In theory, this should be the easiest (and shortest) entry in this journal series, inasmuch as I remember so little of it. But it probably won’t be as brief as I think, knowing me.
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😰 So — about July 30, 2023, the day I totaled the Harley….
BACKSTORY: I learned to ride a motorcycle from my dad at a very young age. He’d acquired a cool little red 1963 Yamaha 250. Now, it was really too small a bike for a 6’2″ man of his size, so I think he bought it with the intention of teaching his youngest son to ride, just as he had taught Max and Mike, my older brothers.
My legs finally got long enough to shift from one foot to the other, somehow keeping the Yamaha upright, and it was then that my introduction to motorcycles began. There were plenty of destinations nearby that were more or less off-road where I could go practice my riding skills, including a golf course — where I’d rev up the Yamaha and carve peace signs in the sand traps late at night. And I wasn’t even a hippy yet!
I rode the little 250 all during my teen years without a license. I got caught sneaking onto public roads a couple times, of course, but since Dad knew every cop in town (another story), the cops would just follow me home, knowing full well the old man would duly crack the whip for them. That’s how things were done back then.
And yes, I had my share of minor tumbles on the Yamaha, as most over-zealous young bikers will, but nothing serious. Perhaps I’ll get around to the full story of my adventures on the little red rice-burner in a future post, God willing.
Now for her part, Rhonda loved to ride from a fairly young age. Rhonda’s idea of a great stress-reliever is to sit on the back of a big bike with a Coke in her hand, enjoying the scenery flowing by. I call it the “wind-in-hair effect”. so naturally, shortly after our nuptials we decided to get back in the motorcycle biz and I bought a fine old 1982 Moto Guzzi V-1000 i-Convert from brother Mike.
We rode that fat old cruiser for several years, traveling all over south-central Indiana. But once we moved to Brown County, the Guzzi proved a bit unwieldy for the precipitous stone roads at Greenbriar Lake, so we sold it to buy an ’89 Kawasaki 450, a nimble and much more manageable bike. I really enjoyed the Kaw, but by then we were doing better financially and had started thinking about getting a Harley.
And since we were envisioning the thing, sure enough one day I learned a friend was selling a 2015 Harley Fatboy (15th Anniversary Commemorative Edition), and we jumped on it. The Lord provides indeed.
Now, maybe it’s because I’m a musician and fascinated with all manner of sound, or maybe because I’d been riding since just a wee lad, but the distinctive rumble of a Harley is like music to my ears.
I never tire of hearing the sound of a convoy of Harleys echoing through the streets of downtown Nashville — unlike the local “Peaceful Valley” folks, who tried their best to convince the county to ban motorcycles with straight pipes within the town limits.
Fortunately for those of us less “progressive” in our biases, Peaceful Valley’s busybody campaign failed. They mean well, but so what?
I mean, what kind of person objects to this?:
Anyway, back to July 30, 2023 — It started out a lovely summer day — but it didn’t last long. Rhonda and I were out for a joyride on the Harley, taking in some dinner out at the Story Inn. On the way home, for some reason I deviated from my usual route back to our Greenbriar Lake homestead, turning off on Salt Creek Road.
🏥 The next thing I knew I was waking up in a hospital bed. I had been lifelined by helicopter up to Methodist Hospital in Indy following a nasty fall on the bike, with no memory of the event whatsoever (I have none to this day).
My sister Susan was standing bedside, with a relieved look on her face. She asked if I remembered anything, then went on to inform me that I had somehow veered off the road and wrecked the bike. Fearing worse news, I immediately asked about Rhonda, who it turned out had been tossed from the bike early in the mishap, and was making her way to Methodist after being treated at Columbus Regional Hospital for lacerations and a puncture wound to her left arm, requiring X-rays and sutures.
I was not so lucky. I had a cracked left scapula, one compression fracture of my T3 vertebrae and another on my tailbone. In addition, I had a shredded artery on the left side of my neck (the artery that sends blood up to the brain), plus two small brain bleeds that had the Methodist neurologists worried. Lastly I had a nasty abrasion on my left foot where I had landed with the Harley on top of me.
And believe it or not, judging from all reports on my behavior while hospitalized, somewhere along the line I had contracted a bad attitude. My sister recounts that at one point she had to “channel her inner Violet” (our mom) to reprimand me for being an ass, and to get back in bed and do what the nurses told me. I had to begrudging comply, because… after all, I was facing my sister’s inner Violet. There’s some lines in this old world one simply does not cross.
I was released from Methodist three days later, after numerous scans and hourly inspections by the good nurses at Methodist. I’m sure they were even happier about my departure than I was. My moto-misadventure was followed over the next couple months by several visits to Methodist, and I was eventually given a clean enough bill of health to get discharged — just in time for me to prepare for the next disaster, which of course I didn’t. In this seemingly unrelenting string of personal challenges since 2020, the next disaster is the one that hurt the very most. More on that in the next installment in this journal series.
Truth be told, wrecking the Harley could have been much worse for both Rhonda and me, but by the Grace of God we were protected. Clearly a couple of His angels were assigned to us that day, and managed to cushion our fall. We are, and will remain, forever grateful for that.
• What I’ve been up to on my 5-year retreat from the world
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