How bad can it get??

Almost anytime you go riding it is a good day. Granted some days are better than others but riding is always better than working. It can be iffy sometimes. I remember trail riding with my brother in law in Washington’s Cascade Mountains in this area call Goat’s Peak, a heavily forested area with what seemed like straight up and straight down single track. There were numerous smooth rocks and tree roots on the trail. It was slick because it was misting, but then it started to freeze, and then snow. We almost had to carry our bikes out of there. I kept saying to him as we helped each other up the mountain “Tell me we are having fun. Because it doesn’t seem like it.”

That, however, was nothing compared to my good riding buddy Terry’s experience. Terry is an outstanding rider and if I can keep him in sight I am very happy. A bunch of the guys were going to go riding in Eastern Oregon and even though I got the invite, I had to decline as I had to make a trip to California on business. The core of this group is a bunch of professionals in their 50’s. David Edwards (former editor of Cycle World Magazine) called Peter Wiley the ‘world’s fastest dentist’. David was in attendance as well as Wendell Phillips (Lockhart Phillips) and several others. Everyone met up in The Dalles, Oregon after flying or trailering in that day (to save the tires). 

Terry gets up the next morning, puts on his leathers and walks out to his bike; but it is not there. Someone has stolen the bike and trailer. This is not your average Honda RC51 either. It had Olhins forks and shock. It also had a Yoshimura full titanium exhaust and made 128 hp at the rear wheel. Everyone is sick about the situation but decides to go on anyway. Peter offers him his RC51 back in Seattle if he wants to go get it. So Terry drives the 4+ hours back to Seattle to get the bike and agrees to meet everyone in John Day, Oregon (which is almost 7 hours from Seattle).

By now I am sure you’ve determined that Terry is a little hard core. It is about 9 in the evening and he is on a narrow two lane country road ‘cruising along’ as he says, not going too fast (we figure he is going about 80 mph) when out of the woods steps a deer. He hit the deer hard enough to split it into two separate pieces. The majority of the impact was with his chest….9 broken ribs, bruised heart and collapsed lung. Suddenly he is laying, in pain, in the middle of the road, damaged, borrowed RC51 on its side and deer guts everywhere. After a little while a lady and her daughter come along and scoop him up and take him to the local fire station and eventually the hospital. As he says “I laid in that hospital bed for a week thinking about a RC51 I had to fix and wondering if I would ever see mine or my trailer again.”

Honda RC51, similar to the one that was Stolen!

By some luck, the trailer was fished out of the Columbia River some months later, but the bike was never recovered. We all recognize this is a dangerous sport and talent cannot overcome circumstances sometimes; but like Terry, we all do it because we love it. Fully recovered years later, Terry is still just as fast as ever.