Crash Wisdom from an Experienced Rider!

This is not a sob story although it starts out kind of like one.

Weeks ago I was at my clubs International Old Timers Motocross annual race at the Hangtown National track. This was my first race back from major surgery at the end of last year. My plan was simple take it easy and I started out that way by letting everyone go on my starting gate. I waited until they had all gone through the first corner before I took off, so far so good. I started catching and passing riders on my row, I felt good and was riding well. While going up a long uphill section I noticed going down the downhill was a rider in my class I couldn’t believe I had caught up to him, I never beat him. Then at the bottom of the long downhill just before an obstacle called the Ant Hill I see this same rider just on the other side of the anthill and was thinking wow I caught up to him very fast.  I think I can pass him before the end of the race. Well that small loss of focus allowed me to go up and over the anthill way to fast and when I landed on the other side I shot sideways off the track. I hit a bank on another part of the track. For an instant I thought, I’m not going fast so this should not be too bad. Wrong, I was shocked just how hard I hit I did not expect that. I hit so hard on my right side the shock from it caused most of the injuries to happen on my left side. Two fractured ribs and a collapsed lung on the right side, but on the left side I suffered five broken ribs, one of them in two places and it caused a punctured lung. Not only that my heart was knocked out of rhythm it was going from say 75 to 175 then back down to 90 and back up to 160 and so on. After five days in the ICU I went home to recover which is what I’m doing now.

All of this started me thinking that this could have been much worse had I not been wearing all the protective gear I put on before each ride. The helmets I use are all fairly new and are the latest in head injury technology; I wear a chest protector that has spinal protection and cups for my shoulders. I wear a neck brace and all the other gear we would consider the minimum to go riding. The new neck braces offer so much more freedom of movement and comfort. I’m not really aware I’m wearing one anymore.    

I broke my chest protector I hate to think how my shoulder would have fared without that protection. If I hit my head it didn’t bother me the new helmets are amazing you can have a good wrap on the head and not feel it. So why am I saying all of this…who cares? Well I do for one I want as much protection as I can reasonably wear. I believe my neck brace saved me from at the very least a sore neck in this incident. 

I see lots of riders young and old who don’t wear any protection other than what is considered the minimum. I’ve always wondered why, why wouldn’t you want to give yourself the best possible chance to survive a crash and as we all know it’s a matter of when not if.

The usual story is it makes me feel uncomfortable or I just don’t like it, no one says that about a helmet or boots. Well we may all complain about them from time to time but would we even consider not wearing them.

When you start getting older recovering from any injury takes a little longer, you would think the older riders at least would think about that. But I’m sure most or all of this is this is how I’ve always done it.

The young riders who don’t wear extra protection, especially the young pro riders who set an example for other young riders bothers me. Why wouldn’t a parent want their kids wearing as much protection as possible? But when you have the top pro motocrossers not wearing extra protection it makes it more difficult for a parent to insist their kids wear the extra protection. There are a few of the top riders who do wear neck braces.

I recently watched a long interview with Jimmy Button, for us older riders we all know who Jimmy Button is. As most of you know he suffered a spinal injury that took him years to recover from and he still has lots of issues he deals with every day. He started a foundation call “The Road to Recovery” for injured riders. The foundation deals with lots of spinal cord injured rider’s mostly young riders. I was shocked at the number of young riders they help every year who suffered spinal injuries some are now dealing with some form of paralysis. Maybe just maybe some of those injuries could have been prevented by simply wearing a neck brace.

Just some food for thought from an old rider who just got the shit beat out of him.

Doug 21J

Best Dual Sport Ride Ever!

A couple of weeks ago Stan, Scott, Terry and I had the best dual sport ride ever. Another friend of mine Eric #33 always says at the end of any ride “Best Ride Ever” I’ve been with him many times and heard him say that, even after some really so, so rides. So I finally asked him, why do you say that after every ride. And he says this could be my last ride so until I ride again the last one is always going to be the Beast Ride Ever, hard to argue with that, I always give a big thank you to whoever might be listening up above for allowing me to do this one more time.

So it was easy to say Best Ride Ever, but in this case I’ve ridden twice since that ride, but I still believe this was this Dual Sport Ride ever. And I’m not alone in that feeling all of us felt the same way, until we have another ride that is better than this one.

So what made this ride so great? First good friends it’s always better when the company is great, so we had that going first of all. Secondly Stan has lived most of his life in the area. He’s probably been on most of the roads in the area hauling logs; I’m going to guess for forty or fifty year’s worth. Thirdly he also knows a lot about the history.

We started our ride at Stan’s house in Nevada City we were on KTM’s and one Husky and before I forget we did not ride on any single track, it’s been raining for what seems like forever here in Northern California. The single tracks would have been too wet that day, we were lucky in that we did this ride in between storms. Besides we weren’t looking to do any single track just as many dirt roads as we could.

After leaving Nevada City through backs streets we headed in the general direction of Downieville we wound our way on both sides of Hwy 49, mostly on the west side of 49 and a little on the west side of Hwy 20. The weather was cold, but not too cold, sunny but not hot, misty but not rainy, just about perfect in other words. We actually did find a little dust or I did anyway I was in the back most of the time. Most of the roads were wet, some muddy and some slippery just about perfect. The scenery was spectacular everything was green and lush; lots of little water falls that will disappear when summer gets here. It’s hard to describe just how beautiful it was. We would ride through little communities through and around ranches. We’d stop and Stan would tell us something interesting about that particular area, doesn’t get better than that.

Give you an idea of just one of Stan’s stories. We rode on an old stage coach line road that went all the way to Reno. The section we road on was called I believe Henness Pass Road. And was a section that went up and down a very steep canyon. The story behind the name was, way back when they were considering replacing old Hwy 40 that ran through the Sierras they were considering this old stage coach road. Well a legislator thought he could get rich so he bought lots of property in the area. They instead decided to build what is now Hwy 80 that runs next to old Hwy 40. One would assume the legislator lost his ass and of course his name was Henness. (Not sure about the spelling of his name) So in honor of his folly came the name Henness Pass Rd. Even if this story isn’t quite true it still makes for a good story.

This section we rode on was quite the engineering feat there were many places that simply had to be filled in, in order to continue the road. They had to blast the rock in order to build the road and used that to fill in the parts of the road they couldn’t blast in order to have a somewhat less twisted road especially when you consider a stage coach and a six or eight up horse teams to navigate the road. They did a very good job of fine tuning the last part of the fill creating a good surface for the coach, the surface is crappy now. (Several of the pictures show the stone wall workmanship) Most of those sections that had to be filled were probably a hundred to one hundred fifty feet to the bottom. It was surprising just how many of these filled in sections there were. Those were some very hardy people in those days. I’m not sure I would have wanted to ride in a stage coach up and down that canyon.

We finished our 100 + mile ride in time for a late afternoon lunch at the Northridge restaurant in Nevada City. This gave us the opportunity for each of us talk about our ride, since most of the time we were sort of in our own bubble with our helmets on.

Stan and I are going to do this ride again in a week or so before things start to dry up.

Doug 21J 

Smart Carbs...How Do They Work

There is lots of new development with carbs, not everyone has fuel injection. Here our resident "tinkerer" 21J gives an inside look at how the Smart Carb works.

Hard parts dressing by Matrix Racing take two

Hard parts dressing by Matrix

It’s been months now since I first tried the Matrix Hard Parts dressing. This is the dressing you spray on your engine cases, brake, shift levers forks, exhaust, frames and you name it. It puts a hard film on those parts and makes them look much, much better.

When I wrote my original article I had only washed my bike maybe once since I had first applied the dressing. Since then I’ve washed my bikes many, many times and the water still beads up on those parts, even on the hot four stroke exhaust.

This product has proven to me it will hang in there for the long haul.

Doug 21J

A very, very thin line

Most of us are totally oblivious to this very, very thin line, we live out our lives wanting to believe we will never cross this line.

Have you ever visited someone in the hospital; you stand or sit there looking down on them feeling some empathy or sympathy for their plight. Maybe you think that could be me and glad it isn’t. Or maybe you’re just arrogant enough to think this won’t or can’t happen to me. Or maybe this is like talking about death it’s just a subject we want to ignore.

Well having crossed that line more than once I’m here to tell you it is a very thin line between being the one standing there looking down and the one in the bed looking up. And it’s especially true for those of us who pursue lifestyles that tend to put us in harm’s way that line can be paper thin.

I just once again experienced crossing that line, this time not as a result of pursuing my passion but from having a couple of body parts let me down probably in part because of my not taking proper care of them. It’s amazing how quickly the transition from walking (If you’re lucky enough) into a hospital turns you into a patient and someone totally dependent on others to take care of you. It can be a very humbling experience and one fortunately I’ve been able to adapt to with some grace and ease. For others this may be the most traumatic thing to ever happen.

Here’s to hoping you never have to experience crossing that line, but if you do you can do it with grace and ease.

Doug

PS

Now hospitals can be both quiet and noisy. If your room happens to be across from say the nurse’s station (Which seems to always be my fate) it’s usually noisy all the time particularly during shift changes. But normally after short period of time you sort settle into the rhythm of it all, which by second day I had done.

Then in the afternoon of the second day and just as I was heading out of my room for a few laps around the rooms and down near the cafeteria (Which when you are on a clear liquid diet can be torture) I along with my tether and rolling appendage (The IV stand on wheels) walked out into the hallway just in time to hear screaming and yelling coming from down the hall in one of the rooms. Hospital personnel were all running down there as well. I decided to just hang tight and see what was happening. Soon there were about four security personnel trying to carry a hysterical women from a room and put her on a gurney all this while she was screaming. It’s amazing how strong someone can become with adrenalin taps wide open. They were struggling to get and keep her under control.

I decided to go a different direction and take my walk. After a few laps and as I was headed back to my room they (The security personnel) came by with the still screaming women with all still trying to hold her down on the gurney and ushering her into a room to hopefully quite her. She looked tall and very thing thin but again adrenalin makes us all stronger. As she went by she looked she had taken a few licks to her face.

The whole floor was buzzing about what had just happened and of course not being the nosy type I just happened to overhear a dozen or so people talking about it.

Seems two female family members who were visiting a male patient and at some point got into a fight, my nurse entered the room and saw one of the women sitting on top of the other choking her. At one point the halls were filled with hospital security and police officers. The rest of the story is a bit confusing and I don’t know what the eventual outcome was. I did see a boy about nine or ten just standing there with a deer in the headlights look and felt so sorry for him. Peace was returned and we all went back to our respective rolls.

Then just when I thought all the bizarre happenings were over, I was taking another walk when two young women walked by me one dressed for the outside hot weather and the other in a hospital gown matching the color and pattern of mine. The young women in the gown looked at me and said “Hi honey” I stood there slack jawed with no response. A little later in my walk I encounter the two again this time they are standing in the stairwell with a hospital employee saying “I don’t know when you will have surgery, that’s up to your surgeon” upon hearing that the two ladies turned and started walking down the stairs, the hospital employee turned and let the door close to the stairwell and walked off. I assume the two ladies walked down the stairs and out of the hospital. 

All of this very bizarre.