Before I start this update I want you all to know that I am OK. So please keep that in mind as you read the following. Actually, everyone involved is OK.
Tuesday night I had another first experience in Taiwan. Adrian, Amanda and Clare and I went to Jung Yang University. It was beautiful. If I knew Chinese I would enrol there just because it is such a nice campus. Amanda and Clare don�t have scooters so they rode on the back of Adrian�s and mine. On the way back from the University Clare asked if she could drive my scooter. At first I didn�t want to let her, but she said she had a drivers license and was a good driver. So I figured what�s the worst that could happen? So we headed back to the apartment.
And it turns out that she is a really good driver. She was very confident and drove very well. So I figured I�d let her drive the whole way home. We went through the scooter tunnel and started across a bridge, and that�s when I got a little worried. She was going too fast. I�m not sure how fast, but I knew it was too fast. I wanted to say something, but my mind and mouth weren�t working very well together at that point. About two seconds I knew something was going to happen. We weren�t going to get out of the turn without getting hurt. And then I saw the truck parked beside the road. And so did she. She tried to pull the scooter into a tighter turn, but we were at the threshold of flip or keep turning. So she tried to miss the truck, but we caught the back left corner of it with the front right of the scooter.
I don�t think that I will ever forget the sound. It was a thick thud, combined with a silence; maybe it was just my body shutting down. Just before we hit I went lucid. I didn�t tense up at all. And as the bike hit the truck I just sort of went with the flow and tried not to change anything. My right knee hit the taillight and my thigh slammed into the tailgate. I think Clare went over the handlebars. I say I think, because at first I was going to grab her and try to roll between her and the road, but she was out of my sight before I could move. I started to go over the handlebars as the bike fell, but my legs were held holding the bike and I didn�t slide off of the bike until it hit the ground. As I passed the handlebars my leg bumped the horn three times. Adrian was on his scooter ahead of us, and me accidentally bumping the horn is what made him turn around to see what had happened. I got up right away and turned off the scooter. Then I noticed that my jacket was ripped. My knee was killing me, but that�s all that I could tell was wrong at that time.
Then I looked at Clare. She was curled in a ball with her face in her arms. And she wasn�t moving. I almost freaked as all the worst case scenarios flew through my mind. I limped over and asked if she was Ok. She is Taiwanese and the fact that she was able to her English and respond perfectly in English let me know that she was OK. But she still wasn�t moving. Adrian and Amanda came up and I told them Clare wasn�t moving. So they looked after Clare as I cleaned up the broken pieces of my scooter. She was fine, except for two strawberries (road rash) on her face. Her teeth were a little sore, but other than that, and a few other scrapes, she was fine.
The back end of my bike was trashed. The wheel turned all the way around and my forks were bent. But Clare and I could walk so everything was good. All that mattered to me was that we were OK.
I�ll admit that I was choked about my bike, which I had bought four days before, but it�s only a machine and it can be fixed.
So Amanda and Clare went to the hospital and Adrian and I waited at the scene to see what was going on, or if the truck owner needed anything. And then . . . the police showed up.
Now, you have to know that Adrian and I both don�t have driver�s licenses. And I didn�t have my ARC, Insurance, or scooter registration (my documents were in transit). So I was terrified the police would get mad at me. They talked to Amanda (on Adrian�s cell phone) and the talked the truck owner. After that they asked if I was Ok, and then they asked a strange question. They wanted to know if Clare was my girlfriend. I said nope, and they said that there were no problems and left.
Then Adrian pushed my scooter to the shop were I had bought it (four days earlier). Luckily we crashed very close to the shop. While Adrian was gone, a second truck showed up and five big men got out. And that is when I started to worry. Once again, my brain fed me images of all the worst-case scenarios. The men went and talk to the owner of the truck, and they talked about the accident. They all of them turned to look at me. I was terrified. But all they wanted was to see my injuries and wanted to know if I was OK. Then the two trucks left. So I was safe. Phew!
When Adrian came back he said I should go to the hospital and get checked out. Unfortunately I don�t have my hospital card yet, so I had to pretend to be Adrian. I was x-rayed, and given a tetanus shot. There was no serious damage, just bruises and bumps.
So Amanda, Clare and I hopped into a cab and Adrian drove his scooter home. We all came back to the apartment and stayed up talking. Clare kept apologizing for wrecking my bike, but I kept saying that it didn�t matter. We were both OK, and that�s all that mattered.
I asked Clare if she knew how fast we were going when we hit the truck. She did: 70 km/hr
I honestly couldn�t believe it. If someone told me they drove a motorcycle into the back end of a truck at 70, I would be amazed that they weren�t in traction. But both of us walked away with only small scrapes and bumps. The gods were smiling on my ass that night.
The next morning the scooter shop called to see if I was ok and to ask what happened to my scooter. When I bought it, it looked brand new. And there it was 4 days later sitting broken and banged up in front of his shop. Clare talked to him and explained what had happened. And said that I would like him to fix it if possible. Now I was expecting him to say that it would be ready in about a week, but I picked my bike up that night at 9:30pm. And it�s actually better now than it was before the accident. So in a way it was a good thing that the crash happened. The shop guy was able to work out a few kinks.
So now today it is Thursday. I still ache. And I have a bruise on my thigh that is purple and ugly, but I can move my leg almost to its full rotation and my scooter is fine again, so everything is good.
Please don�t worry for me. I never drive as fast as she went, and I am very careful. Even more so now. It was a bad accident, but I am healthy and Clare is healthy, so there is no need to panic or worry.
I hope all of you are doing well and have not had anything like this happen to you lately. This was my first accident, and man I gotta say I never want to do that again, but I think it would be kind of interesting to go back and witness the crash, just so I can see exactly what happened. I am sure that I don�t have all of the details correct. This is only what I could piece together from my memory and by looking at how we landed on the ground. The truck was about 12-15 feet long. We hit the back of it. Clare was lying on the ground by the cab of the truck. I was halfway between the cab and the back of the truck and the scooter was beside the rear tire of the truck. So we flew fairly far. And when I think of it, I think that we hit it in the best place at a good angle. If we had been anymore to the right, I would be in the hospital still, or worse. Needless to say I feel very lucky to be in the state I am right now.
Tuesday night I had another first experience in Taiwan. Adrian, Amanda and Clare and I went to Jung Yang University. It was beautiful. If I knew Chinese I would enrol there just because it is such a nice campus. Amanda and Clare don�t have scooters so they rode on the back of Adrian�s and mine. On the way back from the University Clare asked if she could drive my scooter. At first I didn�t want to let her, but she said she had a drivers license and was a good driver. So I figured what�s the worst that could happen? So we headed back to the apartment.
And it turns out that she is a really good driver. She was very confident and drove very well. So I figured I�d let her drive the whole way home. We went through the scooter tunnel and started across a bridge, and that�s when I got a little worried. She was going too fast. I�m not sure how fast, but I knew it was too fast. I wanted to say something, but my mind and mouth weren�t working very well together at that point. About two seconds I knew something was going to happen. We weren�t going to get out of the turn without getting hurt. And then I saw the truck parked beside the road. And so did she. She tried to pull the scooter into a tighter turn, but we were at the threshold of flip or keep turning. So she tried to miss the truck, but we caught the back left corner of it with the front right of the scooter.
I don�t think that I will ever forget the sound. It was a thick thud, combined with a silence; maybe it was just my body shutting down. Just before we hit I went lucid. I didn�t tense up at all. And as the bike hit the truck I just sort of went with the flow and tried not to change anything. My right knee hit the taillight and my thigh slammed into the tailgate. I think Clare went over the handlebars. I say I think, because at first I was going to grab her and try to roll between her and the road, but she was out of my sight before I could move. I started to go over the handlebars as the bike fell, but my legs were held holding the bike and I didn�t slide off of the bike until it hit the ground. As I passed the handlebars my leg bumped the horn three times. Adrian was on his scooter ahead of us, and me accidentally bumping the horn is what made him turn around to see what had happened. I got up right away and turned off the scooter. Then I noticed that my jacket was ripped. My knee was killing me, but that�s all that I could tell was wrong at that time.
Then I looked at Clare. She was curled in a ball with her face in her arms. And she wasn�t moving. I almost freaked as all the worst case scenarios flew through my mind. I limped over and asked if she was Ok. She is Taiwanese and the fact that she was able to her English and respond perfectly in English let me know that she was OK. But she still wasn�t moving. Adrian and Amanda came up and I told them Clare wasn�t moving. So they looked after Clare as I cleaned up the broken pieces of my scooter. She was fine, except for two strawberries (road rash) on her face. Her teeth were a little sore, but other than that, and a few other scrapes, she was fine.
The back end of my bike was trashed. The wheel turned all the way around and my forks were bent. But Clare and I could walk so everything was good. All that mattered to me was that we were OK.
I�ll admit that I was choked about my bike, which I had bought four days before, but it�s only a machine and it can be fixed.
So Amanda and Clare went to the hospital and Adrian and I waited at the scene to see what was going on, or if the truck owner needed anything. And then . . . the police showed up.
Now, you have to know that Adrian and I both don�t have driver�s licenses. And I didn�t have my ARC, Insurance, or scooter registration (my documents were in transit). So I was terrified the police would get mad at me. They talked to Amanda (on Adrian�s cell phone) and the talked the truck owner. After that they asked if I was Ok, and then they asked a strange question. They wanted to know if Clare was my girlfriend. I said nope, and they said that there were no problems and left.
Then Adrian pushed my scooter to the shop were I had bought it (four days earlier). Luckily we crashed very close to the shop. While Adrian was gone, a second truck showed up and five big men got out. And that is when I started to worry. Once again, my brain fed me images of all the worst-case scenarios. The men went and talk to the owner of the truck, and they talked about the accident. They all of them turned to look at me. I was terrified. But all they wanted was to see my injuries and wanted to know if I was OK. Then the two trucks left. So I was safe. Phew!
When Adrian came back he said I should go to the hospital and get checked out. Unfortunately I don�t have my hospital card yet, so I had to pretend to be Adrian. I was x-rayed, and given a tetanus shot. There was no serious damage, just bruises and bumps.
So Amanda, Clare and I hopped into a cab and Adrian drove his scooter home. We all came back to the apartment and stayed up talking. Clare kept apologizing for wrecking my bike, but I kept saying that it didn�t matter. We were both OK, and that�s all that mattered.
I asked Clare if she knew how fast we were going when we hit the truck. She did: 70 km/hr
I honestly couldn�t believe it. If someone told me they drove a motorcycle into the back end of a truck at 70, I would be amazed that they weren�t in traction. But both of us walked away with only small scrapes and bumps. The gods were smiling on my ass that night.
The next morning the scooter shop called to see if I was ok and to ask what happened to my scooter. When I bought it, it looked brand new. And there it was 4 days later sitting broken and banged up in front of his shop. Clare talked to him and explained what had happened. And said that I would like him to fix it if possible. Now I was expecting him to say that it would be ready in about a week, but I picked my bike up that night at 9:30pm. And it�s actually better now than it was before the accident. So in a way it was a good thing that the crash happened. The shop guy was able to work out a few kinks.
So now today it is Thursday. I still ache. And I have a bruise on my thigh that is purple and ugly, but I can move my leg almost to its full rotation and my scooter is fine again, so everything is good.
Please don�t worry for me. I never drive as fast as she went, and I am very careful. Even more so now. It was a bad accident, but I am healthy and Clare is healthy, so there is no need to panic or worry.
I hope all of you are doing well and have not had anything like this happen to you lately. This was my first accident, and man I gotta say I never want to do that again, but I think it would be kind of interesting to go back and witness the crash, just so I can see exactly what happened. I am sure that I don�t have all of the details correct. This is only what I could piece together from my memory and by looking at how we landed on the ground. The truck was about 12-15 feet long. We hit the back of it. Clare was lying on the ground by the cab of the truck. I was halfway between the cab and the back of the truck and the scooter was beside the rear tire of the truck. So we flew fairly far. And when I think of it, I think that we hit it in the best place at a good angle. If we had been anymore to the right, I would be in the hospital still, or worse. Needless to say I feel very lucky to be in the state I am right now.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home