Worst get off yet.......

[380EXCman]

Left work early tuesday to go riding with a customer (I dont golf) and another buddy. My customer bailed at the last minute, so it was just Bluethumper and me. We met out a Rabbit Creek (in the Dez) unloaded our bikes and took off. It was pretty dusty even in the washes. But the wind was blowing pretty hard so we were able to ride errrr race real real close. About 1/2 way into our ride I offer Bluethumper a ride on my bike. We switch bikes and continue on. He is on my 01 Husaberg FC550 and Im on his 99 WR400f. We continue up this wash. He is cruising pretty good and I am just trying to keep the WR on 2 wheels. We stop at the end of this wash, shut our bikes off and the first thing out of his mouth is " I will trade you bikes" I promptly tell him no and that I thought his bike felt like a fast DR350 and I was not intrested. He marveled at how light my bike felt and how well my suspension worked. I marveled at how heavy his bike felt and wondered what spring rate his forks would need to keep his front brake line from poking me in the chest. We continue on and decide to head back down the wash. We are really hauling butt and dicing. He almost puts my bike into an imbankment, I pull up and tell him not to crash my bike. We take off again and this time I decide Im going to show him its the rider and not the bike. I take off and leave him in the dust railing the sandy corners and pounding the 4' deep whoops. I wait up for him again and we are side by side. Im thinking to myself no wonder he does not like the whoops, he is always taking the outside line around them. I decide I am going to show him how good his bike will go through the whoops. We come out of a corner side by side start down a smooth section of wash with about 40 whoops at the end of that straight. I pin 3rd gear grab 4th and start across the whoops. I get about 3/4 of the way through them when the rear tire kicks sidways, I hit the next whoop sideways and when the bike rebounded from that one it was completly sideways in the air...... That was it I thoughtI was gonna die. I hit the ground head and right shoulder first. The first thing I see is red. My vision had completely turned red, I thought my goggles had been covered in blood. The next thing I noticed is that I could not breath. I sit up to my knees rip my helmet off and I still cannot breath My buddy comes running over and asked if I was alright, I just shook my head no and fell to all fours. I still could not get a breath. (This was not the usual getting the wind knocked out of you deal) and I felt like I was gonna die. The next thing I know is that I was having a dream about me and my wife and we were going to the movies or maybe out to dinner. I could hear my friend talking to me but it was like he was on the far side of a gymnasim. Then I just snap to it and everything comes back to me. I get up and tell him we gotta go and that I needed to go to the hospital. He fires his bike up for me and I was just getting ready to pull off and I realize I did not have my glasses on. We look for what felt like an hour and finally find them about 10 feet from where I had come to rest. He starts his bike again and I ride off. We get back to the trucks load up and take off for the hospital. I walk in to the ER and the guy in triage asked what happend. I tell him I had fell off the roof. He did not believe me and asks how fast I was going? was I wearing a helmet? Did I lose conciousnous and a bunch other questions. Long story short I Bruised all my ribs on my right ride (front and back) my right shoulder, my right lung and my kidneys. They found blood in my urine and I need to go back and have it checked to make sure I still dont have any blood in my urine.

I feel like I have been shot at and missed and sh_t at and hit. The doctor was amazed at how dense my bones are and said I was lucky I did not break anything and that I was just "one big bruise" and that I would be sore for a month.

I feel bad though for my buddy. I owe him a decompression lever and a set of Renthal Button bend bars. Sad thing though is that I know I would not have crashed had I been on my bike. Oh well at least my bike still doesnt have any scratches....... :cool:

I broke my helmet, lost my goggles and one glove... Funny thing is we took a survey of the area for gear before we left.... Probably burried there somewhere........... Now we have this debate going over my lucky socks. I think the luck is gone because I crashed but everyone else thinks they are still lucky because I did not break any bones...... I don't know........:think

 

[Farmer John]

FCman,
Glad to hear you will be okay!
I have rode at Rabbit Creek, & wash or no wash, that place is pretty much WFO.
I have often wondered what would happen if a person got hurt out there.
How long of a drive is it to the nearest ER?

 

[KiwiBird]

Ouch! Glad to see it's "only minor" as it didn't need plaster .:eek:

I've had the deal where the noises get really distant too, sounds like mild concussion or "brain in a blender syndrome" as my buddy calls it.

Time to put a "No Yamahas" sticker on your throttle hand.

 

[gospeedracer]

Yeeeoooouch! :scream: That sounded awful! I'm glad you were able to walk away. I guess this one makes up for the fact you "never crash" eh? ;)

Brain blender syndrome huh Kiwi? So that's what happened to you! :p

 

[JMD]

Here's my worst crash:

I was fourteen, and riding a Greeves 250, which was ancient even then. It had an unmuffled expansion chamber with a long stinger sticking out the back. Used to be Rex Staten's motocross bike before my Dad bought it for me. Not fast by today's standards, but lots faster than the Honda CL 90 I had been riding.

It was in the Mojave Desert, mid-July, and it was about 115 degrees. My father and his partner ran a tiny airport on Soggy Dry Lake, selling glider rides and beers to visiting pilots. There was a scattering of motorcyclists every weekend, and sometimes there were desert races. I was eager to start racing, and my father had told me, "If you're going to race, you better get used to the idea that you're going to get hurt." I said sure, I knew that, but in my mind, of course, I knew I was invincible, unbreakable, one of the lucky few.

It was Monday, and my father had gone back into L.A. to work and I stayed out at the trailer on the dry lake with his partner, an old crop-duster and tow-plane driver named Bill. I told Bill I was going riding, and he said to stay around the lake. I said okay, but naturally the first thing I did was to go exploring. A couple of riders had stopped by the trailer the prior weekend and had told us about flying along a trail south of the lake, when suddenly there was a washout right ahead. They were going about 60, they said, so they just gassed it, pulled back on the bars, and jumped the ditch. I wanted to see that ditch, so I headed out in that direction.

I had gone about a mile south of the lake, and I was in top gear, going pretty fast, when I saw a dip in the road ahead. Behind the dip appeared the washout I was looking for. It came up way too fast to stop, so I did what those guys said they did: hit the gas and jumped it.

I almost made it, too. But my rear wheel hit the lip of the other side, about fifteen feet across, and the bike flipped. I still remember flying through the air upside down, thinking that this was going to be bad. When I hit, I felt a big impact, and it knocked the breath out of me. Bill always had a lot of funny expressions, and one of them was, "It hurts all over more than anyplace else." That's how I felt then.

I got up, took off my helmet, threw it down, and kid of checked myself over. Because it was so hot, I had been riding without a shirt on, just my leathers. Big mistake. I was missing hide from a huge patch on my left side; later I would learn my back was scraped badly, too. I could hear myself breathing, and there was a funny gurgling sound from my chest. I reached up and felt near my neck, and there was a hole in my chest, near my collarbone. The bike had landed on me, and the open stinger had punched a neat little hole in my lung, and the lung was collapsing fast.

I knew I was hurt badly, and needed help. I began walking to the nearest house, a little concrete-block cabin about half a mile away out in the sagebrush. I didn't realize that I was dragging a broken foot all the way and left a trail like a slug. I was in shock.

When I got to the house, nobody was home. I looked through the back door window and saw a telephone, but it never ocurred to me to break the window and use the phone. Like I said, I was in shock, and I was only 14. I just sat down and figured I was going to die.

A minute later, I saw Bill's old green Chevy pickup racing down the road. He said that he had been working around the trailer when something told him, "Jimmy's in trouble. Go get him." He headed around the lake, and when he didn't find me there, he headed straight out the road with the washout. He found my bike in a heap, along with my helmet, my gloves, and my wristwatch, which had come off when I flung my helmet to the ground. I knew that, but I hadn't cared enough to pick it up.

Bill got me in the truck, and he looked so scared it scared me. too. He drove like Parnelli Jones all the way into Lucerne Valley, where we stopped at a gas station to fill up. He came out with something in a paper cup and told me to drink it. I smelled it and said, "I can't drink that; it's whiskey. My father promised me a thousand dollars if I didn't smoke or drink until I was 21." Bill said that this wouldn't count against me, and I had my first drink of hard liquor. Then we continued on to the hospital in Apple Valley, driving like a maniac. I said, "Bill, slow down. I'd like to live until I get to the hospital."

I spent five days in the hospital. I had a punctured lung, of course. The doctor said that if it had gone in two inches in either direction, or at any different angle, it would have struck my heart or my aorta, and I wouldn't have lived to get to the cabin where Bill found me. I also had a broken shoulderblade, a broken foot, and about two square feet of hide ripped off. I had to sleep on a sheep's hide because my wounds would stick to the sheets.

When I got home, I made my sister wait on me hand and foot, making me 7-up and cranberry juice cocktails, and if there was too much cranberry juice in it I'd make her take it back and fix it. She still remembers that week. Because of the wound on my left side, I had to sleep on my right side, with the right arm under the pillow and my left arm on a second pillow. To this day, that's the only way I can get to sleep.

By the way, when my father went out to get my bike, which had landed fifty feet from the washout, he saw the tracks those other guys had left when they "jumped" the ditch. Their tracks went right up to the edge, crept down the side, across the bottom, and up the other side.

 

[380EXCman]

How long of a drive is it to the nearest ER?

It was about 25 miles.... from where the trucks were parked. We were about 3 mile form the trucks when it happened.

I guess this one makes up for the fact you "never crash" eh?

Yeah I guess..... It was a doozy. Thats why I think I wore the luck out of my socks. Had em 2 years and never washed them... I was worried about washing out the luck...No need to wash em now. I will just burn em the next full moon we have and put the new Fox socks on and wear them for one week straight and I should be good to go again.... I just need to remember the life span for lucky socks is only 2 years........ Just got greedy I guess....

I still love the desert though...... I like to take the "I think Im fast moto guys" out there and show them what it feels like to be the "slow", "fat" guy on the track.

 

[380EXCman]

Yep the socks are toast.....

Hows this for confidence in our health care system. My wife just called me and said that she got a call form the ER and that they were reviewing my X-rays and that they had found 2 broken ribs.........:silly:

 

[Tom_joad]

hey, is this a "your worse crash" post....

cool, Ive had a bunch but one that comes to mind is when I was out at this open riding area (which now I will NEVER go to any place like that) but I was out there and its mostly trails and hills but me and a couple friends found this pretty neat double, only thing is, it jumped over and existing trail. So basically you have this trail running inbetween the take off and landing and the bad thing is, you didnt get enough air to clear someone coming through. So, that said, you can probably already tell what happend. It was like my 4th or 5th time to jump, I was on the gas and just as I got to the bottom of the take off, one of my friends starts waving his hands, and I thought to myself, too late now, and gave it all I had. So I flew off this jump, got some major hang time, I was UP there.... but then I looked down, there was this guy just puttin through lookin the totally opposite way. I think to myself, CRAPOLA, Im going to die..... then to top it off, he stops... and IM still looking at this guy whos inbetween me and my safe landing.... I get to the top of my accent, then start to come down... Ive got one leg hangin off trying to kick the guy, Im trying yell.... but then the OBVIOUS happens, my frame, the bottom of the frame lands on his gas cap and IM prependicular to his bike... so then I go right over the bars, and finally make it to my landing, but without my bike.. roll all the way down the landing (which was a big hill) and come to a stop... with a dislocated shoulder and road rash ALL over... Im laying there... trying to decide if Im dead or not, which Im not... then I hear it, I can hear the other guy YELLIN..... and I felt soooo bad.... the only thing I could do was pick my arm up, which didnt work, being out of its socket and crawl over to the guy to see if hes alright.... I just sat there next to him until the ambulance came.... then, I got to drive MYSELF home... turns out though, the guy was released from the hospital later that night, with VERY minor injuries and he was able to walk home... that was good to hear... but I was left in a sling for 6 freakin weeks!!!!!!!!!

thats my worst crash, and the reason Ill NEVER go to another open riding area, god bless yellow flag workers.... Ill never ride without one......

 

[endoquest]

Sounds like luck was on your side Mr. Swappy/380, good to hear your ok. Hey Kiwi, that's EXACTLY how my ride started a couple of years ago when I did the nasty dance in the whoops right out of camp(it wasn't as bad as 380's but it still hurt). After recovering for a half hour and straightening the bike out I chased your tracks for sixty miles, right when I finally caught up to you, you broke your rear sprocket on a rock and I got "voted" in to tow your ass 20 miles back in deep sand. I'll get even! Remember, I'm bringing the camcorder on Spanksgiving!

 

[JPIVEY]

Man 380, that hurts just reading it.

 

[Ol'89r]

380EXCman. OUCH! I hate it when that happens. Hope you are going to be ok. One little tip. When you go into the emergency room and tell them you fell off the roof, you have to take your riding gear off first.:confused:

Ol'89r

 

[sfc crash]

ya see! ya see now why i only go fast "in my mind"..bad things man, baaad things.:confused:

 

[ktmboy]

Were you "in the zone" when you crashed, or just plain "zoning"?:silly:

 

[SirThumper]

You had me going for a while. When I read the title of the post, I thought that you must have scratched your new bike, but no. Then it came to me that that is the way you keep your bike so clean.:) Glad to hear you are ok, for the most part.

I am a Mx guy who thinks he is faster everywhere else.:p

as for those socks...I'm glad they were in the back of the truck all the way to Reno.

Those ribs are going to be real sore, so be carefull. I wish I could have made it to that ride you had to your place. There was to much going on for me though, with my dad being gone and all. We will have to get together in the spring.

Anytime you have a wideopen crash it can always be worse. My worst crashes seem to happen in the driveway loading my bike.:eek: