When I came too I was a bit burry eyed, but cognizant of the fact that I hit the back of a Dodge Dakota. I knew I made the conscience decision in a split second to plow into the back of the parked car instead of hitting the moving car head on. The night was dead silent and the car that had swerved in front of me at the entrance of the street was long gone. I was lying on the cold tarmac all alone staring into the sky.

As I looked down, my clutch finger was bent sideways, my nose bloody from hitting the bars, and my right leg was burnt from the pipe, but other than that I was fine. I remember mumbling to myself for some reason: “Sorry reaper, it will have to be another day.”

As I picked myself up off the ground it was then I thought about the bike and wondered what sort of damage occurred to my machine.

As I gazed upon my pride and joy, the thing I just spent hours detailing before this incident happened, I noticed that it was much worse off than myself. Skin and bone will heal on its own, but bent springers and handlebars as well as crumpled tanks and fenders require hundreds of hours in my garage massaging everything back into shape.

It was then that the overwhelming feeling of anger overcame me. I am sure it was a mix of laying my bike down and now having to repair it, coupled with the fact that, due to some irresponsible cage driver, my wife could have been a widow and my child could have no father. These things in combination now had me seething. So much in fact I yanked my 700-plus-pound bike off the ground, got it started, and limped the crooked hulking mass back to my house all by my lonesome to further check the carnage.

While I was sitting there looking at my bike, I remember being told many years ago by an old biker pal of my dad’s, “If you really ride your bike, it ain’t ‘if’ you’re gonna crash, but ‘when.'” And I found out that warm August night just what he meant. When I got the bike up on the lift in my garage and started pulling the damaged parts off, it was then that I realized I was welcomed into a club I really didn’t want to be in.