No 7th!

… and then everything changed.

What Happened…

Last Thursday, the 10th of June, I left home at around 7:20am and headed out my driveway and started down the road on my usual route to work. I went through the roundabout and past the shops, in my peripheral, I saw a car leaving a side street about 75m ahead, I set up my brakes but the car slowed right down and appeared to have seen me. I released the brakes and grabbed the bars again

…. out he came, into the middle of the lane… back on the brakes… front has locked up… BAM! Over the car… sliding down the road… lots of bits and pieces everywhere … seeing stars … I stopped sliding a metre or so into the oncoming lane, thank god no cars were there. Lots of pain from several places, I get up (quickly) and stagger over to the curb where the driver has started parking. My bike is lifeless in the middle of the road. My left wrist really hurts, everything else is bearable. The guy comes over, says he didn’t see me, I’m only partially listening. He seems upset.

A lady who was taking her kids to work hops out of her car to my assistance (Angel #1), a car with 2 (German?) guys stop to help (Angel #2 and #3, respectively), a scooter rider stops to help cars get around my bike (Angel #4.) Angel #1 (or A1 as typing is hard) helps me remove my helmet (stupid, like getting off the road, but no pain in neck, head or back) and helps me get my left glove off. Ooooh baby. She’s busted pretty bad. Bone has come out the side, my hand is perhaps .5″ off center via a strange ’step’ in my arm. Its already very swollen. A1 shows me scars on her wrist where it was reconstructed after a bike accident a few years ago. Ergh. After unsuccessfully trying to move my bke off the road, A2 and A3 come to check on me and after that, they leave. Thank you!

The driver has called my wife and A1 has called Towies and the Ambos. The Ambos are here pretty quick, Bill and Cam, they make a splint and give me a plastic thing to suck. Makes it a bit better but still very sore. Cams been an Ambo for 10 years, loves his job. Bill is more quiet, only 4 years in this gig, he’s driving.

Been at the hospital for a few hours, already given a blood sample for tests (including blood alcohol) and had a little bit of morphine when I go for X-Rays and CT. Not much is said to me about the results and even when the registrar comes around, not a lot of info is provided. I go for surgery at about 5pm and am back in my room at 9:30pm to see my best friend, my dad, becs dad and bec before I crash for the night.

The next day I feel a lot of pain and ‘grinding’ noises in my wrist. I go for more scans. When the surgeon finally comes to see me, she explains that my wrist was like ‘mashed potato’ and has been reconstructured with plates, bolts and pins.  She finds it hilarious that they overlooked the length of the screws and pins they used and now these screws are poking out the other end of my bone and hitting things inside my arm.

I demand a transfer to Royal North Shore Hospital where my hand surgeon (from a previous injury) works. I stay at RNSH for almost 2 days before they cut me open again to fix me. My hand surgeon explains that I have no carteledge left in my wrist and they’ll do what they can to make it better.

I’m at home now. Its been a crazy week. I cant do anything. Holding a tshirt makes my hand feel like it’ll fall off. I have an appointment with my surgeon tomorrow to get some scans and a new cast. Long term prognosis is unknown but I am very prone to getting arthritis due to having no cartledge. I am super worried. I already have a hand with 30% functionality on the right, I cant afford to have any long term problems with my left hand/arm.

My riding is done. I wont get on a bike again. If I’d hit my head….
Car drivers simply cant be trusted, its not the rider, its the driver.

My bike is dead. The whole front end is bent and out of shape, the frame looks bent, my bars are bent and levers broken, I’m even missing a peg. It was a great bike, I’ll miss her.

And then?

That was written the week after my accident. I am still having lots of issues with my wrist, I have very limited movement and lots of pain still. My hand surgeon has referred to my wrist on several occasions as a ‘bag of bones’ as there were just so many fractures. I am not yet back at work full time although this week I start doing 2 days in the office. My recovery period is unknown, the only certainty is that my wrist will never recover fully, I will always have limited movement.

John, the driver of the Falcon, is paying me monthly to reimburse me for the damage to my gear and the cost of my bike. He will have this paid off by Christmas, I hope.

Here are some pics of my bike and my gear. I simply cannot stress how important it was that I had the proper gear on. This accident could have been just so much worse, look at my boots and my pants, imagine if I was wearing shorts and thongs like so many other riders.

Photo descriptions are on Flickr, so hit the image for info on it…

The gnarly stuff first…

The poor girl …

My Gear …

More pics in the Bandit RIP and smash sets on Flickr.

And with this post, I declare this blog closed. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, and a few other places.

Tags: crash bang, my bike, safety

Let there be light

One of my main concerns when riding home after work is that the other cars / road users cannot see me when the sun goes down. From personal experience driving and riding, when you are amongst a lot of traffic and there are a lot of shops around, its super easy for a bikes headlights to blend in with the background and not be overly easy to see. So, I decided to to some work on my lights.

My idea being that I dont want to differentiate myself from the other vehicles, I want to differentiate from everything! Including the shops, people, the lot. A lot of guys seem to try to base the lights on the front of their bike on the ‘Triangle of Light’ idea. Basically, because the lights are in a triangle (one light above, two below) it easily distinguishes your bike from other vehicles. I thought I’d so something similar, with a twist.

The bandit has two dim-ish parking lights on each side of the headlight. I replaced these with high powered 6-diode LED’s. I also added a 25-diode LED strip under the headlight. This gives the front of the bike a fairly unique appearance and gives it a bit more light-presence on the road. The strip is wired into the same loom as the parkers as because the parkers have been replaced with LED’s there is far less power drawn so there is ample to supply the additional lights. I also replaced the tail light bulb with a high output LED cluster to make the rear of the bike more obvious. But its still not bright enough for me and I’ll be replacing the whole rear light unit with either a DIY or premade LED unit. I’ll also be replacing the indicators at some stage with high output LED’s too.

Some pics;
Front with no lights on:

Front with new LED parkers and strip (note, the parkers are hard to see in this pic, but they are actually fairly bright)

Rear with the brake off

And, rear with the brakes on

You can see that the replacement of typical filament bulbs with LED’s increases the bikes visibility somewhat. Its still not enough. I need to make sure my bike will be seen fron the ISS.

Also, if you are planning on stealing my bike, take note of the fierce guard dog keeping watch in front of the bike.

Tags: LED, lights, my bike, safety, suzuki bandit

About this site / me / my bike

About this site

This site is a simple blog to journal my ongoing experiences being a mature motorbike commuter in constantly heavy traffic. It will log my bikes status, mods and my experiences with the world through the eyes of an intrepid motorcyclist.

About me

I’m a 30 year old guy in Sydney Australia. I have 2 beautiful daughters and a fabulous wife. I come from a car background, having owned a few Nissan Skyline GTRs (and also owning the site skylinesaustralia.com.) a few years ago, I decided to bite the bullet and get my bike license. I am not a hoon, I dont mind giving it some every now and then but I dont ride to go fast. My most prominent reasoning behind riding is to halve my commute time. I had always wanted to ride but had been put off riding due to the safety factors. I also spent so much time commuting that it was the only logical answer to time saving.

It was not until I started looking into riding and getting my license that I found out how wrong so many people are in their opinions of motorcycle riders and their general safety. I will not go into the facts or figures right now, if you’d like to read more about this, visit this site and read as much as you need to (starting with the article on the linked page.) I still maintain that your personal safety on a bike is yours to look after. If you ride defensively, not putting yourself in *any* situation where you need to rely on somebody else to avoid an accident with you, then you are as safe as anybody else on the road. Australian Motorcycle News magazine this month (May 2010) reported that Australian Motorcycle fatalities are at their lowest for a long, long time.

Now that I have been riding for a few years and average ~300 kilometres a week in my commuting I want to start making sure I am as comfortable and safe as I can be. I also want to try to get out more often for day or overnight rides around Sydney.

About my bike

My bike is an 07 Suzuki Bandit 1250S. I love it to bits. I have only had it for a few weeks, I had an 08 CB600F Hornet prior to that. The Hornet was just a little uncomfortable for me (I am 6′ 5″ and 100kg.) I looked at many bikes and did many months worth of reading before I settled on the Bandit.

Competition Rules;

1. Must be 1L plus. I wanted lots of Torque, mainly so I could ride without many revs.
2. Must have a larger frame than the Hornet, mainly to fit my frame.
3. ABS Would be a positive (though I changed my mind about this after reading about it.)
4. Must have a screen. I ride in lots of 80kph+ sections to and from work and being tall, I get fairly pounded by the wind.
5. Must have a big rear tyre. This is a little silly, but I love the look of a 180 or 190 rear.
6. Must have a range of 300k’s + so I didn’t need to fill up more than once a week (I hate filling up.)

The competitors;

1. Honda VFR800 – Always wanted one. Love them to bits. Ruled out because ultimately it has a very tech engine and its almost impossible to work on yourself. Also, its only 800cc.
2. Triumph Sprint ST 1050 – Love the look of these bikes. Build quality is fantastic. Ruled out after a test ride because I was just so uncomfortable on it. The fairings dug into my legs, my belly rested on the tank and I was too far forward. I just never felt right on it, which is a shame.
3. Honda CB1000F – Great bike on paper, but there are so few of them and I wanted something that had more available parts. Also, it has a pissy 160 rear tyre.
4. Honda CB1300S – I love this bike. I still do. Its styling is so retro and awesome. It just screams quality. I never found a review that looked negatively at this bike, and it was a Honda (I love Hondas.) But, when I rode one, I found that the edges of the bikini fairing just dug into my legs far too much, no amount of shuffling would relieve me of the jabbing. This was heart breaking, it was by far above all others.
5. Suzuki SV1000S / Yamaha FZ1 / Honda CBR1100 Super Blackbird – All ruled out due to fuel range.
6. Suzuki Bandit. What a bike. Yeah, its a budget bike without amazing components, but its so easy to ride and is oh so torquey. I wont go into all the nitty gritty, I bought one, so that says enough.

The go-fast Christian in me was screaming for a GSXR1000 or an R1. But, I had to fight the urge with all my might. Sensible Christian won the battle in the end.

Whats next?
Well, there are a few things I am planning to do to the bike over the next few months and will update this blog with all my findings and the progress. If you are in a similar situation to me, I’d love to hear from you.

Tags: about, comfort, commuting, me, my bike, safety, suzuki bandit, touring