Ruminations in Korea

I got a chuckle out of this news story from CNN:

(CNN) — Two masked and machete-wielding men who barged into a club in Sydney, Australia, couldn’t have picked a worse night for their robbery — a monthly meeting of bikers.

The robbers chose the wrong night to burst into the club where the Southern Cross Cruiser Club have their monthly meeting.

About 50 burly bikers fought back with tables and chairs — pretty much anything that wasn’t bolted down. One would-be robber was tied up; the other in the hospital.

Police arrested both.

“These guys were absolutely dumb as bricks,” Jerry Vancornewal, leader of the bikers, told CNN Thursday. “I can’t believe they saw all the bikes parked up front and they were so stupid that they walked past in.”

Vancornewal and his buddies were at the Regents Park Sporting and Community Club in Sydney when the two men wearing ski masks stormed in Wednesday night. They yelled at patrons to drop to the floor as they emptied cash registers at the bar.

Hearing the commotion from an adjacent room, Vancornewal and his pals with the Southern Cross Cruiser motorcycle club stomped through to the bar area to intervene.

“They (the robbers) thought they had the upper advantage with their knives and their machetes,” Jim Webb, night supervisor of the club, told CNN. “They didn’t expect to run into a bunch of guys carrying chairs and tables.”

One of the would-be robbers crashed through a plate-glass door and jumped off a balcony.

“All he had to do was push the button and it automatically opened,” Webb quipped.

… A third person, who was waiting in a getaway car, took off when the bikers threw pieces of furniture at him, Webb said. Police have not located him.

After two weeks with only two or three rain-free days, and despite a forecast of rain, the motorcycle gods smiled and it was a beautiful day.

After meeting at Pusan Train Station and having a quick breakfast of a toasted ham, egg, and cheese sandwich, we hit the road at 9:30 am. We rode south past the train station and turned west at the overpass and rode through the tunnel into Daeshin-dong and then through Daeti tunnel into Kwejeong and Hadan. From there, we took Highway 2 toward Jinhae.

After passing Yongwon and approximately 7 km before Jinhae, we arrived at Angol and turned off of Highway 2. We through Angol along the coast until we arrived at the ferry terminal.

We boarded the 11:00 am ferry to Gadeokdo and secured our bikes for the ride.

We went to the upper deck and took a look at the ocean ahead of us.

The captain of the vessel, who was reportedly enjoying an adult beverage shortly before boarding the vessel, was ready to set sail.

We sailed past the construction of the Pusan to Keoje Island bridge.

After about 30 minutes, we turned toward Gadeokdo Island. The ferry docked at a little pier built out into the ocean.

After getting off of the ferry, we turned right and headed up into the mountains. A short ride up a steep mountain and down the other side, set the pattern for the entire island. a series of mountains, coves, and small villages.

There are no major roads around the island. The roads are little more than concrete paths and sometimes no more than a narrow walkway between buildings. No idea what two cars coming from opposite directions would do.

At any time, the roads can end in a military base, a farm house, or a beautiful outcropping of rocks.

When you come to one of these dead ends, then you can only turn around and enjoy the view on the ride back.

Many of the houses on the island are very old and little more than shacks, but they are someone’s home.

Life on the small island remains very traditional. The only industries appeared to be fishing, farming, a few small stores and a handful of restaurants.

Some of the roads between the small villages are so steep that the switchbacks are immediately below section of road that you are on.

The steepness of roads required riders to go hard on the front and back breaks and to keep a substantial distance from the rider in front of you.

Riding back to the car ferry pier, we had a good look at one of the villages, the road leading over the final hill to the pier, and the mainland off in the distance.

We arrived back at the car ferry pier about 2 hours before the ferry was scheduled to arrive. We traveled every road we could find on the island, took a very slow lunch, and rode back to the ferry pier in approximately 3 hours. We waited for the ferry inside a small store, where we enjoyed snacks, adult beverages, soda pop, and good conversation.

Laying in bed and sitting around the house all weekend due to an extremely nasty cold that has given me a fever, head ache, chills, sore throat, dizziness, stiff joints, and other nasty things has afforded me the chance to reflect on a few things.

One thing I thought about as I lay incapacitated on my bed and looking out the window is how beautiful Korea can be. It’s not very big. The mountains are not very high. There is not a lot of wildlife. However, the Korean countryside is some of the most beautiful land that I have ever seen.

Although today would have been an absolutely perfect day for a motorcycle ride around the Pusan area, I was forced to stay home. However, my illness did give me time to revisit a ride I took a couple of weeks ago with some new friends from Pusan and near Kimhae.

I have long marveled that I have so much trouble waking up at 8:00am on a weekday to drag my butt to work, but I have no problem springing out of bed at 5:30am on a weekend to go for a ride on my bike. That is what I did two weekends ago.

I jumped out of bed at 5:30am and hit the road at 6:00am for the one-hour ride to Kimhae where I had arranged to meet my friends and their wives.

As I rolled down the road near my house, I caught sight of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan in the pre-dawn light across the harbor.

I made good time through the relatively quiet streets of Pusan and Kimhae. I arrived at the Kimhae Homeplus shopping center a few minutes after the designated meeting time of 7:00am and about 20 seconds ahead of one friend who had ridden from Haeundae in Pusan. A few minutes later we were joined by the other couple.

We decided to grab a quick breakfast at McDonalds before beginning our ride. The five of us went inside. We were the only ones in the restaurant at that time. Me and one of the couples ordered exactly the same thing, sausage and egg McMuffin with hot chocolate. The little girl behind the counter advised us that, for some mysterious reason, there was no hot chocolate available. So, we switched our drink order to orange juice.

After waiting for nearly 10 minutes for our order, the girl brought out our breakfast. The couple opened their McMuffins and were surprised to see that there was no egg inside their sausage egg McMuffin. I laughed as they debated whether to just eat it or to send it back for the correct order. They sent the food back and insisted on one with egg. My laughter stopped when I opened mine and found that mine was also missing the egg.

I stood up, walked back to the counter and told the cashier girl that my order was also wrong in that it was also lacking an egg. She was very embarrased at that point and said that she could have the cook guy make a new sausage egg McMuffin or I could have the bacon and egg McMuffin that had been sitting on the warmer since before we came into the store. I elected for a new sausage egg McMuffin.

The other two got their correct orders and just as they were finishing their breakfasts, I finally got mine. I opened the wrapper and was absolutely stunned. I had just been handed a piping hot sausage McMuffin again without the egg. Four of the five of us thought that was amusing.

I went back to the counter and explained that I had just been given exactly the same thing that I had sent back. I asked how hard it could possibly be for one cook handling one order in a totally empty restaurant to NOT give me exactly the same thing I had just sent back. The poor little cashier girl was deeply embarassed. I made it clear that it was not her fault and I was not angry at her, but I was upset with the lone cook who was not hiding behind the grill. Upon arriving at my seat, I was reminded by one of the party that McDonalds does not employ rocket scientists to run the grills and handle breakfast orders.

The third time was the charm. I got my sausage and egg McMuffin. After consuming my long overdue breakfast, we went out to or bikes to discuss where we were going to go. Usually, that is something you do long before you show up for the ride, but this was a totally impromptu ride and none of us had any distinct destination in mind. Eventually we decided to head north to Miryang Dam and then ride out west near the little town of Changnyeong.

We mounted up and rode north out of Kimhae and over my favorite bridge in Korea into the little village of Samnangjin.

After a short bank run and bathroom break, we left Samnangjin behind and wound our way up the mountains and headed toward the even smaller village of Jinyang. The switchbacks at the top of the mountain open up to a breathtaking view of the Nakdong River flood basin and farm country.

After coming down out of the mountains and riding through Jinyang without stopping, we turned our bikes toward another set of mountains and Miryang Dam.

We took a brief rest for a drink and a leg stretch, then made the final ascent to Miryang Dam.

Once at the dam, we stood and admired the view for about half an hour.

Across the street from the entrance to the dam was a sign that puzzled us all. None of us had ever seen a sign like it before and none of had any idea what it meant. No burning cars? Cars will be burnt? Don’t drive through fires? I have asked several people since seeing this sign and none of them have a clue as to its meaning.

We hit the road after a quick group photo.

From Miryang Dam, we headed down out of the mountains, and west through the town of Miryang toward Changnyeong. During the approximately one-hour drive from Miryang, we passed maybe five cars the entire trip. However, there were motorcyclists everywhere. The road up the mountains toward the Changnyeong valley is an exquisitely beautiful motorcycle road full of twists and turns as it snakes it way up the mountain side.

At the top of the mountain, we reached the turn-around point of our trip. At the top of the pass, we pulled over at a small shack that served as a restaurant. The smell of cooking seafood pajeon (sort of a seafood and vegetable pancake) was too much to resist. We sat at an outside table on the edge of a huge dropoff overlooking the valley and the road we had just come up. It was the most scenic lunch I have ever had in my life. This picture was taken while sitting in my chair at our table. The mountains rolling off into the distance and the road we had just travelled winding away to the left.

After our lunch and a break, we road back down the mountain, fueled up and headed back toward Kimhae where we separated and went our separate ways.

It was a beautiful ride on a gorgeous day. It was also my first major ride since my accident. It was good to finally eat up some road.

I have my bike back and I am happy to be riding again. I’ve analyized what when wrong. I’ve written about may accident and recovery almost exclusively for the past six months.

Today marks six months since the accident. I thought it would be an appropriate way to close the book on my accident returning to the scene of the accident and checking out the location, particularly the pole that I hit. While the pole did much more damage to me and my bike, it appears that I got in a few good licks and at least did some superficial damage to the pole:

Now, I think I am able to end this particular topical thread, leave the accident behind me, and focus on other things.

Time.

I have had half of a year to ponder a half of a second of my life. Of the past six months, three were spent flat on my back in a hospital bed. That affords you quite a bit of time to think. When you turn such a short period of time over and over and over in your mind for such a long period of time, you see things and make connections that were not immediately apparent at the time the event occurred.

On 23 September 2006, at approximately 9:50 am, I was involved in a motorcycle accident. Within the space of half a second, I went from riding normally to slamming into a concrete pole, shattering my thigh bone, and cartwheeling down the road. What I initially thought had happened at the time of the accident is quite different from what I came to realize actually happened.

Immediately after the accident and for a while thereafter, I believed that I was traveling at a normal speed, taking a normal curve in a normal manner, when my rear tire slipped on some gravel or sand. I believed that this caused me to slide toward the pole, when my tire caught dry road and stood me up into the concrete pole.

What I first assessed to be the result of an unfortunate combination of bad luck, fate, and karma turned out to be the result of a mixture of complacency, haste, and inattentiveness. I now realize that those three things, complacency, haste, and inattentiveness, created a situation where I was setting myself up for an accident. What follows is a detailed analysis of my ride on that fateful day and the bad decisions and mistakes that led to the accident.

Twenty-three years of riding experience does not mean that you will never have an accident. In fact, experience can be a contributing factor in accidents. Experience breeds familiarity and assumption. Familiarity and assumption breed complacency. Complacency breeds carelessness. After nearly two and a half decades on a bike, I know my abilities. I know my limitations. I know what I am doing. As such, the vast majority of my actions have become mechanical and are performed without thinking. Much has become instinctual, much has become habit, and much as become simply thoughtless action. Thus, I spend virtually no time practicing or honing various biking skills. I have become somewhat complacent toward riding and its dangers. I certainly do not give riding the intense attention that a beginning rider does.

In addition to the familiarity with myself and abilities, there is also the familiarity of the road. Statistics say that a large portion of accidents happen within 2 - 5 miles of home. This is because people are very familiar with the roads that travel most often and tend to pay less attention to those roads. I had my accident about two miles from my home. It was on a road that I have travelled regularly for 10 years. So my over-familiarity with the road and my complacency about riding combined to create a situation where I know that I was not paying as much attention to the road as I should have been. The first strike against me on the day of my accident was the complacency that had built up and become part of my riding style and habits over the course of the years.

The second strike against me that day was haste. One important aspect of riding that a lot of riders overlook is taking the time to warm up the tires. In order to get the most traction out of the tires, you should ideally spent 15 to 20 minutes of slow to moderate driving to warm the tires up. I know this is particularly important for Harley riders who use stock Harley tires. Harley tires seem to be significantly harder than other tires on the market. However, on the day in question, I had a very important appointment at 10:00 that I could not be late for. My home is about 13 minutes from my appointment location, and I got on my bike exactly 13 minutes before the appointment. I hopped on my bike, started it up, and took off at normal speed down the road. In my haste, I did not take time to warm up my tires. Thus, the tires didn’t have the traction that they would have had if I had warmed them up.

Initially I estimated that I was going 30 or 40 km/h around the curve. My estimate was based not on any empirical data, but rather on the weak premise that I didn’t THINK I was going very fast. However, in retrospect, as I was attempting to keep a scheduled appointment with no time to spare, it is reasonable and fair to assume that I was going faster than I thought I was. Thinking back on the accident, I would guess that I was actually travelling at 50 - 60 km/h.

While that may not be fast for some longer curves, it was too fast for this particular curve. The curve is very poorly engineered. When I say “engineered,” I mean “not engineered at all.” The road curves to the left. In a properly engineered curve, the road would be built so that the vehicle would be drawn toward the center line to get the vehicle to stay on the road and in the curve. However, the curve where I wrecked was built in such a way that the when you go around the curve to the left the road slopes toward the right side of the road, which causes vehicles toward the shoulder of the road and toward the concrete telephone poles.

In my haste, I ran off down the highway without warming up the wheels and drove a bit to fast around a curve that I knew was dangerously constructed.

Given my intimate familiarity with the stretch of road where the accident occurred and my general complacency about my riding skills, I must admit that I tend to be somewhat inattentive to the road and the hazards of riding when I am close to home. Thus, when my complacency combined with my haste, I was most likely a bit more inattentive than usual. I have come to realize that because I was being inattentive, I made some very basic, beginner-type mistakes.

In addition to the mistake of driving a bit too fast on an unsafe curve with cold tires, I made the seriously stupid mistake of applying my front brake while in the middle of the curve. One of two things will happen if you apply your front brake in a curve. If you apply the brake fast enough and hard enough, the bike’s front wheel will slide out from underneath you and you will slide across the ground. If your wheel doesn’t slide out from under you, the bike will, for some reason having something to do with physics, attempt to stand up and go in a straight line, which means that the bike will try to go to an upright position and straighten out to a certain extent.

Thus, what appears to have happened all in the space of about one second is that I was going around a curve a little too fast and my rear tire slipped slightly while I was in the curve because the wheels were not sufficiently warmed up. When I felt the wheel begin to slip, I was planning to bail off the bike, but I made the stupid mistake of using my front brake to try to slow down a bit, but this caused my bike to go upright slightly and go straight rather than turn. This helped my tire to gain traction again, which resulted in me going relatively straight into the concrete pole and smashing my leg between the bike and pole.

Had I warmed up the tired properly, not been so hasty and leaned deeper into the corner rather than using my brakes in the middle of the curve, chances are that I would not have hit the pole, or at least hit the pole with the bike rather than my leg.

The moral of this long and painful story is to remain aware of yourself and your surroundings, slow down, and avoid making simple, stupid mistakes.

Physical Recovery Update

My physical recovery continues. Things are going well. As of three days ago, I set my cane aside for what I hope will be the last time. I am now walking entirely under my own power. It is physically exhausting walking without any support for the first time in exactly five months. The bone is nearly healed, leaving only the muscles to be rehabilitated through exercise, motion, and stretching. It’s mildly painful, uncomfortable, and tiring, but it’s something that has to be done.

The following picture is a side view of my leg comparing the bones on 23 December 2006 (the day I left the hospital) and 24 February 2007. The angle of the x-ray is looking down from the inside of my thigh, through the bone, and along the screws to the plate on outside of my thigh. Of particular interest is the large bone callus on my thigh. The small light gray mass in the left picture is the bone craft from my hip beginning to grow. In the picture on the right, it has grown substantially and solidified. Rumor has it that over the course of several years, some of it will be reabsorbed by my body.

This picture is a front view of my leg showing the plate on the outside of my thigh.

Steel Recovery Update

I was pleased to get the word that the replacement parts arrived a few days ago. The repairs are scheduled to begin in the next couple of days.

The target date for delivery of the bike is the evening of 16 March 2007. This date was chosen as the target date because there is a cross-country ride to the west coast planned for the 17th and 18th of March. The sooner, the better. I need a ride!

In the meantime, I found this video on my hard drive and uploaded it for lack of anything else better to do. The volume of the bike’s pipes overmodulated the camera’s mic. That problem was resolved and won’t be an issue in the future.

I just finished watching a pirated copy home viewing version of Ghost Rider that I downloaded managed to acquire. (SHAME on you pirates! Now I will have to pay money to watch it when if it gets to Korea, which I will assume will happen as the star is married to a woman of Korean heritage.)

First, my review of the movie and then my critique of the critics, my review of the reviewers, those who, by and large, are a generally useless class of human beings.

My conclusion, in a nutshell, is that it is a good, clean, harmless, fun movie, particularly if you like movies adapted from comic books. If you are a biker, especially one who rides cruisers, then you should enjoy it that much more.

The movie is not Oscar material. It is not one of the greatest movies ever made. It was never meant to be any of that. It was meant to be pure, escapist fun, and that is what it is. There are worse ways to spend and hour and 45 minutes of your life.

Nicholas Cage plays Johnny Blaze, a stunt rider who sold his soul to save his mentor/father from cancer. Blaze becomes the devil’s bounty hunter, rounding up some escapees from Hell, including the devil’s son, who are trying to steal a soul contract signed by an entire town 150 years or so ago. Along his journey to get the contract back, he meets up with a previous Ghost Rider from the old west who had originally rebelled against the devil by refusing to enforce the contract signed by the townspeople. Blaze also begins to control his powers and use them for good.

A few comments about the movie:

Sam Elliot played the older Ghost Rider. Elliot always looks great and sounds great in cowboy roles. This movie is no exception.

Peter Fonda plays Mephistopheles, who is apparently the devil (as opposed to Mephistopheles sometimes portrayed as chief of all demons). Being a big fan of classic biker film Easy Rider, I enjoyed seeing Peter Fonda as the devil employing the services of biker to do his bidding. Another fun little homage to Easy Rider was the muffler pipes of Blaze’s chopper were the same style pipes that Fonda had on his bike in Easy Rider.

Now…On to the critics and movie reviewers. I generally have no use for them. If I want to see a movie, I usually do not read reviews for that movie until AFTER I see the movie. One good thing about living in Korea is that I am able to miss out on the hype and negative publicity of movies.

It seems to me that reviewers do not know how to have fun. Moreover, they generally seem not to understand certain genres of movies, comic book adaptations especially. It must be sad not to be able to be entertained by entertainment. Simply put, just because you do not enjoy a particular genre of movie doesn’t necessarily mean that the movie is bad. Often, I wonder whether the critics even watched the same movie as me. Take, for example, this review from The Salt Lake Tribune.

At first, it seems like director-writer Mark Steven Johnson (who also adapted “Daredevil,” another Marvel Comics title) is embracing the absurdity of this story… It’s hard to look at the comic-book imagery of the Ghost Rider’s burning skull, metal-spiked leather jacket and flame-rimmed chrome-plated chopper — the sort of thing junior-high school boys draw during a dull social-studies class — without starting to snicker.

Well… First of all, the use of the word “absurdity” is objectionable. It is meant to cast disdain on the story and to show how ridiculous the reviewer finds the story line. Personally, I find it absurd that a movie review would think it necessary to point out to people that a movie based on a comic book story about a biker possessed by a fire elemental and serving as the devil’s bounty hunter is absurd.

Secondly, of course it is the sort of thing that junior high school boys draw in social studies class!!! That is the point of comic books! That is the target audience for comic books and movies adapted from comic books, the kids that are currently drawing the pictures in junior high and the older guys that remember drawing the pictures in junior high. What one reviewer would snicker at, many “regular” people would find to be cool and exactly the way an escapist comic book movie should be.

And Johnson even tosses in some offhand (and possibly inadvertent) references to the Coen brothers, with a scene of Johnny meeting the devil at the crossroads (a la “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”).

This is just ignorance on the part of the reviewer. The devil at the crossroads has been around long before “O Brother, Where Art Thou”, at least since before Robert Johnson was singing about it in the 1920s. And even if he is aware of this fact, it would take a large leap of the imagination to assume it was a reference to the Coen Brother’s movie.

But Johnson falters badly when he expects us to take this silliness seriously. … What begins as a campy goof falls apart when it becomes bloated by self-importance and overblown special effects.

This is where I started to wonder if we had watched the same movie. This movie NEVER takes itself seriously. There are sufficiently campy comic book lines and moments throughout the movie. Take this sequence approximately 15 minutes from the end of the movie, for example. Keep you eye on the lizard in the bottom right corner of the pictures. This is CLEARLY not a movie that takes itself seriously:

Another reviewer who embodies the “just didn’t get it” crowd of reviewers states:

A Marvel Comics adaptation that, frankly, never should have even made it past the pre-production stage. This is a shapeless, confused and entirely muddle-headed movie…The basic problem with Ghost Rider: It’s not about anything. … Well, it’s about a skull-faced undead motorcycle rider who wields a chain and whose face is on fire. Beyond that, I give up.

Don’t give up. That’s EXACTLY what it’s about…Except he’s not undead.

However, there are a few who understand. Like this reviewer:

Although “Ghost Rider” wouldn’t necessarily qualify as a “good” movie, it does have a few wonderfully goofy moments squeezed in between a lot of unspectacular visual effects and ho-hum plot points Those who have no tolerance for jokiness where comic book icons are concerned will probably hate “Ghost Rider,”

And there a very few who completely get it, like this reviewer.

He spends his days in human form and nights as a skeleton flambe’ee battling evildoers on a burning chopper…The daytime Cage is without a doubt the weirder of the two identities…Writer/director Mark Steven Johnson (”Daredevil”) manages to spoof superhero, Western and biker-movie cliches and also play them straight. When you stunt-cast Peter Fonda as the devil in this film, you get a respectable performance and a joke all in one.

Perhaps the best, and most “with it” review of the movie was from E-Online’s Luke Thompson. He got straight to the point, which meant straight into the heart of the vast majority of critics and reviewers:

Seriously, people, if you’re going to go see a movie you know is about a biker with a flaming skull and magic chains, you forfeit the right to complain about how the plot isn’t logical or realistic. Or that there are too many special effects at the expense of story.

************

[T]he Easy Rider summons the Ghost Rider up to do battle by proxy. Everything after that seems like it was made up as they went along.

Had, say, Ben Affleck been the star, the movie would suck hard. But Cage is allowed to let his freak flag fly, downing jellybeans from martini glasses and repeatedly making scary faces at himself in the mirror. If you can roll with that, take the ride.

Take the ride!

Maybe there is something wrong with me. I have shared this with a few people and none of them find it amusing. However, I do.

Searching for a good, reliable GPS setup for my motorcycle, I looked at several varieties of handheld digital GPS devices. At some point in my search, I stumbled upon this very nice looking analog GPS device from Aerostitch. The copy reads:

“Take your batteries and slavish dependence on other high-tech flummery and heave it overboard. With this device, you can pinpoint your location anywhere on earth and not be reliant on dodgy bits of information being projected through the ether by divers black arts. Precision constructed of brass and the finest optics available and featuring premium isinglass sun filters, it is compact and rugged enough for the adventurous motor-cyclist. Mounts for 7/8″ and 1″ bars are included, as is a fitted, velvet lined rosewood storage case. Not included are required declination charts (call for details) or the extremely accurate watch you are going to need to use this thing. Meets R.N. standard 3329-5 of 1787. Price: $3,117.00″

The healing process continues. I’m off of crutches and using a cane. My thigh bone is very nearly completely healed. Now I am working on rebuilding the muscles in my right leg. Due to four months of not using any muscles, my right leg is mush. But the muscle is coming back fairly quickly. At my last visit, the doctor hinted that I might be able to get rid of the cane after about two weeks.

Now that the the major physical worries are over, I have some time to reflect a bit on the injuries.

After I slammed into the concrete pole on 23 September 2006 and rolled along the ground for a bit, my right thigh bone looked like this:

The fact that my femur broke into four large pieces and several smaller chunks most likely saved me from a compound fracture with bones jamming through my skin, major soft tissue damage, and blood pouring everywhere.

Surgery several hours after the accident fixed the break. The doctors but in a titanium plate and 11 screws. Apparently a drill bit broke off during the surgery, which I didn’t know about until months later. The post surgery leg looked like this on 23 September 2006 (the staples running up the side of my leg are visible):

I was discharged from the hospital five weeks later. Seven days after being released from the hospital, I went for x-rays and a check up on 4 November 2006. I took the x-rays, but the doctor was not available on that day to review the x-rays. What no one knew was that the titanium plate in my leg had cracked:

Note the few stray bone fragments. They are buried deep in my muscle tissue and will remain there forever.

The next morning, 5 November 2006, I woke up, and when I moved my right leg, my thigh bowed up like an upside down “U”. I didn’t know why it did that. It didn’t hurt, so I rationalized that it was something do to with the muscle.

The next morning, 6 November 2006, my leg was not any better. I went to the hospital to find out what was wrong. The doctor looked at X-ray taken two days earlier and exclaimed “Oh shit!” He told me the plate had broken and that my bone had re-broken. He immediately re-admitted me to the hospital and sent me down for more x-rays. My leg looked like this:

From another angle:

Well…that explained why my thigh was shaped like an upside down “U” when I moved it.

I underwent my second surgery to remove the broken plate, saw about 1cm off my thigh bone to make the ends flat, screw on a new, lager, wider, thicker plate, and to graft some bone from my thigh onto my leg. After surgery on 7 November 2006, the new plate looks like this (The broken drill bit can be seen in this picture):

Many people have emailed, telephoned, etc. asking about the condition of my motorcycle. I usually reply that the situation is critical.It is a little difficult to explain the extent of the damage. I didn’t quite understand it until I saw it myself. I had asked my friend who is repairing it how long it would take. He said it would take about two months to fix. When I asked why it took so long, he said it would take about one month to get all of the parts together (many have to be ordered from the US) and about one month to do the actual repair work.

I asked why it was going to take a month to do the repair work. My friend sighed on the other end of the telephone and said something to the effect of, “think of it this way….I am not repairing your old bike. I am basically building you a new bike.”

My reply was, “what do you mean building me a new bike.” He paused for a moment and said, “basically you’ve got a rear fender, a seat, a frame, and an engine…well, most of an engine anyway. Everything else is getting replaced.”

I couldn’t really wrap my mind around what he was saying. Eventually, he visited me in the hospital with about 200 pictures of the damage to various parts of the bike. The list of parts to be replaced is two pages long.

I picked out a few pictures that are fairly representative of the damages.

One of the first things to hit the concrete pole was my gas tank.

As the bike flipped over and sent me flying, the bike landed on the other side of the gas tank and tumbled up the road.

Unfortunately, before I went off the bike, the concrete pole basically sheared off the right side of my bike, crushing my leg in the process. This next picture is the right foot peg and one of the exhaust pipes coming from the engine. The pipes are pancaked flat and the foot peg is bent upwards. My foot was on that peg when I hit the pole. There was literally no space between the side of my bike at the pole. My thigh was smashed into that “no space.”

Here is a picture of the right side of my bike before the accident:

Here is a picture of what the right side of my bike looks like now. However, this is not a very accurate representation of the damage, because the front end is still on the bike. Everything in front of the gas tank will be replaced….everything…forks, fender, handle bars, mirrors, levers, everything.

I am anxiously awaiting the day when she will look like the “before” picture again… except with a few cool modifications.

Recently, I was standing in my doorway getting ready to go out for a ride. I looked in the mirror and saw that I had on my Harley-Davidson boots, Harley-Davidson shirt, Harley-Davidson jacket, Harley-Davidson fanny pack (with my Harley-Davidson handkerchief and Harley-Davidson wallet inside), Harley-Davidson bandanna, Harley-Davidson gloves, and Harley-Davidson helmet.

I was horrified. I had become “Harley Guy,” the type of guy that has Harley-Davidson stamped on everything he owns or wears. I hate that guy, but I had become him, the corporate sellout. I was rather disgusted with myself.

I immediately went inside the house and threw my Harley-Davidson jacket into the garbage can. Never wanted to see it again.

I started an internet search for leather motorcycle jackets. The name Fox Creek Leather kept coming up. I finally visited their site and thought that they had some beautiful products. Reading through their site, I was impressed by the thickness of their leather and the alleged care with which they are constructed.

I was very interested in purchasing one of their jackets, but was hesitant to buy anything because I would be buying it sight unseen via the internet from some place 8,000 miles away. So, I scoured the internet for personal reviews or comments on Fox Creek Leather Jackets. I visited many sites and many sources, but was unable to locate any negative comments or reviews. Not a single one.

I broke down and gave them a call. They went over specific measurements and eventually convinced me to get one size bigger than I thought I should. I bought the Classic Motorcycle Jacket II. I also bought a pair of braided chaps and some deerskin gauntlets.

The arrived in Pusan, Korea from Virginia, USA in 5 days.

As many reviews had said, the leather was very thick and weighed a ton, but was very soft. Everything fit absolutely perfectly. although it is still a bit warm here in Korea, the vents on the jacket made it very comfortable to wear.

Well. Just a few days after getting the jacket and other leather gear, I was wearing my new jacket and gloves and I slid on something, missed a corner, and slammed into a concrete telephone pole. I broke my leg and was launched off my bike. I tumbled along the ground for about 30 feet.

The leather jacket quite possible saved my life and definitely saved me from serious blood loss and significant upper-body injuries. I had one minor scrape on my right forearm, which I believe was just a bit of road burn caused by the inside zipper lining on the right sleeve. There was absolutely NO damage to the jacket. There was a bit of dust on the right sleeve and right side of the jacket, but I dusted that off in the emergency room. There is not a single scratch on that leather jacket.

Having had the opportunity to go through the ordering process, the wearing of the jacket, and the evaluation of the jacket as a protective item in the space of about two weeks, I can, without the slightest hesitation, recommend Fox Creek Leather to anyone who is looking to buy thick, heavy, beautiful, expertly crafted leather motorcycle clothing. Those people know what they are doing. They know exactly what a biker is looking for in a jacket. Their product saved me from significant pain, blood loss, and possibly death. I cannot recommend them enough.

I talk a bit more about it here:

As some of you may know. I am in the hospital. I will be in the hospital for quite a while. Here’s the story.

Saturday morning, I was riding my bike to work. At approximately 9:50 am, I was coming around a curve in the road. (Keep in mind that what follows happened in the space of about one second) For some reason, perhaps sand or gravel on the road, my back tire lost it’s grip on the road and I began to slide toward the side of the road. I saw that I was sliding toward a telephone pole. My plan was to dump the bike and let it go its way while I went mine. However, just as I started to let go of the handle bars and abandon the bike, my rear tire caught its grip on the road and high-sided me (stood my bike up) right into the concrete telephone pole.

The exact spot of the accident can be seen at 3:35 on this video (where, ironically, I am talking about the inability of harleys to corner very deeply). I hit the telephone pole that is just to the right of the center of the screen at the 3:35 mark.

As I hit the pole, I ducked my head and was looking at my gas tank and leg as my leg got sandwiched between the tank and the pole. I saw my leg break and flop around as I went spinning off the bike. I rolled about 10 meters further up the street, with my bike tumbling close behind me.

I came to a rest on my left side. My right glove was off (I still don’t know how or why) and I was bleeding slightly from my middle knuckle. My right leg was numb and bent inward at the thigh at a particularly odd angle. The toes on my right foot hurt. I was staring at my bike…and the bits and pieces of it laying around the road.

I yelled at the top of my voice. Not so much out of pain as out of helplessness and the need to get to a hospital. I yelled for help. No one responded for several long seconds, during which I saw several cars drive past me. I did see one person in a truck looking at me and talking on their mobile phone. I could feel people standing and looking at me from the bus stop behind me.

I yelled again for someone to help me and for someone to call 119, the emergency services number. I would guess that I laid there a full minute before someone actually came to me. It was some old woman telling me that 119 had been called and were coming. A few seconds later, two Mormon Church missionaries came and started to talk to me. They said that they had heard the accident from their apartment and had run down to help. They helped me get my helmet off and to get my bike off the road.

The police arrived a couple of minutes later. They were asking my name, what happened, was I OK, things like that. They asked what I planned to do with the motorcycle and whether someone would come to pick it up. I thought that was a stupid question to ask at that point in time and I told them so. They started to lecture me about how I just couldn’t leave it there on the side of the road. To shut them up, I told them that I would have someone come and pick it up AFTER I got to the hospital.

While waiting for the ambulance to get there, I made a few phone calls on my mobile phone to let people know what happened.

The ambulance arrived about 15 minutes after the accident. Several guys rolled me over onto the gurney and wheeled me over to the ambulance van. After stuffing me inside, they asked what hospital I wanted to go to. I told them I didn’t care and that they should just get me to a good, close one. They said that I had to decide, so I told them to take me to one of the bigger hospitals near the accident site.

After a bumpy ride with lots of corners, we arrived at the hospital. They wheeled me in to the emergency room where I waited for an hour or so. Eventually, they took me for some x-rays. In the x-ray room, they cut my pants off and had to remove my boots. As they pulled the boot off of my swollen right foot, my toes felt really bad. I could feel the blood sticking my socks to my toes and to the top of my boot. Eventually, they got the boot off and everyone in the room had very unpleasant looks on their faces as they looked at my toes. I asked what was going on? One of the missionaries that had come with me said, “Dude, your toes are shredded.” There was too much blood for them to say more than that. I had to move on and off the x-ray table to take the x-rays. That was unpleasant.

The doctor decided that I would have to have surgery to repair my leg. He explained that usually, they would usually delay surgery for a couple to put me in traction and stretch out the leg before going in to work on the bone. However, because the damage to my toes required immediate surgery, they would do my leg surgery at that time. They scheduled surgery for 2:00 pm that day.

As I awaited surgery, my Harley Davidson repairman friend came from Changwon (about an hour from me) to pick up the bike and take it back to his shop for repairs.

At the scheduled time, I went into surgery. Just as they gassed me into unconsciousness, I heard the doctors grumbling about how difficult it was going to be to operate on my leg.

I woke up in my darkened room around 8:00 pm. I was told that the surgery had taken about three hours. The doctor told me that everything went well, but it had taken four large nurses to pull my leg far enough and straight enough to set it properly. The doctor told me that everything was clean and should heal very nicely. When asked about my toes, he told me that there has been some damage to the bottom of the second toe on my right foot and extensive damage to the third toe. He explained that they cut off “the end” of my third toe (i’m still not sure what that mean… it just looks like a bandaged mess right now) and used the skin to repair my second toe.

They told me to sleep and they would talk more in the morning. I quickly complied.

After waking up Sunday morning, I noticed that I had a urinary catheter tube, which was extremely uncomfortable…and EXTREMELY painful when in came out Tuesday afternoon.

My brother came down from Seoul to help me out for a couple of weeks.

The doctor came in Sunday afternoon to explain the situation. He showed me the x-ray. It was NOT a clean break. My thigh bone had shattered into several pieces and they had spent a lot of time picking bone fragments out of my thigh muscles. They installed a titanium rod running from my hip to my knee and secured it to the bone with eleven large screws. The also used a steel band around the bone to hold all of the bone fragments in place.

He explained that I could probably use crutches after one week. I would have to stay in the hospital for three to four weeks. It would be at least five weeks before I could put any weight on my leg. I would use a walker for three to four weeks. The splint would stay on for about 8 weeks. And I would be able to walk freely after about three months. Motorcycle riding would take about four months.

As for the bike… I don’t have all of the details yet. But the latest repair quote was about $6,700.

I live on Youngdo Island in Pusan Harbor. It’s connected to mainland Pusan by two bridges. One of the bridges is conveniently located across the street from my office.

Inspired by YouTube videographer Mordeth13, I decided to record a part of one of the roads I can take to get off the island. The road runs along the top of the cliffs on the south side of the island overlooking the outer ship anchorage.

I’m still messing around with video quality so it’s not that good. Also, my motorcycle is so loud that it overloads the microphone on the camera, as does the wind when I turn my head. I’m working on these things. I expect things to improve soon.

Last night as I was riding through town and trying various options for making videos, I very nearly filmed my own death.

The most common motorcycle accident is someone turning left, legally or illegally, across the path of the motorcycle. That is exactly what happened to me last night.

Here are a few screen captures from my video:

I was moving along at a pretty fast speed when suddenly a car began making an illegal U-turn directly in front of me. Notice he is starting to cross the center lineonly a few yards in front of me.

As he continues to intrude into my line, I react by moving right as quickly as possible.

He paused just long enough for me to manage to move far enough to the right to scream past him as he continued to make his illegal turn.

This guy definitely would have gotten a golf ball in his windshield if I had not left it in my office.