I apologize for this going on so long, but this subject has a lot do with my relationship with bikes these days. Please bear with me.
The worst "obstacle" story I have came when a buddy and I were heading up into the mountains late one night; he was on a full-dress Harley Electra Glide and I was riding a CL350 Scrambler (kind of like Mutt and Jeff...). We were stopped at a stop sign on a county road. The road we were taking did a little jog to the left as it crossed the main highway and continued up into the hills.
My friend started out on his Harley, crossed the road, made the jog, then headed out. I was right behind him on the '350. Of course, being twenty-one or so we laid on the gas leaving the stop sign, and, even though I had only traveled a few yards, I was probably approaching 30MPH or more when I hit the edge of a pothole that my friend had just barely missed. In the dark, and with the way the road was offset, it was impossible to see it until you were right on top of it.
The bike took off like a rocket, hit the pavement, oscillated right, then left, and when it went right again I knew it was going to go down. The only thing I could think of (wearing nothing but jeans and a denim jacket) was that if I hit the pavement I was going to be in a world of hurt; and that, rather than me, I should try to let the bike take as much of the damage as possible. In the last moment, I gave an effort and managed to pull myself across the bike as it went down. There was a loud bang, a screech of scraping, tearing metal, and the bike spouted a rooster tail of sparks that streamed out behind it as it careened down the road. Straight towards a set of car lights fast approaching in the opposite lane. All I could think of was staying with the bike, hoping that I wasn't about to be involved in a double crash. I mean, really. To lay your bike down and then get run over by a car just didn't seem fair. I finally ground to a halt and lay there in the middle of the road in a cloud of dirt and smoke. The car pulled up, stopped. The driver rolled down his window, looked at me and shook his head. "Wow, man," he said. "That was really spectacular!"
I got the impression that he wanted me to do it again.
He asked me if I was alright, or if I needed help, but just at that moment my friend pulled up on the Harley. I got up, shook myself over, and realized that, for the most part, I was in one piece, though my right elbow and knee were starting to smart. We thanked the driver for his offer of help and he drove off.
The '350 was in pretty rough shape, although the engine was still running. I switched it off and we got the bike up on its wheels. In the light from the Harley's headlight, we could see that the bars were misaligned and bent, the rear passenger peg was ground down and there was major road rash along the entire right side of the bike from headlight to rear fender. Amazingly, the wheels seemed to be okay.
It was then we realized that I wasn't okay. "Hey, man," he said, "I think we need to get you to the emergency room. Look at your knee!" I looked. It had been ground flat on one side and was beginning to bleed copiously. I thought I could see a little glimpse of bone, and it was starting to hurt like hell. I looked at my elbow and it was pretty much in the same state. We stashed the Honda on the side of the road and he drove me to the local hospital, which, fortunately, was located just a few miles away.
I was admitted and sent back to an examination room. An emergency nurse came in, looked at the mess, then came back with a nylon scrub brush that looked like an overgrown fingernail brush. "Sorry, honey; I'm afraid we're a little short staffed tonight, and very busy. Use this brush to clean the gravel out of it, and I'll be right back".
I said, "can't you give it something to stop the pain?". She shook her head. "The damage is too extensive. There's nothing we can do right now. Just get that gravel out of there."
She left, and I started picking at the dirt with one of the bristles on the brush. This sucked. Did she really expect me to dig into that hamburger with that brush? Was she nuts? Each tiny little stone was pure agony. After about five minutes, and three or four pieces of gravel extracted, she returned.
"Haven't made much progress, have we?"
I looked at her. "This hurts like hell. It covers what's left of my kneecap!"
She took the brush from me. "This is nothing," she said. "We get guys in here that have slid down the road on their backs. Now, that's a mess." And with that, she took the brush and began attacking the knee with vigor, like she was scrubbing melons or something.
It was the first (and only) time that I went out like a light.
I got the bike back into running condition (it's nearly impossible to kill one of those old 350 twins) and continued to ride it through the summer. I hadn't learned my lesson, unfortunately, and I laid it down again several more times, mainly due to stupidity and recklessness on my part. It was fortunate that all were minor accidents, and I never really hurt myself again, but when I got on that bike I turned into a raving maniac who lived for speed and ignored the danger. It was after I almost slid off of 12,000 foot Independence pass taking a curve too fast that I finally came to my senses. I realized that I had no business riding a motorcycle, and that I was likely to kill myself if I continued like this. It wasn't just a case of thinking, "I'll have to ride more carefully". Having that power and speed available to me on such a light vehicle brought out the Jekyll and Hyde in me. I wouldn't have lasted two seconds on one of today's modern crotch-rockets.
It helped that I was due to start College in Berkley that fall. My friend let me stash the bike in an old warehouse his father owned and I left for school. Once in California, I bought an old VW van that I drove to death. I stayed in CA. after I graduated, and it wasn't 'til eight years later that I returned to Colorado. By then, the warehouse and bike were gone. My friend had tried to reach me but, once out of school, I had just wandered for a while with no permanent address, and was impossible to find. He didn't have any room for it, so the bike went bye-bye. Probably just as well...
Fast forward twenty-nine years. I haven't touched, ridden or even sat on a motorcycle since the day we locked the 350 up in the warehouse, but the bug has never left me. So, one day, I bought an old CB550 to restore. In my mid 50s now, I hope I can trust myself to be a little more cautious with one of these things.
But, you know... sometimes at night, when everything's quiet and I'm just sitting in the garage smoking and staring at the bike, dreaming of what it will be like to take it out onto the road... there comes this little flutter of something deep down inside of me that feels faintly familiar and vaguely wild, like an old friend you haven't seen for a while...
I'll keep you posted.
