Day 8

This post is a day late because Friday was a long, hard, painful day. I wrecked my bike in Kentucky on I-24 about a mile north of the Tennessee border. We rode once again through steady rain most of the day and were really looking forward to getting home. The roads obviously were wet and I opened a handle bar storage pouch when something flew out of the pouch and past me. I'm not really sure what happened (it was a split second kind of thing), but I tried to look back to see what I had just lost and might have tapped my front brake or moved the handle bars trying to see what I lost, not sure. But what I am sure of is that the bike went down and I went for a 200 ft, 70 mile-an-hour slide down I-24, rolling and banging my head on the pavement several times during the trip. My helmet got scratched up some, but did it's job.

Brad and I were lamenting the cold rain when we left Missouri that morning, but it caused me to put on extra layers of clothing that ended up saving my skin. The slide tore through 2-3 layers of clothing at several locations and thankfully I had six layers on top and four layers on bottom. That, combined with the fact that the wetness of the pavement limited the friction, helped me to come out of it almost without a scratch. I did break my hand (5th Metacarpal). The paramedics called it a "boxer fracture" because they are frequent boxing injuries. I am very thankful to God that I wasn't seriously injured. The Kentucky state troopers said that almost all of the motorcycle injuries on the interstate require MedFlight.

As it turned out, my bike has minimal damage. When it went down it pretty much just layed on it's side and slid about 300 feet down the highway. No tumbling or breaking apart, just tore up the right-side highway bars and pegs, the right saddle bag, and a little pipe scraping. All of my baggage (except for the tank bag) stayed strapped on and the bike was still ridable. I was amazed (and once again, thankful).

The paramedics were preparing to take me to a local hospital, but I was so much wanting to get home, I asked if I could just ride back to Alabama and get my hand checked out there. They said I could, so they rigged me up a temporary splint and Brad and I hopped back on and rode home to Alabama. The splint made it tough to use the throttle and front brake, but we rode slower and made it just fine.

Brad was great through all of this. He didn't see the wreck because he was in front of me. But he called Deb and let her know I was OK and helped me get my broken and bruised self all the way to my house in Madison even though he had 30 more minutes to ride to get to Tonya and Emma who were eagerly waiting to see him for the first time in a week. He spent the week waiting for me to get my gear back on every time we stopped, and coaxing me to go a little further when I was ready to call it a day. And then to be 120 miles from home, only to have me dump my bike and delay us another two hours. He's not known for his patience, but I pushed him to his limits and he never (OK, rarely) gave me a hard time. Thanks for the adventure Big Guy.

So that's it. We're back from our long ride and have stories that we'll still be telling in 20 years. We had a blast, and even the bad days added to the adventure. We totaled 3600 miles and covered eleven states. Thanks for taking the ride with us through this blog. It was a great time, but it's good to be home.

All the best,
B

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