Passes & Canyons Blog

Every time we ride we know there is at least the possibility that things will turn ugly. On the vast majority of days it doesn’t happen, but then there is that one day.

It happened with the OFMC last year down in New Mexico, when Friggs, for no reason he understands, crashed on a perfectly smooth, clear road.

We had just gotten past a rough, torn up for chip sealing stretch of road, and stopped at the top of Emory Pass. Moving on again, the road was practically new and you could not have asked for better.

I was in the lead, with Bill behind me. Friggs was at the very rear, in back of Dennis. As I cruised along I noticed I had not seen Bill for too long so I slowed down. Bill caught up with me but had his turn signal on, so I pulled over at the first opportunity. Bill had not seen the guys behind him in too long a time.

A lot of things go through your head in a situation like this. First off you assume everything is all right and there’s a good explanation. Someone had to stop to pick up something they dropped. Someone realized they had not sealed one of their bags. There are any number of things that could cause a delay.

But you also worry it might be worse. What if someone went down? What if they went down and are seriously injured? How would you even deal with that? I don’t think any of us have First Aid training and where we were it was unlikely that there would be cell service. Would you be watching your buddy bleed to death waiting for an ambulance to finally arrive?

These are not pleasant thoughts to entertain so we focused on the more benign likelihoods. Still, after waiting about five minutes for the others to catch up, and not seeing anyone, we headed back.

Bill and I talked later and confirmed we had both been thinking the same thing, that we would come around a bend to see a disaster strewn out in front of us, with someone badly hurt. Each twist in the road offered that possibility afresh. We were figuratively crossing our fingers and hoping not to have something really ugly burned into our memories.

It was with great relief that we saw Brett and Dennis going the other way and they gave us the OK sign. But where was Friggs? Bill and I kept on until Friggs also went by and then, with relief, we turned around and caught up with them all at the same place Bill and I had pulled over. Friggs had gone down and was miraculously uninjured. His clothes were ripped and torn, his helmet scraped horribly, and there was damage to the bike but Friggs was somehow OK.

Wow. Such a good outcome when it could have been so bad. His angels were definitely watching over him that day.

So anyway, this has got me thinking, and I’ve decided two things. First, before this summer’s trip I’m going to take a First Aid/CPR class. And then, next chance I get, I’m going to take an Accident Scene Management class as well. The unfortunate thing is that these are not offered frequently and I just missed one because we were in Europe. That’s why I say “next chance I get.”

I’ll let you know how these go. Maybe you might consider getting some training, too. Couldn’t hurt and you never know when it might help–a lot!

Biker Quote for Today

If I hadn’t laid ‘er down , I would have wrecked.

Tags: accident scene management, CPR training, First Aid training

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Motorcycle Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.