I used to think experience was that thing you get once you don't need it.

Well, it seems that all these years I have been looking in the
wrong direction with this experience thing regarding space-time.

All those thousands and thousands of miles and hundreds of
close calls over the last 25 years (along with my measly $400
worth of protective gear) made me literally walk away from this
one.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------


...riding my daily 10 miles back from work at midnight
2 weeks ago, going uphill on some bendies through a
forest patch at about 40mph (65km/h) a 30kg deer
(a juvenile around 70Lbs, dunno) decides to leap across
the street, 2 feet in the air, in front of me. Smack.


I had literally 0 seconds reaction time, the thing simply
wasn't there and then there it was, on my front wheel.


The deer flew left, maybe 40ft total, across the road, hit
its head against the pavement, bounced over the guardrail
and landed in the forest in a nice patch of soft grass under
a tree that it was never to stand from again. I believe,
thankfully it died instantly from both a broken neck and
the blow to the head.


The bike flew right and fell on its right side and scraped the
road before coming to a stop a good 70ft later.

Me, not sure, everything was over 5 seconds later and
with so much adrenalin pumping in my system i'm still
not sure what exactly happened.

It seems that I flew over the bars straight and landed
kinda like superman on my left side and then rolled
2 or 3 times finally curling in to fetal position because I
thought the bike was still behind me, it wasn't.

Seconds later I stood up instinctively to get out of the road
cause of fear of traffic, and realized I just crashed, that i hit
an animal and that i was, fine.


I ran to the bike, turned off the headlamp and auxiliary
floodlamp (bike has only electric start, that's why) and
turned on the hazard blinkers.

I got my backpack off and pulled out my trusty high-end
LED torch (kinda like a D-cell maglite but with a 1 mile range)
and switch it on to assess the area.


Flash!  ...the nightroad turns to daylight (700 lumens, hehe)
$hit, whats that?  ...oh, my magnetic tank bag, $hit, what's
that? oh, the mirror, blinker, acerbis and other bits of motorcycle,
$hit, whatsdad? darn, thats gasoline leaking from your vents
dumbdumb, pick up ur bike NOW.  $hit, my left hand is funny,
has blood, no strength, not good ...pick up ur bike with right
hand and left elbow, ahhh, pain in left arm and most everywhere
else, good, bike is upright, now don't drop it and roll it to road's
shoulder, done.

Go pick up your bag and bike bits, ouch, butt hurts.
....ummm, where's the deer?

Deer! deery?  nuts cannot find it, it might have gone into the
forest hurt, crap, it will suffer all night before dying, crap.

Finally, after 2 disoriented minutes I found the deer on
the side of the road, quite far from the point of impact.
Oh, honey, $hit, are you ok? leaned down to touch it's
neck, still warm, lungs not moving, eyes open, bloody
head ...good, you're dead, it's all over.  


Then suddenly an instant of panic filled me while I thought:
"nuts, am I dead too?"

So I started to look for my own body with the flashlight.
Nothing, no body anywhere, and someone has moved
the bike, you are not dead.

Ouch, warm pain and adrenaline everywhere.
Let's inspect my body, helm off.  Just scraped a bit, no blow,
no blood, neck ok, good. darn left arm feels funny and warm,
no big deal, fingers are responding perfectly, elbow and shoulder
ok. Legs (I look down)  $hit, where are the rest of ur jeans? lol
Ankles fine, knees fine, butt hurts, $hit, blood, naah, it's ok,
it's just a scratch. Abs ok, chest ok, no wait, it hurts to breathe,
lets test if ur lungs have collapsed, 1,2 .... deeep breath, hold
it in, out sloooowly, again,  no, both are fine, ribcage hurts tho'
open your jacket, feel the ribs, ok, all there, nothing pointy or
sticking out, good, ur fine.

Bike, what about the bike, what should I do?  call cops, call
ambulance, call wifey?  $hit, you have no german bike license
yet dumba$$  no cops, ur fine, no ambulance either, could
I maaaaybe ride this crap home maybe???  ...mmmm


1st of all, try to start it. Vrooom!  purring like a kitten, god
I love japanese bikes.  ok, clutch ok?  yup.  brakes? $hit,
right lever is bent and done for, buuut wait ...it did not break,
wow, it works.  Gas ok?  stuck?  ...vroom vroom, nope, a 10th
of it is gone but it works fine, wow.  gears?  all is well, bike is
only damaged on right side.  front tyre????   $hit, there is
green deer poop everywhere and it"s bent BAD, not good.

Does it roll?   (put bike on sidestand, lifted front end and try
to roll it with boot)  nope, rim is not bent but wheel does not
roll well, why?  ...fender is rubbing with tire, crap. Kick, kick,
kick, kick again with all ur strength (steelcap boots).  
Try to roll it again, wow, it's free!  ...sorda, good enough.
Handlebars ok?  ...they seem fine.  Forks?   Nope, forks are
done for but wait, they are functional, sorta.

ok, get ur gear, helm and let's go home.

OOOOOOOUCH, cannot pull clutch, it huuurts.  
shut up and stop whining and pull that clutch,
1, 2, ouuuch,  1st gear. OMG it's rolling!
1, 2, OUUUUCH, 2nd gear... im going straight
but handlebars are bent about 30 degrees to
the right, oh well, whatever.

1, 2, Ouuuuch, 3rd gear ...mmmm front wheel is
wobbly, don't go faster that this.

so this way I rode 9 painful miles home going 20mph
hoping all the way I wouldn't come across a copcar or
simply drop dead on the way.  
 
 

Damage (BODY):

- lunate die punch fracture on left radius (not too bad)
- bruised rib cage
- 2 very very slightly cracked ribs (pain almost gone in 14days)
- general pain/bruises from head to toes
- bruised/scraped left butt
- 1 microsurgery to fill punched-in area of radius head with
fake bone-sponge and remove splinters
- 3 wires holding all tendons and ligaments in place
- 3 screws holding bones in place (not pictured)
- and that's it  (lucky lucky bastard)

Silver lining:
Hospital stay was swell and surgery went well, my socialized
"MerkelCare" medical insurance took care of everything.
Also it's great to be young and healthy as see/feel how your
body bounces back and starts to regenerates at a cellular level
in about a week, amazing.


Damage (BIKE):

- Fork
- triple tree
- mirror
- brake lever
- gas grip
- acerbis branch-guard
- blinker
- dent in gas tank
- headlamp ring
- scrapes in muffler and foot pegs
- front fender

Silver lining:
For starters it's a $500 bike and it's gonna cost me just $200
worth of parts to get it in running order again: the scrapes and
dents I'll let them be.


ATGATT (gear)

- S5 boots (see pic)
- O neal "pumpgun" knee protectors (worn under pants) LOVE these!!!  Saved my knee, period.
- Closed helm
- alpinestars mesh jacket with elbow, back and shoulder kevlar hardpads (saved my shoulder and elbow)
- bike gloves
- Nitro padded snowboarding backpack (helped A LOT, xtra padding for spine)
- kidney guard/belt (helped A LOTTTT!!!!)

You did good,, now,, you need to learn how to shift w/o the clutch once its rollin.. glad it wasnt a 400 pounder..

Man, you've been having all kinds of great luck lately!  Your wife wrecks the car, a deer wrecks the bike.. all that remains is for a bird to come along and wreck your scooter.

Good job on not getting injured too much!

Glad to hear you're ok! It's a good thing you  were geared up, but I hope you realize now that you need to get a license. Who really wants to worry about whether or not they can call 911 after an accident?

Isnt hitting a moose pretty much the end of the vehicle?

glad you came through with (relatively) little injury.

At least the deer was a little one, how did it cook up?
(believer in poetic justice, and a redneck to boot)

I'm back, doctor says all is well and should go again
in 1 week for a CT scan and to trade the cast for a smaller
one so I can slowly start mobility therapy (playing around
with grapes and such he said smiling) because after 2
weeks my whole arm looks like a chicken bone, darn,
ALL the muscle mass is gone; I'm still excused from work
another 14 days so that should be enough time for all the
pain to go away and get back on my feet and of course to
fix the bike AND car.

---

Thanks all for your nice words, yes, I was incredibly lucky.

- Wow, moose vs car, I heard they start kicking once they come
inside the cabin through windshield, jeez  but moose vs bike,
for-frigging-get-it!

- yeah, i have a valid license, legaly certified and translated
from back home in SoCal but since I now live here officially  
more than 6 months a year I'm sorda required to get a german
one by now, it's just a lot of paperwork, money (maybe $500)
and tests, but I'll get to it this year, promised.

- "Man, you've been having all kinds of great luck lately! "
yup, still all is as it should be my friend; everything happens for
a reason, the trick is to pay attention, learn and go forward.

---

Cont...


Where was I?

Yup, a bunch of weird different things happened these last
3 weeks.

- first, I NEEDED vacation from work SO bad before I went nuts
(4 star hotel kitchen, maybe 70hrs/6x a week in high tourist
season) but it was impossible to ask for even a few days off
right now, so as always: be careful whet you wish for because
you'll get it but there's always a catch.

I used to joke around in the kitchen with the guys and ask
"I wonder which one of us will end up dead first or in the
hospital soon because this cannot go as is much longer"
without a "life-crash" of some sort, I mean, personal or
at work because  of the long hours, lack of sleep and all
that stress that makes you kinda stupid (like hungover)
after long shifts, and in fact, all day, most every day.

We even use to "race" with our razor sharp knives cutting
vegetables as fast as humanly possible hoping one of us
would lose a fingertip in the process and go home for a week
or so, but no blood was ever shed, so we just laughed instead.


This industry makes you go nucking futs after a while,
seriously,  have you ever met a sane chef?     ...though not.  

---

Second, I got a warning about the crash about 20 good seconds
before it happened, but I didn't understand it at the time.


What happened is that while starting to ride up that hill
one of the several voices in my head told me that it would
be a SPLENDID IDEA if I would start wearing my inliner-skates
wrist guards under my gloves in the case of a fall, I agreed,
and even went in my head through the utility room in my
house and saw exactly where they were stored next to my
skates and kneepads and decided that I would go and get
them 1st thing in the morning for the next day's ride.

Next thing I know ...smack, deer, fly, tumble, roll, scrape, silence.

Now we know that all this mental process was a warning
for the immediate present and not for the next day.

This meant: "you are about to have an accident and
you'll hurt your wrist stupid"  but i didn't understand.



...also, 2 days prior I was testing my 700 lumen led lamp
on the handlebars to see how it would light up the road,
it was beautiful, it was glorious illegal daylight in front or me,
but at the time i had just secured it with zipties and needed
to think of a better method and some sort of switching system
so i took it back off, big mistake, then and there something told
me "you'll regret this", oh well, too late.

here is the lamp:
http://www.ledlenser.com/?gclid=CODP2cKJ_6kCFQIt3wodJm2xyg

mine is actually bigger than any of these (except the x21),
mine is called  "litexpress workx 504"

---

Third, when I found the deer and touched it on its neck,
it told me it was scared and in pain. It was already dead
by then but still somehow asked me to explain what had
happened, i did, it understood and forgave me.


...yesterday on my way to work to drop off the hospitals'
paperwork for the sickleave, I stopped at the accident scene
walked around a bit and took some pics, to my surprise the
deer was still there, under a different tree cause someone had
moved it about 5 feet in order to cut the overgrow next to the
road but it was still there, half of it at least.

The other half was gone, eaten away by bugs and animals
and something told me: "look, I'm a bunch of cool different
animals now, not just a deer"   I took a pic and walked away.

---

Lastly, the operation was done under complete anesthesia in case
they would need to punch out some bone marrow from my hip
in order to fill the hole in my radius but this was not the case
because it was not so bad and just used the artificial stuff that
will dissolve and turn to real bone within a month.

The thing is that during the surgery I went somewhere, I don't
remember $hit but I did feel the time gap between getting
gassed and waking up in the corridor.

I went home, to San Diego, to tell my mom something it seems,
at the time of the operation it must have been 4 or 5am in
the west coast so she was asleep so it seems we talked or
something.

An hour after waking up from the OP I was in my room
puking my guts out because of having eaten a kiwi
because I hadn't eaten anything since the night before
on doctors orders, but my body could not handle any food
yet because of the left over anesthesia in my system, so
I went to the bathroom to clean up, and out of the blue
the phone rings.

...it was my mom.


I talk with my parents maybe once a month over a skype
type thing usually on sundays for a couple of hours,
but this time my mom tells me that she for some reason
HAD to talk that day to both me and my brother (who is far far
away as well) just too see if everything was fine, fcuked up!


All drugged up I told her all was well and that I would get
back to her in a couple of days on my day off so we could
talk longer, my brother, she said, was fine too.
 

2 days later, back home after 2 nights at the hospital,
I called her/them back and told her about the accident and
everything and my plans for this summer and so on.
She laughed and told me she KNEW something was
fishy even though we both said everything was fine
after that 1st call, and was glad nothing serious happened
to me, crazy.


Well guys, take care and I'll get back to you all soon
with more updates and pics from the progress of the
bike's repair. L8r

---

Oil spot (gasoline) in pic (middle/left)  
is where the bike came to rest,
impact point was somewhere where the curve
ends, afer the shadows.




Here is a better view of road, the deer fence on the left
is where the deer jumped from back to the forest,
now i know it was eating flowers there.
Under the big tree on the right is where its body
came to rest, it somehow flew over the guardrail.



Here is the patient.



Its coming along well but it's really darn hard with only
one good arm, so creativity to the rescue!

Stimpy, so glad to hear your going to be ok.
Hubby almost had a deer in his lap a few
months ago. We were riding in the dark, he
was ahead of me. I thought OMG. and he was
able to avoid it.
Hope your recovery time is fast and your back
in the saddle soon.
Take care and again glad that this was not as
bad as it could have been. hugs, kim