Crashed… again.
Details:
FJR1300, ~20mph, uphill, w/ my Mom on the back, in snow. Not good.
Context:
My mom has been itching to go for a ride. The forecast for Sunday was for 60s. My mom asked me to come down and take her for a spin. I showed up around 3:30. We ate and then saddled up. Over dinner we discussed where she wanted to go. She wanted to go up by the McMinnville reservoir. It is up in the foothills of the Coastal Range. The first problem was the bridge was out, she knew a detour. OK. So we got on the road heading west into toward the coast. The temps were in the high 50s. It was clear, partly cloudy. Visibility was generally good. We climbed up about 3 miles into the forest we started seeing snow on the shoulders. In the last 1/2 mile before the lake, the road turned to a snow covered mess. The tarmac was exposed in three tracks. Everything else was snow. My mom isn’t very flexible, so getting on and off the bike is a real chore at times. With this in mind, I keep rolling forward, looking for a place to turn around. The turnout at the spillway was covered. There aren’t any shoulders. About this time the sun fell behind the range. I continued west, occasionally hitting snow banks with my toes as I followed my 8′ path of wet pavement. I finally got to a place where ATVers had cleared out some more space. I had one bike width to turn around in with gravel under foot. Nice. I got turned around and started east. We got back up to the lake. As I was coming around a left hand corner a car appeared. With only three tracks, I had to get in the right most track. I never made it. When I hit the slush, I lost the front end and down we went. We fell. My mom stuck out her hand and jammed her shoulder. The bike was lying with the rear wheel parallel to the pavement. I didn’t have any apparent injuries, but my mom had having a problem. The people in the car stopped and offered to help. It took a few minutes to get my mom back on her feet, but she wasn’t in good shape. Her left arm wouldn’t move. The couple in the car offered to drive her back into town. So we headed back.
I scooted ahead to get the car ready. She arrived. I helped her get out of her riding gear and off we went to the ER. If she didn’t move the arm, she was in mild pain. If she moved it, her face would twist in a grimace. Not good. Check in, wait, I inform my friends, lots of txt msgs. We got back to see the triage nurse. She thinks it looks dislocated, but the doctor will have to take a look and probably get some x-rays. Back into the ER. We wait and wait. A nurse draws some blood and hooks up an IV. A little morphine and my Mom’s finally starting to relax. The x-rays come back. It isn’t dislocated or broken. The swelling that looks like a dislocation is actually a very large and deep bruise forming. At least that’s what the doctor thinks. So. Tomorrow, I’m taking the day off. I need to drive my Mom to see her doctor for a pre-existing appointment and I need to make sure that she has everything that she needs and is reasonably comfortable.
Problems:
Well, I was there and I shouldn’t have been. That one’s kind of obvious.
I think the real problem was the sun setting. The pavement had been fine when there was direct sunlight. Without it the road went started to ice up. When I was trying to help my mom up, I started to slide down the hill. My motorcycle boots didn’t have enough traction for me to even stand up at that moment. There was no chance of me riding through that section and less than 10 minutes before I had ridden the same section in the opposite direction without any problem. S/F/P
I don’t know. It is part of the sport. If you ride, you will crash. Period. But I still feel bad. If I would have refused to take her, then we wouldn’t have been there. But she wanted to go see the lake. That’s exactly what we did. Once things got dicey, I didn’t have any options but to continue until I found a place to turn around. When I could, I did. But it wasn’t soon enough.
It’s a weird feeling when you toes are striking piles of snow as you ride through. There must have been 6″ on the ground in some places. It went from occasional snow on the shoulders to snow everywhere in seconds. I passed snow, then road through clear cut where everything was bone dry and clear. The next corner, I was in snow. Ugh.
Conclusion:
So, my mom is already asking to go again. She refuses to stop riding with me. She knows the risk, but says that she doesn’t want to stay home and do the ‘safe’ thing. She wants to get out and live while she still can. When the morphine kicked in she started talking about how nice the air smelled up there. The clean, crispness of riding through the forest. Yeah. She wants to ride again. We just need for her to heal and for ALL of the snow to melt!
