Getting Back on the Horse...

Brigid, in a most excellent post at Home on the Range (if you're not reading, you are doing yourself a grave disservice), talks about getting back on the horse:

We've all had that experience. The one that scares the wadding out of you, and makes you reticent to get back near what caused the situation in the first place. "Getting back on the horse" as they call it. Sometimes it's a near accident, sometimes it's the real thing. One of those days that was meant to be spent in quiet order when suddenly fate reaches out to bite you in the behind. You expect death to arrive with fanfare, but instead it usually comes in the most ordinary of circumstances. The Roman goddess Fortuna grabs the remote and changes the channel—click.

Yes, it's all that good. SRSLY.

Mine revolves around an accident and a motorcycle, although ironically not a motorcycle accident. It was a little over 12 years ago; in fact it was four days before my wedding. Mrs. G. and I were living in a little apartment just over the border in NH (yes, I lived briefly in Live Free or Die Land and stupidly came back), halfway between her job outside of Boston and my Master's studies at the University of New Hampshire. I had gone to my parents' house for dinner that night (Mrs. G. worked nights), and had a most unpleasant encounter on the ride home.

It was a clear August night, no pouring rain or howling winds, and I was thinking about my impending nuptials only 96 hours hence. I was driving up Route 113, a two-lane blacktop through a sleepy suburb, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw headlights coming out of a side street. Really fast. The 17 year old driving the souped-up Civic didn't realize that the street he was drag-racing down ended at the highway I was occupying. He plowed into the driver's side of my tiny Plymouth Sundance at approximately 40 MPH, crushing the driver's door into my side and sending me violently into the console (yes, I was wearing a seatbelt). When the cars came to a rest I couldn't move, trapped in place by the crushed remains of my door.

Long story short, I spent six months in physical therapy trying to walk without excruciating pain. I was doped up on serious painkillers through my wedding (I joke that I have an out because I was under the influence; that never goes over well with Mrs. G.) and honeymoon (including a week in Montreal where the hotel workers were all on strike, meaning that I had to carry my own bags the entire time...). After the accident, I had a realization: My life was spared that night because of a load of laundry.

I had originally intended to take my motorcycle that night.

There's no doubt whatsoever that I would have been killed had I been on my Magna rather than inside a cage. My car absorbed a 40 MPH impact that left me with significant injuries, but injuries from which I recovered fully. There would have been no such reprieve on the motorcycle. At the very least, I would have lost my left leg entirely; more than likely I would have died either from the blunt force trauma or from massive blood loss.

It was extremely hard to get back on the horse after that accident. I tried, over and over, to take the Honda out again. Each time, I'd sit in the seat, thumb the starter, let it warm up, maybe even back it out of the parking space, only to shut it down and cover it back over. I kept playing the accident over and over in my mind, thinking about how close I came to dying; thinking about how lucky I was that I chose to do laundry at my parents' house and therefore took the car rather than the bike. Each time I thought about the accident, how I'd cheated death, I'd break out in a cold sweat as I pondered my mortality and how close I came to facing it.

Eventually, of course, I did get back on the bike. After the accident, I rode it exactly one more time that season - to my parents' house to store it in their garage for the winter. The entire time I rode the 15 miles from our apartment to my folks' house I was sweating bullets, scanning each and every side road for the hurtling car I knew was waiting to kill me. Starting it up the following spring was a little easier, right up until the stupid yuppie bastard in the Explorer crashed into my Toyota van at 65 MPH - he thought that having rear anti-lock brakes meant he could stop on a dime in a cold April rain. I had two serious accidents that sent me to the hospital in the short span of eight months. That's why the next car I owned was a 1983 Cadillac Coupe DeVille - I wanted the next person who hit me to PAY.

I rode less and less in the ensuing years, as building a house and starting a family took me away from the open road. Having kids meant playing it safe, not taking unnecessary risks, being the responsible family man. Then the Harley came along, the thunderous V-twin shaking me out of my safe little routine and reconnecting me with the marvelous world on two wheels. I've had my share of close calls on the Harley, from an inattentive soccer mom in an SUV who pulled the age-old "left hand turn right in front of the bike" trick on me (fortunately she telegraphed it well in advance so that I was able to maneuver around her - and teach her kids in the backseat colorful new words through the open window) to the octogenarian who blew through the red light and nearly made me a hood ornament for his Buick.

They say you never forget your first. That's never more true than for your first near-death experience.

I still ride today; I'm still very careful and remember my MSF mneumonic SIPDE (Scan, Identify, Predict, Decide, Execute) for staying safe on two wheels. I'm aware that at any given moment one of these lumbering idiots in their luxo-cages can squash me like a bug; my 750 pound motorcycle no match for their two-ton luxo-SUV. I ride with the mindset that everyone else on the road is actively trying to kill me, and act and react accordingly. I'm back on the horse.

And I'd be a poorer man had I decided to stay out of the saddle.

That is all.