My GPS log from the day:

167 10:12:33 AM 3041 ft 359 ft 0:00:05 49 mph 109° true N36 49.932 W80 20.123
168 10:12:38 AM 3019 ft 0.1 mi 0:00:08 49 mph 116° true N36 49.913 W80 20.053
169 10:12:46 AM 3000 ft 67 ft 0:00:05 9 mph 111° true N36 49.872 W80 19.948
170 10:12:51 AM 2998 ft 0 ft 0:10:48 0 mph 0° true N36 49.868 W80 19.935

49 mph to 9 mph to 0 mph. The 67 ft I’m guessing is the distance my bike and I skidded, tumbled and bounced down the parkway.

I never saw the deer. I’m guessing he didn’t see me either, until it was too late for both of us.

I remember nothing about the accident. A blur coming from the right? Maybe.

I opened my eyes to see three older men standing around me asking if I was OK. I’m guessing at this point the answer is “No”.

The rest was a blur…

Being strapped to a board.
A brief ambulance ride.
Hearing a helicopter.
Being loaded into the helicopter.
Realizing the paramedic in the copter was VERY cute.
Being disappointed she wouldn’t honor my request to tilt the chopper so I could see out the window.

Hospital. X-Rays. Pain medication.

At some point Brenda and my father-in-law showed up (I was in Roanoke, VA). The next day I was bandaged up and sent home.

At home it was another trip to the hospital. Some pins in the hand, a plate on the collarbone and a few weeks (months?) sleeping in a recliner.

The Recovery

Lots of physical therapy! My shoulder feels fine although it still is weird feeling the plate in there. My hand is probably back to 90%. It is stiff and I’m still exercising it. One of the good things to come out of this is I do try to stretch and exercise a bit every morning.

The Damages

Collarbone – broken in two places.
Hand bones – mangled.
Bike – totalled.
Riding suit – not too bad but the paramedics cut it off me – totalled.
Gloves – missing one (from my mangled hand?)
And I can’t remember anything that happened at Easter (lots of Percocet)

Still Riding?

Yes.

Have I mentioned how great my wife is?

The Gear

New bike: BMW R1100GS (w/ABS)
Helmet: Same as the last one. I figure it worked so why change? Shoei RF1100
Gloves: I did get some better gloves with more protection. I’m still not sure what I did to cause the damage to my hand, and if better gloves would have prevented the injuries.

Lessons Learned

If I had not been wearing a helmet I’d be dead. ATGATT
If I had not been wearing my Aerostich I would have sustained worse injuries – I had no road rash!
If I had left the campground 5 minutes earlier or 5 minutes later none of this would have happened.

Thanks To

Whoever found me on the Parkway.
The paramedics who got me to the hospital.
The cute girl in the helicopter.
The folks at the campground who gathered up all my gear and got it back to me.
The guy on my motorcycle mailing list who brought my bike home from the mountains.
My doctors and physical therapists.
Friends, family, neighbors who supported my family.
My wife.

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”
— Hunter S. Thompson

Helmet

Shoei RF1100

I just purchased my new Shoei RF-1100 helmet in December for Christmas and I’m glad I did.  Looking at the damage sustained in the accident I’m not sure of my older Nolin N-102 flip up helmet would have protected my noggin as well.  You can see a giant crack on the chin bar and  I’m assuming that was the first place my head touched down.   I’m not sure if the flip-up chin bar on the Nolin would have held up as well.  Not sure what happened to my face shield but otherwise I thought the helmet held up well.  I will definitely be replacing it with the same model.

Roadcrafter Suit

Roadcrafter Suit

My beloved Aerostich suit.  It was cut to shreds by the EMT.  Overall I think it held up extremely well.  There are only a few small spots were it wore through the first layer of ballistics and I had no road rash whatsoever.  I was quite surprised after the accident that  I had no hip, back, knee or elbow pain.  I’m assuming the padding did its job.  This will certainly be replaced with the same thing.

Boots

Oxford Matrix

My old Oxford Matrix boots held up well.  Actually the night before my accident I had picked up a tube of ShoeGoo and had repaired the sole on one which was falling off in a few spots.  The boots came through the accident with just a few minor scuffs. They were due for replacement and I will consider replacing them with the same model.

Gloves

My worst injury is my hand.  I’m not quite sure what happened during the accident and I’m missing my right glove.  I’m guessing due to the damage that the bike fell on it at some point. The left glove has a few abrasions and nothing more.  I’m assuming the EMTs cut my glove off and it simply wasn’t recovered with the rest of my stuff.
I will be investigating a new pair of gloves but  probably not the same Aerostich Roper gloves.  They had no padding and no armor.  I’m not sure if either would’ve helped during this accident but it certainly wouldn’t have hurt anything.

Overall I’m very happy with my gear. Had I not been wearing a full face helmet I most certainly would be eating soft foods through a straw at this point.  Without my suit I would probably be looking at some extensive road rash and quite possibly more broken bits. The gloves were the weak spot and I’ll be researching whats out there and getting something with a bit more protection.

As far as my bike goes – it was totaled but I plan to replace it with another V-Strom DL-650.

Over the Easter weekend I was hit by a deer on my motorcycle.  Thankfully I practice ATGATT (all the gear, all the time) and made it though the accident.  I did suffer a broken clavicle (2 places) and a few mangled bones in my right hand.   A full recovery is expected but right now I can barely feed myself, so air travel is a stretch.

I was a originally hoping the awesome Dan Wilson could fill-in and do my preso but tonight I had to finally face the reality of my situation and sent an email to Jim & Sean at cf.Objective and withdraw.

I’d like to thank Sean and Jim for inviting me to speak, and a huge thanks to Dan Wilson who offered to fill in for me….

• Sammy Hagar
• Joe Satriani
• Michael Anthony
• Chad Smith

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to everyone that registered on the Avermedia site we had 229 referrals and are now the happy owners of a CP300 document camera! As you can imagine we are all VERY excited!

I have no idea how many people signed up after reading my blog post – but for those of you who did – my daughter, her teacher, classmates and I say…

THANK YOU!

Document Camera

I usually don’t post stuff like this too often so bear with me…

My daughter’s 4th grade class is trying to win a document camera. Their teacher Mrs. Tuttle is really into technology and has the class using Edublog, VoiceThread, Wordle and doing all sorts of cool stuff with the computers in class.

I am still trying to win that document camera.  The next giveaway is January 5.  In addition to posting comments in the avermedia forum I can also win through your referrals.  The user with the most referrals wins — no random drawing —  Anyone can register — so please take a few moments and register — my username is ctuttell and needs to be entered exactly for it to count — please ask anyone you know to register — the winner last month only had 76 referrals : )

Sign up is simple – simply visit the AVerMedia site and click: this link and register on their forum.

All you need to enter is your name, email address and your country. I’ve already registered all my email addresses and so far haven’t got anything back from them.

As mentioned in the blurb above – the important part is the Referred By field…

You need to enter their teachers username:  ctuttell

I know email addresses are sacred (spam sucks) so I’ll understand if you don’t want to bother but if you are feeling generous this holiday season could you please sign up and we’ll see if we can win!! :)

A quick run down of what’s going on…

July 1st the company I was working for (Lockheed Martin) lost their contract with NIEHS.  Luckily I was picked up by the new contract winner (SRA) but it’s been a bumpy ride so far. Not only did I switch companies but I’ve also changed positions – I’m now a “Configuration Manager”.

Hopefully this is going to mean more Ant, testing, etc. in the future! So stay tuned – things will be picking up around here soon.

Maggie watching an old analog TV.

Soon these will be forgotten.

I had never been to the Lincoln Theatre and was surprised at how tiny it was. It reminded me a lot of the old Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill. The show was sold out and soon the place was packed with a mix of old Zappa fans, young kids and several people their with their son/daughter, mother/father.

The music was loud, and I should have had some plugs with me, but it wasn’t obnoxiously so. The mix was great, no one was overbearing and Dweezil had an awesome tone throughout the whole show. They played a great mix of Frank’s tunes. Dweezil joked at the end that they could keep doing this awhile as they “had plenty of material to choose from”. The played some old stuff, they played some classics and several times near the end they seriously jammed, Dweezil throwing his hands up in the air to tell them to ‘keep it going’ which the band did with ease. Dweezil has some awesome musicians backing him up. Frank’s music is challenging and everyone on stage gave an amazing performance.

Dweezil really shone. He was one of the happiest looking musicians I’ve ever seen on stage. Frequently he would be pulling off these amazing riffs while casually looking over at one of the other musicians with this huge shit eatting grin on his face. He just seemed to be soaking up the energy of his father’s music from his bandmates and the crowd. The crowd was feeding off it as well and at one point a pair of panties even made it up onstage!

They played for almost 3 hours only taking a few breaks to tune or fix something. After the show it was nice to see Dweezil out on stage, talking to fans and signing autographs. Usually after most shows I go to the band scurries off to the bus never to be seen again.

Dweezil mentioned that he hopes to keep this show on the road, sharing Frank’s music with old fans and especially introducing new fans to the music.

I hope he comes back to Raleigh again. I’ll be there.

Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is THE BEST… ~ “Packard Goose” (Joe’s Garage)

For more info – including a few good blog posts about the Raleigh show – check out the official Zappa Plays Zappa site.