One More Day

And so, it finally happened. I finally went down hard. The pavement was clean and smooth. I was riding down Blood Mountain in a routine little right turn I had driven a dozen times before. I was exiting the turn comfortably at about 40mph, and the bike just hit the pavement. The first thing I noticed was this sudden grinding noise. It sounded like I drug my foot peg, but it was actually the handlebar. I was already down. The second thing I noticed was my head hitting the road. To this moment, I have no real idea what caused that crash, but I remember every detail of it. I don't list all this to be morbid or to elicit sympathy; I detail it to make a point, that I got through this okay and will probably get through it again one day. View Album Get your own The last time we spoke, I had just watched three people in beanies and t-shirts bleed all over a gently sweeping curve in the highway. The irony is not lost on me. My bike went about 75 feet on a rear peg, a f

We have this neighbor who's a retired gentleman with an apartment in the city and a cabin in the mountains. Near as I can see, what he does for a living now is ride his motorcycles. I hope my retirement looks something like that! Anyway, he's a gracious host, and we accepted one of his many invitations to spend a weekend riding in the mountains. We slept to the sound of crickets and rode and ate out of convenience stores and diners. It was a fantastic weekend, and I learned a few things about myself and the people around me this weekend. A couple hours into the weekend, we came upon a crash site. A guy on a cruiser locked his back wheel, slid out, and hit the pavement right on the yellow lines. It was a wide, gently sloping curve with a clear line of sight. He just lost it. Two people in the oncoming lane swerved to avoid him and went down, one into the guard rail. Some forty-odd bikes stopped along the road to assist, provide shade, lend satellite phones, and direct