No Point Being Afraid

It's been a while between posts.  Going five weeks without internet will do that.  Anyhoo....

I've gotten back on motorbikes in the last year or so, after going many years not having one.  In my twenties I rode motorbikes all the time, and used one to get around just about everywhere.  I rode to uni, to work, to do the groceries, for weekends away, whatever.  I rode in the cold, in the pouring rain, in the middle of the night, and didn't really think twice about it.  In fact, I just loved being on a bike.  

I never really thought much about the risks involved in being on two wheels, and I guess I was a pretty typical twenty-something in that I felt bullet proof.  Not that I was a total idiot, I was never one of those guys you see riding around in singlet, shorts and pluggers (that's thongs/flip-flops for my non-Aussie readers), but I guess I rode in a more 'aggressive' way than I would do now, and I never felt any danger.  The thing is, I think you need to see life and death happen before you ever really grasp just how quickly a good day turns into a really bad one.

There is a commonly held belief in the motorcycle community that there are two types of motorcyclists: those that have had a crash, and those that are going to.  Sometimes the rider walks away from it, maybe loses a bit of skin, and sometimes it's a bit more serious than that.  I was 22 years old when I had mine, and unfortunately mine fell in the 'more serious' category.

It was a beautiful day in Brisbane.  A Sunday, not a cloud to be seen, big deep blue sky.

 The sort of day that you just love to be outside.  I hadn't ridden far, just a short trip in to university to get some reading done at the library (yeah that's right, back in the day you actually had to go to uni to get a degree, not just sit in front of your computer at home ;)).  I was riding home in the afternoon, and had barely left the uni campus when it happened.  I was cruising along, doing maybe 60 kph, travelling around a slight left hand bend in the road.  It was a particularly hot day, so I had decided to ride without a jacket on, which was unusual for me.  I figured it was a short commute, low risk.  There were cars parked along both sides of the road, so I was careful to hold a good lane position closer to the solid white line in the middle to reduce the risk of a car door opening or one pulling out unexpectedly.  What I hadn't anticipated was that a young 'P' plate driver, who had been parked on the left side of the road, had decided to pull out and try to do a u-turn on that blind bend.  The road wasn't particularly wide, especially with all the parked cars, and her Hyundai blocked both my lane and the oncoming lane.  By the time I saw her car, it was stationary and at 90 degrees to the curb - I don't think she was too sure what to do to complete her badly chosen maneuver.  I just had enough time to register what was happening, grab the brakes and try to swerve for a gap that wasn't there.  I clearly remember a split-second thought, an internal voice that said "you are going to hit that" as time slowed.  I plowed my Kawasaki straight into the drivers door.

I didn't actually come off the bike, instead I came to rest against the car, still awkwardly sitting on the wreck.  The car was caved in, the windows shattered, and the driver was hysterically screaming.

I don't remember too much after that point.  There was a game of football happening nearby, and people came running over to see what had happened and try to help.  Randomly one of them was a guy I vaguely knew who had dated one of my housemates a few times.  I'd never been so happy to see a familiar face, although I haven't seen him since and have always wanted to thank him for just being there.  I remember seeing my arm was at all kinds of angles that didn't look right, and it being really hard to breathe.  I remember the ambulance showing up, and the first question they asked me was "do you have private health insurance?" (I didn't).  Although it wasn't intended and they were just trying to decide which hospital to rush me to, this question scared the shit out of me.  Irrationally I thought that they wouldn't get to me to the hospital if I didn't have insurance!  Next I remember lying on a gurney in the ER for what seemed like an eternity, and being in a lot of pain.  I remember people pulling on my arm to try to set the bones back in place.  I had no anesthetic.

I was in hospital for seven days.  The doctors wanted me to be there longer, but I checked myself out.  I couldn't stand being there any more.  I had been in a ward of about seven other men, all old and all dying, surrounded by their wailing families.  I thought that if I stayed there any longer, I would die too.  I was broken - concussion, broken nose, broken arm, broken ribs, punctured lung and a destroyed spleen (thus a lot of internal bleeding).  My young and otherwise fit body had gone into survival mode to help repair the damage, and in the seven days I was in hospital I lost 13 kilos.  One of my mates who visited said I looked like an AIDS patient.  I also had a mean scar on my abdomen about 15cm long from where the surgeons had opened me up to save my life, so any sort of movement was really painful and I could only shuffle around hunched over like an old man.

So until last year I hadn't owned a motorbike again.  I did have one for a while when I lived

A younger me contemplating life and stuff

in Thailand with my then girlfriend and now wife, but that was just borrowed.  It took me that long to decide I was ready to buy another one.  Actually, I hadn't even decided I was ready, but I had decided I wanted to find out if I was ready.  The funny thing is, I think it was the innocuousness of that day that made it so hard for me to start riding a motorcycle again.  

What do I mean by that?  I think I could have more easily 'gotten over' my crash if it had happened because I was doing something reckless, because it would mean I could avoid it happening again by simply not being so reckless.  But I wasn't being reckless when I hit that car, and it's that realisation that made it so hard to get back on a bike.  I'm sure I'm a better road user now than I was at 22 because of experience, but I still don't think I could avoid that crash if that same thing happened again tomorrow.  That's what troubled me.

You may wonder why I would ever decide to ride a motorcycle again anyway, given what had happened.  The thing is, after all that time passing, I still had fond memories of riding and I missed the sensations.  But I think the biggest step I had to take was to get over the mental hurdle, and it took a shift in perspective to do that.  I've come to realise that most of us will never know how long we have or when our time will come.  I may die on a motorcycle, but statistically speaking I'm a lot more likely to die from a disease or illness.  I came across this interesting (if somewhat morbid) graphic, which explained that the odds of dying as a pedestrian or motorcyclist are about the same, and we are about seven times more likely to die from falling over!

With motorbikes I have tried to mitigate the risks - since I started riding again I made sure I bought good quality protective gear, and did some rider training.  However, my realisation was that there was no point being afraid, we all have to go sometime.  

When I was looking through photos for any of my old bikes, I came across a letter that a friend wrote to me just before I was heading overseas, and it included a poem called To an English Friend in Africa by Ben Okri, some of which is quoted below:

Live while you are alive.

Learn the ways of silence and wisdom

Learn to act, learn a new speech

Learn to be what you are in the seed of your spirit

Learn to free yourself from all things that have moulded you

And which limit your secret and undiscovered road.

Fear not, for death is not the real terror,

But life - magically - is.

Seemed relevant.