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….

The Scenic Route

Tom was channel surfing a few days ago and saw this great show about “The Quiet Zone” which he later dug up online…

The Quiet Zone is home to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Green Bank Telescope, a fully steerable 17,000-pound Goliath that captures radio waves from space with the precision of a Swiss watch. It’s capable of receiving the quietest radio signals in the universe. But it can’t do that if there are other devices broadcasting in the same frequencies – even signals too faint to interfere with anything else. The telescope is so sensitive that only diesel-fueled cars are allowed on the property because even spark plugs emit radio frequencies that can wipe out the signals from space.

If you are in the area (and it’s waaaaaaaaaay out there) I highly recommend stopping by and taking the bus tour!

Jalopnik has a nice one: Remembering Robert Craig “Evel” Knievel, Jr.

Growing up in the 70′s and begging my parents for a motorcycle was due in no small part to Evel Knievel. He was bad. He was cool. He was Evel!

I had the wind up toy Evel and motorcycle. I had the Evel Snake car you could jump canyons with. I was in front of the TV anytime he appeared on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. I have scars from the bicycle jumps that didn’t go quite right… He was my hero.

In the old days they, the promoters, wanted more and more from me. They wanted me to jump or spill my blood and break my bones. Every time they wanted me to jump further, and further, and further. Hell, they thought my bike had wings. ~Evel Knievel

I also just wrapped up a cool little jQuery project I want to blog about in the next day or so. I need to strip out the production code and simplify it a bit for the demo. The more I use jQuery the more I love it!

And I still need to get Critter some files from my Selenium/Ant presention!!

Last weekend I went to Myrtle Beach to see Megadeth! Dave and crew put on an awesome show. Checkout the Megadeth site for some great concert videos! I’m sure I lost a bit more hearing but it was well worth it :)

Turns out it was also the last weekend of Bike Fest so I managed to check out some of the zillion bikes before I had to come back home Saturday. Sweeeeet! Unfortunately I only had my camera phone and the few pics I did take sucked but there were some incredible bikes.

This week I’m swamped at work digging through an older MVC Fusebox app. Since I’ve done Mach-II going back to Fusebox has been a challenge. I definitely prefer the event driven Mach-II.

Tuesday at our latest TACFUG meeting I volunteered to do a presentation on using Selenium to test your web applications. Will certainly post presentation files afterwards! I also need to give my Ant presentation on Meetup.com for Charlie Arehart.

And finally I’m helping my wife setup a site – more on that soon!

Last weekend my riding buddy Tom and I headed to Virginia – it was time for our annual motorcycle trip! (photos here)

We left Thursday morning headed for Meadows of Dan and the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was wonderfully cool in the mountains compared to the 90 degree heat we had at home. We putted up the parkway all day, dodging deer, RVs and the occasional bike rider. Around 6 we arrived in Natural Bridge, VA and found a cheap hotel to crash for the night.

Friday we headed to Green Bank, VA to check out the radio telescope located there… the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope is the world’s largest fully steerable single aperture antenna. We had a great ride up on some terrific mountain roads. On arrival we were informed there was a tour bus just leaving so we ran to catch that… During the tour we were informed that no cars or digital equipment is allowed near the telescope to avoid interference. All the vehicles on the site were diesel (no sparkplugs)! The tour was great and very informative. Tom had an old school disposable 35mm camera so hopefully he got some good shots… We had a bit of rain while at the telescope but it quickly cleared up and we headed back to the hotel.

Saturday found us on the Blue Ridge Parkway again – we only had about 60 miles left and we could say we rode the entire thing – so we headed out. At the end of the BRP – it turns into the “Skyline Drive” and we decided to ride a bit of this as well – which ended up to be a mistake. First – it was $10.00 for motorcyclists, and then the speed limit was 35mph, and being Saturday – traffic was heavy. We rode up as far as the Skyline Lodge but had to turn around – driving 35 was just too boring… It was a nice area – and if you are visiting I would check it out – there were frequent places to stop and get gas and food (unlike the BRP).

Sunday found us headed home – back to the heat! All in all we averaged around 300 miles a day. Neither of us had any bike troubles and no spills – though I ran off the road once – and we both had several close encounters with deer.

Almost a year ago I blogged about Feasting on Asphalt – a show on the Food Network of all things.

In it – Alton Brown traveled across the US on motorcycle (along with a film crew also on bikes) eating along the way. It was a great show – and tonight I was flipping around and Feasting on Asphalt 2 is on – this time he is riding up the Mississippi. If you like motorcycles, travel and/or food – check it out! I need to post pics from my recent trip as well!

Feasting on Asphalt is on each Saturday night through Sept. 8, 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on the Food Network (check your local listing)…