In my 60 years of
riding motorcycles, I have had four serious crashes, any of which
might have taken me out permanently. But for the grace of God or
whoever pulls our strings in this life existence, I have survived
them all to date.
1. Riding a
troublesome CB450 in downtown San Diego, a college student pulled out
from a parking spot and did a U-turn in front of me. I hit the left
rear quarter panel and the bike and I hit the ground very hard. I
tried to get back up, but noticed that my right foot was at a very
unusual angle to the rest of my leg, so I just stayed down until help
arrived. The end result was a compound-fractured tibia and broken femur.
The femur was stabilized with a long steel rod and the tibia was
secured in a full-length leg cast. The steel rod was
removed a couple of years later.
2. The BIG ONE.
Winding down the end of a 6-hr. endurance race at Ontario Motor Speedway, I rear-ended another bike which had slowed suddenly and
drifted down in my path, just as I was looking at a pit sign saying
that there were 20 minutes left to go. That crash red-flagged the race
and I got a helicopter ride to Loma Linda Hospital. My right arm was
broken in three places, The upper humerous bone was broken in two
spots, which were secured by two long screws in the upper break and a
plate and screws for the lower break. The ulna bone was broken just
below the wrist. Due to a nearby open wound, the doctors delayed
surgery until the wound healed up. In 3 weeks, the follow-up x-rays
showed the bone moving back to where it belonged and was fusing
rapidly. Doctors said to just leave it in the cast and it healed all
on its own. That crash ended my racing hobby, but I fixed the race
bike and swapped it for a CBX 6-cylinder super bike.
3. Having met a
woman at a nightclub on NYE in 1982, I offered to take her for a
motorcycle ride on NYD. I was unaware that the recent storms left
black ice on the roads leading to the town Julian. As I followed a
slow-moving car, it pulled off to the side of the road and I veered
towards the centerline, shifted down a gear and applied power. The
rear end fishtailed wildly and the bike started to go down on the
left side. I instinctively tried to outrigger the bike with my
extended left leg, but the black ice prevented any kind of
countermeasure and we went down, sliding across the roadway into the
path of oncoming cars. When I tried to stand up, my left knee
collapsed. Passersby, including a nurse, helped me to the side of the
road and someone found a long branch and some rags to stabilize my
leg. My shaken passenger was uninjured apart from a hole worn in her
boot. A CHP car came by and loaded me up into the back seat, tben
took me up to the Ranger station where we contacted my passenger’s
brother who drove his truck up, loaded up the KZ550 and both of us,
then took me to the hospital and left the bike at my house. The
diagnosis was a torn ACL and PCL ligament. Surgery followed with the
ligaments reattached and my leg back into a full-length leg cast. I
sold the bike, while still in a cast. The only real damage was a
scuffed dyno cover, which I replaced.
4. The “last”
one. In mid-March of 2025 I was riding with my Jamuligan friends,
returning from a nice breakfast at the local casino. As we returned towards home, I was second in line of the four of us, riding
down the two-late road in Harbison Canyon. George was leading the
pack and I was second in line, with two more a ways behind me. As I
was descending down the canyon, I reacted to the sight of an ugly
Nissan car which had intruded into the oncoming lane and appeared to
be heading straight for my front wheel. I instinctively grabbed a big
handful of front brake and the wheel locked up, low-siding the bike
and me down the road at about 45 mph. It was an instant of
earth-sky-earth and the bike and I slid to a stop in the roadway. My
two riding buddies, who were trailing behind me about 100 yards back, arrived at the scene of me and the bike lying on the ground, with no
signs of the car that triggered my response. I was down for the count
and my friends, plus some local neighbors all came to my rescue. My
friend Steve called 911 and the local fire department arrived within
minutes.
Steve and Keith both
wrestled my bike upright and off to the side of the road, as I was
being attended to. The bike’s seat had been torn off the bike, the
shift lever was bent downwards, and the foot of the centerstand was
folded inwards. Both of the handlebar levers were broken, and the
quarter fairing had a large scuff mark on the left side.
I was up, sitting on
a cement wall, trying to sort out what had just occurred. The EMTs
got me onto a gurney and loaded up into the ambulance for a trip to
the Trauma department at Sharps Hospital, about 20 miles away. I had
slipped into shock, so I just tried to keep quiet with my eyes closed
during the bumpy ride and was transferred to the hospital trauma
department. They gave me a CAT scan from head to foot and
discovered that my right thumb was broken, but nothing else was
damaged to any degree. My brother was called to come down from Mira
Mesa to gather me up and take me home about five hours later.
My thumb was
repaired with surgery a week later by use of a plate and a half dozen
little screws. During the surgery, my heart rate had spiked to 135
bpm, which is way up from my normal 60bpm. When I came out of surgery
and into recovery, the nurse said that she had seen a lot of patients
come out of surgery with high bpm rates and then they subsided the
next day. Mine followed that pattern, but the cardiology team at the
VA was alerted and put me through numerous tests before I was
discharged from the hospital. They applied a heart monitor to my left
side chest and I was told to keep track of any unusual heart rhythms
for a two-week period. I was never aware of any kind of irregular
heartbeats during that time, however.
A few days after the
heart monitor was returned to the lab, I got a distressing message
from my primary care doctor:
Patient had a min HR
of 49 bpm, max HR of 211 bpm, and avg HR of 73 bpm.
Predominant
underlying rhythm was Sinus Rhythm. 2 NSVT runs occurred, the run
with the fastest
interval lasting 6 beats with a max rate of 169 bpm, the
longest lasting 14
beats with an avg rate of 119 bpm. Atrial Flutter occurred
(<1% burden),
ranging from 82-211 bpm (avg of 131 bpm), the longest lasting 1
hour 25 mins with an
avg rate of 138 bpm. Isolated SVEs were rare (<1.0%),
These are not good
numbers for the long-lived human being….
I was never aware of
anything unusual in my heart rate at all. My previous checkups and
even some EKG tests were inconclusive until this accident. A
prescription of Metoprolol is forthcoming and I will have some
follow-up appointments with the Cardiology department. I don’t know
how long this has been going on, but it appears that the unforeseen benefit from crashing my beloved Hawk GT650 is that I may have a few
more years of health and well-being. I hadn’t planned on an early
check-out, but this gives me some confidence that my heart problems
will be contained and monitored into the future. I guess you can call
it an extended warranty event.
With gratitude, even
from crashing my bike…
Bill Silver aka
MrHonda
www.vintagehonda.com
