A brush with death

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Yesterday morning Ms Hook and I joined two friends for a ride to Burney Falls Park in California. It’s about a 4 hour ride from Carson City, NV.

We made it most of the way there when the rider in the middle ran off the road. It was a long sweeping turn and for whatever reason he just ran off the edge into some deep sand and gravel. I could see him coming off his bike as we went past.

When I stopped and turned around his bike was in the middle of the highway and he was lying on a bank beside the road. My best guess is that we were going about 60 at the time. There was a sign, I saw later, saying it was a 55 mph curve and it was a 65 mph highway.

He was unconscious when I got to him. His leg looked funny and I figured it was broken but it turned out to be fine. He was having a hard time breathing and between the gasping and moaning it was a scary sight indeed. The side of his helmet showed he had hit his head, but wasn’t caved in.

I was very proud of the folks that came by in the next few minutes. Five or six cars stopped and lent a hand with directing traffic, getting his bike off the road, holding a tarp over him to give him some shade (it was over 100), getting water to wipe him down with, driving off to where there was cell coverage to call for help, etc. With all the things you hear about people’s indifference it made me feel good to see how a bunch of strangers pitched in and helped.

An ambulance showed up in about a half hour and it took about 45 minutes to get a helicopter in to haul him to Redding, CA.

He turned out to have remarkedly few injuries. There were two very painful looking cases of road rash on his back. But neither were deep and there didn’t look to me to be a lot of damage. It just looked like someone had taken a fairly light sandpaper to his skin in a very brisk manner.

He has three broken ribs and a bruised lung. They kept him there last night, and tonight also, because of the lung. The other fellow and I will drive up to Redding tomorrow and pick him up.

So I guess he will be fine. His bike’s totaled. On the way up tomorrow we’ll stop and get all his things off it for him.

The wreck was horrible looking. I couldn’t imagine, as I turned around, that he wasn’t, at the very least, looking at a long hospital stay.

2

Yikes! How scary! I’m glad it turned out so well for all. A totaled bike sucks for sure, but your friend was very lucky, thanks to you and all the concerned passers-by you encountered.

3

Very lucky particularly in light of how far he was from emergency services.

4

Wow. Scary. Uplifting to hear about all the people who stopped to offer aid, though, I agree. Glad your friend is (basically) OK!

5

Yeah, other than just having the snot beat out of him he’ll probably be fine.

I just talked to him and he’s doing okay.

6

I was at Burney Falls last weekend! I live in Shingletown and deliver mail in Redding. If theres anything I can do…

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OK, so eventually I figured out that you were riding motorcycles, and that “the rider in the middle” (out of four people?) was one of your companions. It seems like there’ s a paragraph missing. But I think I eventually got it.

Glad your friend is OK! Mr. S laid his bike down once on some gravel (before I met him), and he still has some bits of the road in his arm. Scary stuff.

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I didn’t understand the rider was somebody in their party until the end either. I thought they met a group of bicyclists until the speed was indicated, and finally I realized they were in a group together on motorcycles.

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I had the unfortunate experience of passing thismoments after it happened when driving from OH to NH. Motorcycle fatalities are a phobia of mine when driving on the interstate…

10

He’s home now. We drove up and got him. His wife was in LA when it happened and he wouldn’t let us call her until yesterday evening so she just went home so she could be there when he got there.

He’ll be laid up for a bit while the ribs heal but should be fine.

11

I thought they were on bicycles until you mentioned it!

I’m glad to hear he’s okay, and that humanity stepped up to help, and that you’re looking out for him.

But what happened? Did he hit something? Something hit him? Bike just got away from him?

I’m still a little confused. Was this a young person of little experience? An old hand out for a cruise?

I’m just glad he’s going to be okay, really. But a few more details would be helpful.

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Old hands can have little experience too. Which was the case here. He had, we looked later, 4,138 miles on the bike in three years. He just got too wide for no good reason that I saw. Just guessing (he doesn’t remember a thing) I’d say he just got too relaxed and didn’t start the turn soon enough. Then when he saw he was in trouble he couldn’t get off the throttle or lean enough to save it.

The road there has no paved berm. As soon as you get off the pavement there is really deep, soft sand and gravel. I parked my bike in it and had a hard time pulling out of it to get back up on the highway.

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Here’s some pics

Being worth a thousand words per this ought to help.

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Mrs Smee’s nurse died on the back of a bike this month, driver critical.
I liked her, pretty blond, very caring.