop, there went the wrist. He suggested that we give the chain and rear wheel a close inspection.
As it turns out, Shawn's theory fits the available evidence better than any other so far.
Friday afternoon, after dropping off the moving truck, Julie and I headed to Lakeville to lay eyes on the Rooster for the first time since the accident. I expected my stomach to be doing flips seeing the bike again, but those came later. As my parents reported the day after the accident, the bike doesn't look heavily damaged, and most of the visible damage is to the tank, instrument cluster, headlight and handlebars. The crankcase, lower exhaust and engine are not even stratched.
Imagining a crash that would scuff the top of the instrument cluster while leaving the guts of the bike unharmed is consistent with Shawn's reconstruction. Since I might have locked the rear wheel trying to slow down if the front brakes failed, I was eager to test them; they seemed to be in working order.
Walking to the rear of the bike, our big a-ha's: The chain seemed intact, the rear wheel's spokes seemed normal, but the rear reflector -- which hovers at the terminus of the bike's floating tail just below the license plate -- was completely folded over, behind the plate. Matt, my insurance agent, asked me about this right after the accident, and, thinking it was made of plastic, I hypothesized that perhaps the span between the plate and reflector melted with the exhaust when the bike was on its side and running after the accident.
But the span is metal, not plastic. It didn't melt. And the deep grooves on the rear tire tell the story: it made contact so forcefully and so suddenly with the rear tire to fold the metal in half, score the back tire around its circumference and then likely caused the rear tire to lock or at least hop, triggering the crash.
What remains unexplained is: how on earth did the tire make contact with the reflector -- normally several inches away? Did I hit a pothole that bottomed-out the suspension? Did the rear suspension fail? Did the reflector get bent inward (toward the tire) without my knowledge?
When we asked the the mechanic at Motoprimo for a possible explanation, he asked whether someone was following me too closely. (!) I was traveling alone, but is it possible I got hit from behind by something?
Clearly, there are many more questions, and full-fledged answers might elude me forever, but the evidence appears to be converging and a problem with the rear tire seems the likeliest explanation.
I go back to Motoprimo in a couple of days, after the mechanic has had time to inspect the rear suspension and tire more thoroughly. I'll have my camera in hand to document what we learn.
In the meantime, I continue recuperating (having nearly kicked the pain meds and made progress with my physical therapy) and am enjoying settling into a newly shared home with Julie and seeing friends and family.
And feeling the wind again. After bustin' ass on Friday helping unload the truck, Shawn and Lucas invited us to a delicious, inventive meal at their place. As though that weren't sweet enough, when I arrived, Shawn offered to take me for a spin in the sidecar of their stunning red and white Indian, the only practical way for me to ride with my broken wing. I can't tell you how good it felt to fly again.**
--
*Thanks, Eric H.
**A Mike and the Mechanics reference is simply unavoidable.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Fast or slow is fine with me
Our days in Columbus were action packed -- and not just with packing -- with lots of time with friends from Julie's MFA program, including the end-of-the-year party for grad students completing their degrees, called Epilog (renamed Eulogy by one witty faculty member). We were lucky to share several meals with Kim and Jen, two of the best, kindest and most side-splittingly hilarious friends you could hope to have.
Julie's buds turned out in large numbers on Monday, too, to help load the 26' moving truck -- to the gills. I'd been concerned about feeling a little useless at a time when another set of hands would help, with my arm tucked in a sling and so few objects able to hoisted single-handedly, but Bart & Elizabeth, Mike & Kevin, Tom, David, Scott, Erica, Elizabeth, Natalie, Brian and Julie made short work of the place: we were loaded in 3 hours.
And yesterday morning we set out. But not before encountering some of the jaw-droppingly inconsiderate behavior that Julie has written about in her blog. In this case, we were treated to neighbors behaving not only un-neighborly, but downright petty and cruelly. (Perhaps if you can't navigate around the moving truck we are in the process of loading -- even though lots of other people have -- you should consider another route or perhaps whether you are qualified to drive a motor vehicle, rather than standing on your horn, swearing at us in
front of the children in your care and calling the police?) Such behavior defies understanding, co-existing with such an outpouring of kindness from friends.
In any case, we were happy to hit the Ohio state line. After a quickie in the back of the truck, that is.
