>Motorcycle Accident Redux

Posted on May 15, 2009 by Steve Picray

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I went on my lunch break from work tonight, and I went to McDonalds. That’s right, the one where I got hit on my motorcycle. I wanted to look the scene over and make sure my perceptions were accurate. It turns out that they weren’t.

I told the insurance companies (both his and mine) that the street where the accident happened had 3 lanes going east, and he was in my lane, which is the middle lane. Tonight I tried to think of the accident through the other driver’s eyes. In actuality, there ARE three lanes eastbound, but only AFTER the McDonalds entrance. Before the McDonalds entrance (where I was sitting behind the other car) there are only two lanes. The third lane starts to grow out of the left side of the “middle” lane right at the McDonalds entrance.

What this tells me is that my original assessment of what happened was incorrect. The other driver wasn’t driving half in the “middle” lane and half in the “left” lane…he was driving half in the left (of two lanes) and half over the center line. In effect, this means that I was in possession of the left lane, and he tried to pass me by moving partially across the center line, which is illegal.

I am planning on taking this picture to my insurance company and showing them the correct version. Then I will ask them if I should tell this to the other guy’s insurance company, because I dont’ want it to seem like I’m “changing my story.” The way I see it, either way he’s at fault.
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>Motorcycle Accident

Posted on May 13, 2009 by Steve Picray

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So I had my first motorcycle accident. I walked away from it. Here’s what happened:

I was riding east on 96th street (just east of Meridian) when the car in front of me stopped in front of McDonalds to let a westbound car turn against the traffic and go into McDonalds. After the westbound car turned in, the car in front of me just sat there, half in the right lane and half in the middle lane. I was in the middle lane, on a line with that car’s driver. I waited ten seconds for the car to move, and when they didn’t, I started to pull over to the left section of my lane to go around them.

Just as I did this, another car hit me. We’ll call the other car “Bartimaeus”, since he said he didn’t see me. I have a very bright blue and white helmet, an orange Harley “Bar and Shield” logo emblazoned across the back of my rainsuit, and an American flag fluttering on my sissy bar….He would have had to be blind to not see me. See Mark 10:46.

Anyway, Bartimaeus decided that he wasn’t going to wait either, and he moved forward halfway in the middle lane and halfway in the left lane. If I had stayed where I was, he would have just missed me. Since I was moving over into the left portion of my lane, he ran into me with the passenger side of his car. My left highway bar (THANKS DAD!!) took the brunt of the impact both on his car and on the pavement. My left mirror also hit his rear fender on my way down, and it broke off when I hit the pavement. I scuffed up the toe of my left boot, and my left elbow smacked the ground, bruising it. My helmet skidded on the pavement as the bike scraped across the pavement for about five feet or so before coming to a stop.

I stood up, shaken, but not stirred. Wait, that’s not right…shaken but relatively unharmed. Bartimaeus came over to see if I was ok, I said I was fine. I noticed that there was something leaking out of the bike (probably oil or gas), so I picked up the bike so it was upright and rolled it over to the side of the road. We exchangeAdd Imaged information and waited for the police to show up. I have not stopped thanking God for keeping me safe and allowing me to continue to live, especially since it’s my 35th birthday.

Now we wait on the insurance companies to figure out whose fault it is. As you can see in the picture, the two scrapes where my bike went down were solidly in my (middle) lane. If he had been in the middle lane, he would have hit me in the back. If he had been in the left lane, he wouldn’t have hit me at all.

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>Riding

Posted on May 6, 2009 by Steve Picray

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I turn 35 next week. When I was 33 years old, a friend at church tried to convince me to buy a motorcycle so that we could go riding together. “Riding where?” I asked him. “Just riding,” was his response.

After a year of discussions with my wife and an assist from the $4 per gallon gas prices (most motorcycles get over 50mpg), I bought my first motorcycle in June 2008. I bought it on eBay and I didn’t really look at where the seller lived. He lived in Northern Michigan. Right next to Canada, eh. When I discovered this, I realized that I would need to drive up there and collect my bike by myself. I had a trailer hitch installed on our van (you know, the one that we don’t have anymore?), spent $20 on some winching tie-downs from Wally World, and rented a trailer from Uhaul. I left at 0700, and arrived around 1500 (3pm). We loaded up the bike, and after some paperwork, I took off for home around 1700 (5pm). I got home at 0100 and crashed into my bed. Actually, IIRC, I unloaded the bike and drove the trailer back to the Castleton U-haul so I wouldn’t have to in the morning.

I then spent two months looking at my motorcycle, since I had promised my dad (after registering the bike) that I wouldn’t ride the bike until after I passed the safety course. After passing the safety course in September, I started riding regularly, until November when it got too snowy, icy, and cold. I still rode three or four times a month through the winter.

Now it is warm again. I don’t care if it is raining or not. I don’t care if it is windy. I don’t care if it is hailing—-actually, that one I do care about. But aside from that, I want to be on my bike anytime I have to go somewhere. This is what my friend was trying to tell me when he said, “Just riding.” I have tried to explain this to my wife. When I drive my car, I’m merely attempting to get from point A to point B. When I’m riding my motorcycle, I am enjoying the trip. I think this is one of those things that you can’t explain, but that must be experienced. I recently found the following list of quotes about biking, and thought I should share them. I got them from the Motorcycle Forum website:

  • Four wheels move the body. Two wheels move the soul.

  • Life may begin at 30, but it doesn’t get real interesting until about 90 mph!

  • If you don’t ride in the rain, you don’t ride.

  • Work to ride & ride to work.

  • If you ride like there’s no tomorrow, there won’t be.

  • Bikes parked out front mean good chicken-fried steak inside.

  • You can forget what you do for a living when your knees are in the breeze.

  • Only a biker knows why a dog sticks his head out of a car window.

  • There are two types of people in this world, people who ride motorcycles and people who wish they could ride motorcycles.
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>Women

Posted on May 6, 2009 by Steve Picray

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I am a nurse working on the medical floor of a hospital. All of my coworkers are women, and as such, I’m around women all the time. I love my wife, so I tolerate her eccentricities (just as she does mine), but working with ten women every night is really starting to wear on me. Sometimes I want to talk about things that only other guys will understand. None of my co-workers care that Zambrano pulled a hammie a few days ago. They don’t see my side of things when I talk about an argument I had with another woman.

Tonight I started to talk about a conversation I had with my wife last night, so that I could communicate my newfound love of riding my motorcycle. I started to relate how my wife said she didn’t understand why I liked riding, when I was verbally attacked by my co-workers, and told in no uncertain terms that my wife is unhappy, and I need to watch the kids so she can go out and have a good time.

They said I’m doing something wrong and my wife needs to have some “me” time. The funny thing is that I have told my wife this, and I started to tell them, “Yeah, I’ve told her that she should make some friends, and spend time with them.” Unfortunately, I also mentioned that she might go over to a friend’s house and take our daughter (she could play with the other mother’s kids while the adults talked). No sooner did the words “take our daughter” leave my lips, when I was told that she shouldn’t take the kid, I should watch the kid. Another one of them said, “She needs to get a job.” I also got, “You need to figure out what your wife wants.”

I don’t deny that there may be some merit in what they say, but I feel that the attacks were unwarranted, and their unsolicited advice was not welcome. I only wanted to communicate my enjoyment while riding a motorcycle. They saw it as an opportunity to play “Dr. Phil” with my marriage. Well, my wife and I are perfectly happy together, and we love each other. We have been married for almost 14 years now, and Lord willing we will have a long life together.

One woman tonight said, “I need to call your wife,” as if she is going to call her and they will trash me together. She doesn’t know my wife. My wife would probably say, “Who do you think you are attacking my husband like that?”

I don’t understand why they say Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived, and yet he had 1000 wives.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments