Posts Tagged ‘accident’

Back in the Saddle Again

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

I was leaving the checkout when a young woman came up to me, presumably by identifying my riding gear, and asked, “Is the red motorcycle out there yours?”

My immediate thought was, this can’t be good.  “Yes.”

“I just backed into it.”

Definitely not good.

I followed her out into the parking lot and there was my GoldWing, laying on her starboard side, with the back corner of the port saddlebag smashed. The marks on the ground where the crash guards had dug into the pavement, told that the bike had been pushed about half a foot on the ground once it was over.

To say that I was pissed off is an understatement.  How can anyone miss an eight foot long, bright red motorcycle? I went to the starboard side, checked to make sure the kickstand was in the down position and picked the bike up by the handlebar and passenger hand hold.

After looking it over, I was estimating at least a $1000 repair bill, and the damage was slight. I asked the gal if she had called the police and she said she didn’t think they needed to be called. I informed her that if the damage was over $300, the police had to be on the scene. This might not have been the complete truth, as I don’t know the specifics of Utah law on this, but this is the general limit for most states.

She again insisted that the police did not need to be contacted and I informed her that she could call, or I would.  She called them and in the process called a male friend of hers, who arrived a few minutes before the police arrived.

The woman I was upset with, but I had not raised my voice. I didn’t lecture her and I saw no need to even talk to her until the police were on the scene.  What would be the point?

She had other plans, however, and proceeded to remark on how little damage there was and again didn’t see why the police had to be involved.

I replied by giving her a short story on how I had replaced the starboard saddlebag cover, which was $450 for the part alone, and was about to go into all of the damage I saw on the bike, when her male friend suddenly shouted at me, “You don’t talk to her! You have no reason to talk to her!”

I had kept my cool up to this point, but my mind was seething now. I wanted to tell this worthless little fucking asshole that no one here had named him god and that he had absolutely no authority over me, telling me who I could or could not talk to. I wanted to tell him how little I thought of his opinion and that I was only responding to her instigation of a conversation, and that if that he was so fucking worried about her talking to me, he should advise her to shut the hell up…

Instead, I said nothing. What would be the point?  His tiny little brain wouldn’t have understood the situation anyway.

No, I had only to wait for the police to arrive.

Her friend left after a few minutes, saying, “I hope it works out for you” as he walked past.

I replied back calmly, with a slight menace to the tone, “It will.”

A few minutes of silence later, a squad car pulled into the lot.  He parked next to me and the woman walked over. The officer asked me what had happened, and I told him the truth, “This lady came to tell me that she backed into my motorcycle, so I went outside and found the bike on it’s side.  I don’t know more than that, because I didn’t see it happen.”

The woman was instantly pissed and snarled, “Give me some credit.”

I was about to start into a lecture, but figured it wouldn’t be worth it.  How could I explain to someone who is already upset that I can’t give conjecture to the officer?  I could only tell him the facts and the facts were that I didn’t know what happened, other than she had admitted to running into my motorcycle.

The officer took her aside and asked her what had happened and though I couldn’t hear the conversation, I read her lips enough to know she admitted to hitting the bike and knocking it over.  She claimed that she didn’t see it, which seems obvious to me.  While she confessed to her transgression, I started to ponder what kind of living hell she would be in at this moment, if it had been a pedestrian she had backed over instead my motorcycle. Machines can be fixed, or even replaced if they are damaged beyond reasonable repair – but people can’t be put back together all that easily.  I wonder if she had thought about this at all?

Because it wasn’t just a motorcycle she hit.  It was a big red warning sign – an 850 pound wake-up call that she needed to slow down and use far more care when wealding the most dangerous weapon she owns: her car.

The officer went back to his vehicle, plugged the registration and insurance information for both of us into his report and printed off a copy for each of us.  This is what I wanted.  This is what I had been waiting for.  I now had a police officer’s testimony that she had admitted to hitting my motorcycle.  This is what was needed to keep the fight with her insurance company to a minimum.  Again, whether she understood this or not is unknown, but I would guess she hadn’t a clue. She seemed nice enough, having come in and informed me of the accident, rather than driving off – but on the other hand she could have been forced to do so, because the parking lot was very busy and there were most likely a half dozen witnesses at the time who would have pointed the finger at her.

Hit and run, even just property damage, is a very bad move.

So, whether it was her decent nature or self-preservation, I don’t know to this day.

When I got home I called my insurance company just to let them know what was going on.  I then called her company and filed a claim. The usual phone tag game was played and the bike went into the shop for appraisal.  The accident was on the fifth of November and I didn’t get the bike back until the 27th.

My estimate was damn close.  It was about $1200 to fix, though the shop missed damage on both brake lights on the port side, which I’m now having to send photos of, so that they can file this with her insurance as well.  My guess is I’ll have to eat it, because they screwed up the first time.  I won’t be pleased if this is so.

The shop was unable to find the exact replacement highway pegs, Mick-O-Pegs.  They’re still in business, so I don’t know how they missed it.  They replaced them with Küryakyn highway pegs, which I don’t find as functional, but honesty do find to be more comfortable and better looking. In the end, I’m not upset with the change.

One thing I do regret, which might have sped things up with her insurance as well, is that I didn’t demand a rental car.  I was out for three weeks without my primary transportation.  I won’t make that mistake again.

As for the woman who hit my bike, I have no harsh feelings.  I was pissed at the situation, not at her. I doubt she would have understood that at the time.

No, the only anger I have toward a person, is toward her little shit of a friend, who thinks that he has the authority to tell me what to do. I needed to keep things peaceful, so that the law would be on my side when it arrived, otherwise I would have stopped my conversation with her as requested and leveled it in a very close and uncomfortable fashion at him.

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Meet the Flint Stone

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007

I’ve managed to make my way through forty two years of life without ever visiting a hospital emergency ward. As you have probably guessed, my record has been broken. The cause? The British Infantry of the 18th Century. To be fair, I’m exaggerating, it was but one of their muskets.

Let me back up a little. I have friends with the hobby or business, depending on your point of view, of reinacting the Seven Years War period, known quaintly in the North American theater as the French and Indian War. This group of friends attend various events in proper attire and kit for the period, particular to the cavalry unit they represent and demonstrate various bits of day to day life in the army of the King’s command. I’ve been handling the group’s IT needs for some time now, so attending an actual event, even as tiny as this one was, looked to be a fun way to see the reinacting portion in real life, as a participant no less. Well, not so much a participant, as a jackass in black BDU pants and matching polo shirt, rolling cartridges, inflating target balloons and loading black powder handguns and muskets for demonstrations. This was not your typical reinactment event, it was just a small demo for a town fair in north central Indiana, but it was a chance nonetheless to mix things up in a small and friendly environment and have a nice change of pace to take during my vacation.

One of the duties I took to, was to work on muskets and pistols which did not fire properly and at the least, discharge the load. Mind you, we were not using bullets, just black powder and the cartridge paper wadding, but you don’t want to keep a charge loaded, even if it is just a blank. I was working on one particularly stubborn carbine when the record breaking event occurred. The hammer was giving me a bit of trouble, resisting being cocked like a horse pulling tight on the reigns. I was attempting to pull back the hammer with the two smaller fingers of my right hand, when I decided to rotate my hand and push back with the palm of my hand instead, to work with extra leverage. For those of you who don’t know the moral of this story already, this is where our good soldier, yours truly, really screwed up. This is not the proper thing to do, and my palm promptly slipped.

On a modern firearm, slipping on a hammer like this may hurt you a bit, if you managed to catch the webbing between your thumb and hand in the hammer’s arch of movement. It might sting a little, but you’d be intact. On a flintlock musket, beneath the hammer’s top, is a piece of flint. The flint is used to strike against a metal plate called the frisson, which produces a spark that ignites the powder in a small pan under the hammer, proceeding through a small touch hole into the breach, setting off the final charge in the barrel and launching the bullet. Worst case scenario with a hammer slip would be an accidental discharge, but I hadn’t even opened the frisson to put powder in the pan yet. No, my problem was not with the base issues of fire, but with a rock. You see, flint works in part due to its shape. In a process called napping, which breaks off the rock in sheets, the flint is shaped into a fine edge. A very sharp edge. A razor sharp edge, which primitive man used to make arrow heads, axes and knives. An edge of which a corner thereof cut a beautiful arch across the meat at the base of my thumb, like a surgeon had cut me with a scalpel.

It took but a split second to notice that the tissue was cut well through the skin and into the muscle itself, but had not hit an artery or vein, as the blood loss was minimal. We cleaned it, put gauze on it and taped it up. Nevertheless, it was deep enough to cause concern, so my closest friend in the group and I drove off to the local hospital to get it examined by someone smarter in medicine than us.

There’s not a lot to tell about the event from that point on. I was lectured about my blood pressure, given a tetanus shot, prescribed an anti-biotic and had a sterile version of super glue used on the cut instead of old fashioned stitches. Though from a medical point of view I prefer the glue method, part of me is a little disappointed that the wound won’t show the typical marks of stitches, making it more in line with the period piece which caused the wound. Still, a wound is a wound and like every other wound, will be a faintly discolored reminder of why stupidity hurts.

However, in many ways it can be said that the worst casualty out of this weekend’s adventure was not the cut, but the mental damage. I’ve caught another disease, you see; like motorcycling or sailing. I’ve come to really like black powder muskets and can see one in my near future. Reinacting? I’m not so sure about that, but the smell of burnt powder, the challenge of all the physics involved in every shot and the simple fun of shooting: I’m sure about that. I’m also sure that I’m going to be giving flint a lot more respect than I have up until now.

Note to self: be smarter than the rock.

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