Ah! My Hip!
A slow grin spread across my face as I rumbled past the inlet to the twin courts toward the opposite end. I glanced at the speedometer and noted that I was traveling at about 23 mph, which seemed pretty fast on the short stretch of road. The houses that curved around the dead-end street began to loom in my vision and I decided it was time to slow it down and turn back around.
I pulled smoothly on the right handle, the brake, and waited for a second to adjust to the slowing speed. Except right from the start I knew something was amiss because my velocity wasn’t decreasing as I expected, and the houses ahead were still getting closer. I tried gingerly to turn just a bit to my left to avoid rushing up on the neighbor’s driveway in a barely-controlled, unfamiliar machine and applied more pressure to the brake handle.
Suddenly things went very wrong. The front forks began to wobble violently and the speed of the bike still had not gotten much lower than twenty miles per hour. I felt what control I had slip away rapidly and I launched my feet out to try and gain some purchase. Of only the stupid thing would stop moving so fast…
The bike tilted heavily to the right and I planted my foot on the asphalt in an effort to keep from going over. The weight of the bike and the speed (maybe 15 mph by this point) landed square on my right leg, which caught the momentum of the tilt and pushed back: Equal and opposite reactions. At the same time my grip and control over the handlebars was forgotten for just long enough to allow the front tire to twist sharply to the right, almost facing the headlight back toward me at a 45° angle.
Still my own momentum and the rebound from the salvaged tip to the right acted on the bike and my body, sending the machine down to the left and tossing me foward over it’s twisted handlebars and into the street where I broke my fall the best I could with my arms, felt my head hit the ground and I rolled over myself coming to a stop on my back.
I felt HB’s presence before I actually saw him, as he squealed to a halt on the mini bike just behind me. I tore myself from the ground in an effort to appear brave or tough or whatever. I tried to take a mental stock of my condition but my brain received only one message from my body: “Malfunction!” I staggered over to the low brick wall that leveled out the neighbor’s yard from it’s natural downslope and sat down, shocked and hurt.
My hand broke through the general chaos of sensations first, reporting serious road rash on my left palm. I glanced at it and noted the nasty torn hole that was seeping trace amounts of blood around embedded gravel chunks. HB was coming over now, asking how I was. I grunted a reply at first, still unsure how bad off I was. As if accepting my ability to hobble to the brick wall and make noise as indication that I wouldn’t require a paramedic immediately, he went over to check the bike’s condition.
For a moment I forgot about my own condition: I had lain my friend’s bike down. Unforgivable sin? Minor inconvenience? Pricey mistake? I didn’t know the reaction I would get, nor the damage I had done, and I suddenly had to know. I managed to get up and felt the first gripe from my right hip as I stood. Okay, left hand and right hip so far, I thought.
The left turn signal was broken off and the left rearview mirror swung wildly on its peg. The left rear saddlebag was badly scuffed and in the relative darkness of the evening streetlamps, I couldn’t see how badly damaged the black gas tank was. My heart sunk. I had wrecked FT’s motorcycle. Some friend.
I felt my hands start to shake. HB said something reassuring and immediately began to try and coax me back on the bike. My right elbow suddenly piped in with a belated status report, “Pain here!” it announced. I checked it and noticed a grim slash of bloody cuts and dirty, ragged skin hanging loose from raw-looking scrapes. There was nothing I wanted less at that moment than to sit back on the motorcycle.
“Don’t let it beat you like that, man,” HB said matter-of-factly. “Here’s what you did wrong: You didn’t respect the power. Now this time…” I cut him off.
“No way, man,” I said. “I’ll just take this little one back.” I slapped back the kickstand and started to push forward on the safe little toy bike.
“Come on, dude,” HB pressed sternly. “You just got going too fast. This thing is heavy, it’s powerful. Look, you don’t even need the throttle, just use the clutch to control your speed. You have to take this back to the garage.”
For a moment I caught myself in the midst of a waging war within my head. On one hand the aching parts of me, now increased to my right arm, wrist, shoulder and especially hip as well as my left hand, screamed in unison to not dare getting back on that death-trap and expose them to such agony again. On the other hand my brain was calmly, rationally telling me that it was stupid to make one mistake and then give up. No one learned by quitting.
So I put the kickstand back down on the mini bike and walked a bit shakily back to the Harley. I swung my leg over it and ignored the groaning protest in my hip as I righted the bike toward the home end of the courts (HB having already turned it around for me). I gently tested HB’s clutch theory and the bike moved a little under me. A thrill of fright spread through my entire body as the wipeout from moments before replayed in my mind and I quickly squeezed back on the clutch and brake. HB noted that I needed to apply both when it was time to stop.
Of course. Duh.
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