Crashing is bad, but healing is good

J. REED/PRO IMAGE STUDIO

Wheels writer Larry Tate crashes at Cayuga on Sept. 12.

Larry Tate

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

BEST AND WORST Moments

The best and worst experiences of 2009 are closely intertwined for me.

The worst was waking up face down in the grass at Toronto Motorsports Park on Sept. 12, wondering what had just happened and why everything hurt.

The incident was within a lap or two of the end of a three-hour endurance race. Either I or the very fast pro rider passing me made a mistake of inches (I have about five minutes of amnesia, don't remember the incident at all).

Witnesses tell me my front wheel got taken out and I went down hard instantly.

Nine rib fractures, a separated shoulder and torn rotator cuff, and a stretched femoral nerve (whoever even heard of a femoral nerve?) add up to more injuries than I've suffered in my entire life, never mind just from motorcycles.

Eleven weeks later it's coming good.

I'm continuing physio on the shoulder and nerve, although I still have a touch of dizziness now and then if I stand up quickly. I've spent a couple of days cutting winter firewood so I figure if I can safely use a chainsaw I'm in reasonable shape.

Big thanks to the Ontario medical system. You hear lots of negative comments about it, but I was treated royally from start to finish, including an ambulance ride from Hamilton to Napanee to get me closer to home five days after the crash.

If I ever have another accident – of any kind – I hope it's near Hamilton, because the treatment from their trauma ward was exemplary. Thanks, Dr. Dubuque and the rest of you.

The best experience is easy – walking out of Lennox and Addington General Hospital in Napanee under my own power only a week after the crash.

Getting back on a bike in the spring is going to be the highlight of this millennium, and the best post-Christmas gift I've ever had.

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