Seven broken ribs, but the leathers were saved

 

Fellow Wheels correspondent Steve Bond and I have pretty similar tastes, whether it be food (beer and burgers always works), music (classic rock always works), motorcycles and the kind of roads they should be used on, and most important, how motorcycles should be ridden.

We're also pretty similar in our methods and attitudes on the race track, if you allow for the fact that Bond is faster than I am. Hey, he's younger than me, so I'll claim that as my excuse.

But our latest similarity – both of us ending our riding seasons in the emergency ward of a hospital – is a bit much.

In Bond's case, he managed to high-side a friend's Yamaha SR500 at Mosport, landing on his back and ending up with what the ortho guy called a "shattered" shoulder blade. (Read about it at wheels.ca)

Me, I crashed this month just three corners from the end of a three-hour endurance race at Toronto Motorsports Park (near Cayuga, southwest of Hamilton) when another rider inadvertently took out my front wheel as we turned into a bend. Come to think of it, there's another similarity here: it was somebody else's bike that I crashed as well.

Unlike Bond, I landed on my face so my shoulder blade was fine; shame about the nine fractures in seven ribs in the upper right chest. I was out cold for a couple of minutes (don't remember the incident at all) so didn't really feel much of anything until we got to the first hospital and had a little discussion about whether or not they'd be cutting my leathers off.

I won and the ER attendants eased them off, saving me about $1,000 but costing me the most pain I've had in the last week.

Definitely worth it, but man did that hurt.

The Hagersville ER people were inclined to let me leave with some pain-killers except that I managed to pass out while they were doing a final X-ray, which justifiably changed their mind.

Off to the Hamilton General Trauma unit for a CT scan of my head (which, as they say, came up empty ...) and the most complete physical I've ever had. If you must visit a hospital, I can recommend both unreservedly; good caring people and fast, sympathetic service.

As for the incident itself, because of the period of amnesia, I've only got reports from others as to what happened (also, some photos, which for some reason interest me more than my wife ...).

The bike I was on, a BMW Thunder racer belonging to my friend Dino Paron, is pretty quick, also big and long.

It looks like the passing rider misjudged slightly and clipped my front wheel on the way by; he didn't crash but felt the hit and had paint on his bike when it was examined back in the pits.

I went straight down, and while the BMW bounced around a bit, it wasn't damaged badly, according to what Paron tells me.

That goes for me, too. As Bond concluded in his piece last month, incidents like this 100 per cent verify the smarts in wearing the best protective gear you can afford; bad things can always happen.

My Scorpion helmet did its job (scuffed and cracked, it's done, but I didn't even have a headache), the Nexo leathers might need a couple of stitches here and there but no more, the boots look as good as new, and while I'll replace the Joe Rocket gloves, I've seen people racing with worse.

My wife's first question when I got home, of course, was "Well? Is that finally about enough of that?" All I can say right now is "maybe," considering that the pain in my side right now is about equal to the pain in realizing I won't be able to try Michael Leon's Ducati superbike at Shannonville next weekend.

Larry Tate writes about motorcycle

racing for Wheels. larryt@primus.ca

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