Two weeks ago I wrote about Jim Campbell, who had just completed at 30-day, 30,000-mile ride on his H-D Screamin’ Eagle Ultra Classic to raise money for muscular dystrophy. Since then I’ve emailed Jim a couple times about telling his story more fully in a book or in additional articles, but I haven’t had a reply.

    Jim Campbell in a Ft. Worth hospital

I found out why about half an hour ago. In an email from Jeff Sirles, Jim’s friend who first told me about his pal’s feat, I was informed that Jim is in the hospital in Ft. Worth. Here’s Jim’s note.

Hi Ken

Thought you may want to know Jim Campbell was in a severe bike wreck in Ft. Worth, Tx over the weekend. He is hospitalized there. Ill spare the details… its all on his 30K for MDA facebook. He needs our support in other ways now. He is a fighter and will live to ride another day. Please let your readers know.

Regards

Jeff Sirles

Oh my gosh.

So I immediately went to the FaceBook page and found this report from Jim’s wife, Beth.

Well, for 30k+ miles Jim rode his Harley w/o an accident but the odds finally caught up to him. On Fri. evening Jim wrecked his cycle on hwy 20 outside of Ft. Worth TX. He was taken by ambulance to Harris Methodist Hospital in Ft. Worth in the ICU unit. He has a broken neck & pelvis. Please keep him in your thoughts & prayers and we’ll update this site with his progress for those who wish to know.
Beth, Jim’s wife

I don’t know what to say other than “Oh my gosh.” To have ridden so far–safely–and then to have this happen . . .

You can track Jim’s progress on the FaceBook page, as I’ll be doing. Best wishes, Jim.

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Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve never been a Harley guy. Rather than spend big bucks on a loud, expensive bike with the pegs way out in front, I have always preferred the cheaper, quieter bikes with the pegs underneath so I can stand up on bumps.

Well, sometimes you have to make sacrifices. For me, as someone who writes about motorcycles, I sometimes have to ride Harleys. Just have to, you know? There’s no escaping it. Dirty job and all that.

This is just a heads-up that I’m going to be making the ultimate sacrifice in the coming weeks and I’ll be spending a lot of time on a variety of Harleys. I was talking the other day with Troy Terranova, the finance manager over at Rocky Mountain Harley-Davidson, and he’s going to try to change my mind.

As Troy puts it, he believes Harleys are hands-down the best motorcycles in the world and if money were not an issue the vast majority of riders would own a Harley–just that simple. For my part, I acknowledged that I’ve rarely ridden Harleys and have never spent any real time on one. For obvious reasons, Troy can’t put me on a new bike for an extended period but with used bikes it’s a different matter. He’s going to set me up to spend some real time on a selection of Harleys, in the hopes that I’ll fall in love.

Troy’s motivation here is simple. Rocky Mountain H-D gets publicity, and it would be especially good publicity if he does in fact convince me. My motivation is to see for myself what is behind the Harley mystique that I have never experienced before. Plus, of course, it gives me good stuff to write about on all my various gigs, such as Examiner.com and RumBum.com.

So stay tuned, I think this is going to be very interesting.

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