Not a scratch

I had a random thought today. I think I know what phase of life I’m in. Some people are in their midlife crisis, some in their golden years, and even some women are in their postmenopausal phase. I’ve decided that I’m in my postmotorcycle phase.

For those who don’t know, I recently had the pleasure of bouncing my motorcycle off a car in a head-on collision. Everyone who witnessed the accident swore they thought I was dead. The photo above is the actual accident after they hauled me off in the ambulance. Somehow I escaped by launching myself off my bike, somersaulting in the air, and landing on my back beside the car. After a few CAT scans, pelvis x-rays, and a sonogram, I was released.

I still don’t know how I survived without any broken bones, let alone a concussion. Besides having both my ego and a good part of my body bruised, my body was back to normal within a week.

It helps that I was wearing a full faced helmet and a heavily armored and padded motorcycle suit, but still the physics do not make any sense to me. The combined collision speed of the two vehicles should have been about 60 miles per hour – without airbags.

Some may think that it was insane for me to be riding a motorcycle in the first place given that I have two small children. It’s hard to explain the experience of a motorcycle to someone who thinks that. Once I pressed the ignition button all my worries floated away into the background. Until I pushed the kickstand back down, I was in a different place.

I imagine that riding a motorcycle is like being a skydiver. I've heard that at first it’s totally insane, but later on you get used to it and even crave it. The first time I took my bike up to 30 miles an hour, it felt like I was going a 100 miles an hour.

One friend asked me before the accident how I didn’t freak out when I looked down at the asphalt as I rode along the freeway. I told her I just didn’t think about it. Even after that conversation I made a point to look down at the asphalt. I still didn't worry about it.

Too bad we all can’t take our eyes off our worries and instead enjoy the ride.

What's that sound above my head?

Today I woke up to the sound of someone throwing up beside me. What a way to start the day.

The guilty party turned out to be my eight-month-old infant. At least it didn’t faze me. Not that I wasn’t concerned. Let’s just say it happens more often than I would like. My wife, however, was fazed since she got the full treatment from my son.

Now, if he had meant to throw up as a practical joke – that would be awesome. We could tour all around on the late night TV show circuit. First he could puke on Letterman, then Leno, and finally Jon Stewart. I would take him to more shows, but really, he’s only 8 months old. He needs his sleep between barfings.

Speaking of tossing one’s cookies, there was this one time in Muncie Indiana that I was almost thrown up on. I managed to slide out of my sleeping bag just as the puke hit my pillow. My friend Ben was throwing up on the dresser beside me and must have thought he was in the bathroom. Was I supposed to be the fuzzy bathmat? Good thing I heard that one coming.

I can’t say the same for my friend Troy (let’s call him Bif to conceal his identity). A few years post the 'Muncie Incident', after a late night bender, Bif wasn’t able to get away in time from my outpour of stomach contents. The splatter effect was remarkable due to my height advantage from the top bunk bed.

From Bif's perspective, he woke up to the sound of rain splattering on the papers I had taped to my wall. Only after the 'rain' started hitting him did he get up to see me repeatedly using the back of my hand to clear the puke from my bed. I guess I had a fluid arm motion since a wide arc of the floor was affected. Bif wasn’t too thrilled about peeling partially digested nachos and salsa off his shoes the next morning.

Boy, what a friend. And he doesn’t even bring it up that often anymore in mixed company.


And now for something completely different . . .

Not too much else happened today other than I realized I need more music in my life. All the great movies have great soundtracks. I’ll need to work on mine. So far I’m drawing a blank.

I’ve been a bit musically incoherent since I had a whole batch of CDs stolen from my apartment in school. I figured it was better to act like the music didn’t mean anything to me rather than facing up to the fact that I just lost a few hundred dollars worth of music. At the time a few hundred dollars was everything.
Now you’re lucky if you can get a plane ticket for that.

That’s all I got for now . . . more will follow later.

By the way, the photo above is not me nor Ben. It's just a random picture from the web. It's amazing what Google Images can find.

When I come around

I can’t believe I’m actually writing a blog. Shouldn’t there be some restrictions on who can do this? I didn’t even have to submit a lab sample.

I haven’t written the least amusing thing for quite some time. Wait - I should be honest - I don’t think I’ve written anything amusing. Ever. Well, maybe some off color e-mails between friends, but those were more for my own entertainment. Amusing just isn’t my thing.

I’ve decided to write this blog just to check it out. I hope it will be a good place for friends to mock me, or at least partake in the fun. Just reviewing the comments could be interesting enough – assuming of course that anyone has anything to comment about any of this.

I just wrote some other thoughts and decided to delete them. I should pace myself if this blog will last more than a day or two.

Cheers!