|
Blatherings From The Editor Why It Hurts
A while back a fellow SEAT rider questioned why I had various degrees of pain here and there when I wrote about the different seats I have had on my two beemers. Keep in mind that we all have different experiences that lead up to how well we do when we get...well…old. Here are some of my “experiences” that have shaped my riding. The first real motorcycle I had got parked in the back of a slow moving sedan in my first week of ownership. A couple of stitches in the chin. If that wasn’t enough, I hit a curb trying to negotiate a curve two weeks later on the same bike and got to visit the sidewalk up front and personal. My first experience getting to know road rash. Not too many years later I did a great wheelie into the back of a stopped car on my brand new, under 500 miles, motorcycle. Inner and outer stitches totaled 15 if I remember correctly. But this pales when compared to the taxi I center punched at an intersection accelerating hard past 75 plus mph. Demolished the taxi and the bike. My gear…cutoffs, flip-flops and t-shirt. Good thing I was young and immortal. I raced motorcycles in Thailand and Japan, and I have the scars to prove it. Once I high sided coming out of a hairpin, knocked myself into next week, and then peed blood and had bladder infections for six months. Turns out I have three kidneys and the accident plugged up some of the plumbing from two of the kidneys to the bladder. A bunch of us used to race to the beach every weekend. Ninety miles of back roads with little or no traffic…only one speed, WFO. There were trucks though, and once a really big ugly one forced me off the road. I hit a tree, fell down and crapped my pants…true story. In LA a car crossed three lanes of traffic and took me out. I did a thousand or so summersaults and slid to a stop in the gutter with my nose an inch away from a huge dog turd. Must have hit my head, my left eye roamed on its own for about 24 hours. That was scary. Still have the bump on my head. Motorcycles aren’t the only cause of some lingering grunts and groans. Fell off a mountain in Viet Nam and landed on my back. Fifteen years later I found out I probably broke my back in that fall. While hiking in Katmandu, Nepal I got trapped 50 feet up on a rock wall. Finally jumped into the Bagmatti River…it was only 3 or 4 feet deep. Felt like my hips would replace my shoulders. No stitches or broken bones, but a really nasty infection from the river…yuck! Sports also help old age to have some great quirks. At 156 pounds I was easy meat for 200-pound lineman in high school football. Playing third base in slow pitch softball in my thirties and forties helped to create some life long reminders. On more than one occasion, I was knocked silly by runners coming into third. Took a ball in the eye and had my right pinky ripped almost completely off. Slow pitch softball, a vicious sport. All in all, my “experiences” haven’t been that bad. I still have all my parts and only a minor broken bone or two. I remember an “older” rider telling me, “If it don’t hurt, it ain’t working.” Unfortunately I’m beginning to understand. Deryle Mehrten, full of…experiences.
|
|||