This is the end

Before I left for this trip I had read a lot of other motorcycle travel logs that went awry on their own journeys into the south. I had left with those thoughts in my mind but I tried to suppress the really bad ones and not let them haunt me. Especially one in particular where a solo trip through México ended in a man being paralyzed from the chest down as a result of a run in with a crazed donkey… If any of you have been keeping up with Andy’s blog you are well aware that my own voyage has now ended but that doesn’t mean that it was a failure in my mind. Furthermore, like every story there is always another perspective and mine is quite different from the one that Patient detailed in his story….

After we finished getting our paperwork in order at the border of Guatemala we mounted the bikes and headed off into the overcast sky after yet another painless border crossing. The town we crossed into didn’t have a paved road and we fumbled our way through the seediness in an effort to get away from it. Patient’s GPS worked wonderfully though and after a few missed turns we found ourselves on a road with truckers and busses on it. Those two types of vehicles are always a good sign and we rode on the poorly conditioned dirt road at a modest speed as the sky sprinkled drops of dew upon us. The clay surface of the road became slick and it took us about forty minutes before we meet the pavement again thirty five miles later. By the time we meet the pavement the sky was starting to dry up but we still maintained a moderate speed due to the pavement that was littered with potholes and other various hazards.

We wanted to hit up the ruins at Tikal but Patient had realized that his bank card was missing the morning we left México and he needed a new one so we were headed to the nearby island town of Flores. Everything I had read or heard about Flores was all good so I figured Tikal could wait another day. I mean it is supposed to be a vacation here, so why hurry through it? The plan was to ride to Flores and stay there for one night and gather information so that Patient could have his bank card ordered and sent in the mail to a hotel. After our last experience with overnight shipping we knew that such a thing only exists in the idea of said services, so we would therefore have a few days to make the run to Tikal and take in another vast and breathe taking ancient city. We had also heard that Tikal’s security guards are know for their weak ability to thwart off bribes to spend the night in the spiritual temple laden grounds. Tikal was one of the most dreamed about places to visit on my tour so I was extremely happy as we passed the turn off for the ruins on our way into Flores. I could hardly wait to bribe the guard and string my hammock up in the forest and feel the energy of both the jungle and the prehistoric empire that now sleepily lies at rest. Twenty minutes later we started seeing signs for the town of Santa Elena and it was relieving to know that the days ride was almost at an end. That’s when the reality of things going awry entered my dimension. The split second that changed my day was a swift and heavy one. Along the roads there are many tiny villages called pobolados and upon entering them there are variously sized and shaped speed bumps to slow the traffic in these pobolados. With our bikes long traveling suspensions we only had to slow down to about fifteen or twenty miles an hour while the cars and trucks literally had to come to a crawl to conquer the massive bumps. It just so happened that this pobolado wasn’t marked and I happened to take my eyes off the road to glance at my tank bag for a brief second when we came into it. I also happened to be trailing that day and was riding more in the center lane due to the potholes that were littering the right side of the lane I should have been in. Add all these happenstances up and guess who was riding too close in a bad position as well as who had no idea that the speed bumps were coming up? That’s right, it was me…

By the time I was looking up again I felt like I was already on top of Patient pushing him off the obstacle. I tried in vain to swerve my bike to the right and avoid hitting him but my speed (probably around fifty or so), the bump and his slow speed combined like a perfect algebra problem solved and made for a nasty collision. I had had dreams about all kinds of crashes and bad things happening to me but running into the guy I’d been following for almost four thousand miles only was not one of them, but not even fathomed. When I first looked up I could see Andy’s face turned and looking at me with an expression that was asking why I was so fuc*ing close to him. The seconds after the impact went quickly but what I remember is trying like hell to keep the bike under me. It was swaying in a tight s pattern and I recall trying to grab my rear brake to gain control of the machine. Since I tried to swerve right to avoid hitting Andy I was now riding in the grass next to the road and the next thing I know I see the ground coming and in all my semi professional years of crashing myself into the earth I tried to get my body into a ball and land with a dive roll to break the impact. I believe I flew over the handle bars and landed with my left rear shoulder first which took most of the impact then heard the hard smack of the back of my helmet merging with the earth. I distinctly remember the flying in the air and hearing the thump of the helmet, or was it that bone snapping in two? It all happened so fast that I may never know. I think I also rolled a few times after the initial impact because I was about twenty feet in front of my bike.

My mind has always been clear and calm in almost every trauma I’ve put my body through. It was that way when I was tossed like a rag doll through the back window of an automobile accident that left me with three fractured vertebrae. It was clear when I fell off a rail in the terrain park on my snowboard and torn the ligaments up in my shoulder. It was calm the day I rode into a tree, knee first, on my snowboard and tore up my ligaments on a powder day at home in Vail. The only time I can recall it not being calm was when I was eight years old running through the house playing a game I called diver. I was wearing the long stripped tube socks of the seventies but only had the socks pulled up as high as my ankles. The rest of the length of the sock was left out in front of me so that they were my “fins” as I “swam” through the house. I stepped on one of the fins when I was running through the house and promptly brought myself down in a swift motion. My little arm hit the end tip of a large wooden rocker and my bones snapped like a bowl of Rice Crispies crackling and popping in the mornings of my youth which immediately prompted the howling like that of a young girls instead of a young boys. .. It was very far from being calm I might add.

As I digress… That 25th day of October I was also level headed and I immediately knew something was wrong with my shoulder when I tried to push myself up off the ground seconds after I stopped rolling across the top of it. I looked to see where Patient was and was relieved to see him standing next to his bike that was now on its kickstand twenty five yards up the street. His right side saddle bag was sitting on the ground next to him instead of on the bike and I grasped the fact that between the ache in my shoulder and the look of his somber face looking at his destroyed saddlebag I knew my bike was not going to be pretty. After my initial pushup I brought my knees under me and put my face back into the ground to take the pain in. Inside my head many thoughts began to rush into and out of my brain like hurried NY City subway commuters on a Monday morning . It was probably irrational for some of those thoughts to come to me but they did anyhow…

I can’t believe my trip is over. I can’t believe I just ran into Patient. I can’t believe my snowboarding season is now going to be delayed. I can’t believe that my shoulder is the only part on my body that is throbbing with a piercing pain. Why is my tank bag next to me? I hope my camera is ok. How did my goggles come off? Patient is going to kill me for smashing his saddlebag. I can’t believe I just ran into him and I am the only one lying on the ground. Is this a dream? I guess I won’t be making it to Tikal. I wonder what my bike looks like. Where is my bike? Maybe I’ll be fine and my trip really isn’t over yet. I don’t want to be hurt again; this is really going to put a damper on my snowboarding season. I wonder why there are no blondes down here in Central America? Wow this pain is unbearable, I need to get moving and deal with getting things back in order. How am I going to wash my hair with only one hand? The last time I hurt my shoulder my girlfriend was visiting and she was an excellent nurse. Yep that pain sure is potent. Sharp and powerful it is…

As these thoughts were floating through my psyche I overhear Patient asking me a question. I cease my flow of limitless thoughts and listen as I pick myself up with my stomach muscles and come to my feet whilst uttering a few words to let him know I’m with it. “Yeah I’ll be fine, Where’s my bike?”

“Are you sure you’re all right? What hurts? We gotta get your bike upright.”

I looked around as he talked to me and the situation was immediately clear to me. The initial thought I had was true. I started walking towards my bike and realize, probably only because Patient was saying it aloud, that gas was leaking out of the tank because the bike was upside down leaning against a small burm. As I stepped next to the bike I saw that it was also leaking oil, the right side saddle bag was no longer holding shape, the front fairing was missing, the consol was gone, the ignition was dangling loose, one of my mirrors was missing, and the other mirror was bent in an absurdly silly shape. All the while, there were at least nine or ten people running around speaking in the excited voices of pure adrenaline flowing freely picking up the shattered remains of my faring and consol and showing them to me. Talk about surreal. The shock of my injury and the realization of these simple things brought back the one thought that seemed to be consuming me ever since it came to me. I can't believe my trip is over.

An older gentleman showed me a piece of the small odometer that was once my gas gauge dial. A small boy was displaying to me a tiny piece of glass that was once part of my head light. Many other instances followed where these strangers kept showing me pieces of my bike then placing the piece in a small pile that began to grow at the foot of where Patient and I stood in awe of the mess I’d made. Patient finally spoke and what he said registered in my mind, for some unknown reason, that I needed to perform this step. I walked a few steps closer to my bike and without any thought squatted down, grabbed the handle bars with my throbbing left arm, a piece of the frame with my right one and lifted the bike upright. I felt the crinkle of freshly cracked bones move about inside my upper chest then stepped away to stand in shock some more. I heard Patient telling me to sit down and relax so he could handle things but I just stood there accepting the reality and calmly rationalizing how to get out of it. The people were still scavenging the area for parts and were still bringing them to me and I was beginning to wonder the purpose of this. Patient said in his blog that looking back at it, it was actually rather humerous in a twisted sort of way. But as I stood there dumbfounded by the complete reality of my pain and probable exit out of Guatemala, I was stupefied by the purpose of their actions. I kept thinking “why are they gathering these parts? They can’t possibly think I want them. I’m sure as hell not going to super glue them back together and I just can’t fathom why?” Today as I write these words I am still dumbfounded by their actions and the only logical reason I can conclude is that they don’t like trash cluttering the sides of their roads…

Dealing with pain for me means that I occupy my mind with something else. Usually this is a deep breathing mediation while I am undergoing the self inflicting painful process of getting tattooed; that day I occupied my mind with a plan instead. I knew I needed to gather myself and my bike and get to a safe place to store the injured stallion while I could then go see a doctor and real analyze the true situation of my injury. Patient was thinking along the same lines and was talking to one of the locals up near his bike where I couldn’t hear them. He came to me and explained that he was talking this fellow, Danillo, into the nearest town almost twenty miles away to find a truck that could came and pick up the mess and take me to a hospital. He was obviously aware of my injured shoulder that I was trying to hide from him, for reasons unknown. He returned about thirty minutes later with a truck.

Once Patient left it dawned on me that I no longer had to play charades and finally let the pain overtake me. I sat down in the grass next to my bike and tried to think about how everything was going to go down. I had the wits to dig into my tank bag for my voice recorder and make some notes about what just transpired. I also pulled out my camera and took a few shots of the scene as well. By this time the pieces had been gathered and the mothers called their young back home now that the excitement of the crash was subsiding. Only three kids remained with me not really talking but just sitting and staring into nothing with empty eyes not believing what we were living in that particular moment. They told me that they thought I was dead when they saw the flash and sound of my accident. None of them could believe that I was still walking and that was the simple conversation we had before the silence ensued while we waited for Patient to return. One of the older gentlemen that helped gather the pieces came out with a glass of water, some pills and a plastic chair for me but my stubborn mind refused all help. He put the chair in the shade and offered me the pills. I got up and walked to the chair giving my thanks while I kindly refused the pills and water because I couldn’t think of the water as anything more than the surest way to catch a case of runs. Runs in my current condition would not help matters is all I could think while the gentlemen looked at me with crazy eyes for refusing the pills. On top of this I also wanted to be aware of all the decisions I made for the rest of that day since the one I made last ended up putting me into the ground. I sat and took deep breaths in to try and calm my mind…

Once Patient had returned I suggested that we go to the city first and found a hotel so that I could store my mess. After that was taken care of I would then go to the hospital. Patient wasn’t keen on my plan but I acted pretty calm for the pain I was enduring and he went along with me just to appease me. Once we found a crash pad, no pun intended, I began to unload the things out of my now twisted and unsecured saddlebag. After I was finished securing my gear I got in a cab and found a private doctor on recommendation of Danillo. He explained that the general hospital was crowded with people and I’d be lucky if I saw a doctor there in four or five hours. The Private Doc took a few X-rays and told me that he could either put me in a full shoulder pad replica type cast (which would have my shoulders rolled back with my palms on my hips, thumbs forward, and only having the ability to move my arms from the elbow down) or perform surgery on my dislodged bones. Looking around the hospital with the knowledge that I had purchased medical evacuation travel insurance I said that I would come back if I felt that I needed anymore of his assistance. He said sure and asked for the equivalent of thirty bucks for the consultation and the X-rays. I was sent on my way home in the same sarong that I came in with as my sling. No drug prescriptions, no questions, nothing more…

I then purchased a calling card and began the painful process of getting home. Like all insurance companies my Medivac insurer initially denied my request for a flight saying that I had been treated and I should be fine. This due in part to the fact that all they knew after speaking with my inadequate Doc, who said he released me and I would be fine, I was nothing more than a minor injured crybaby who didn’t require their services. However, once I explained what his services actually consisted of, the position of my almost protruding bone, the options before me at his dirty clinic, the condition of both my mental state of mind and my bikes physical damages they recanted their initial claim and put me up through the chain to talk with the next person in the corporate ladder to resolve my situation. After talking with two more representatives of Medjet Assistance I was able to give my email to a nice young woman who worked for two days coordinating my safe return home. Now that I had them communicating in email I could at least go sit down while Whitney and I hashed out the details of my return. Whitney put forth an extraordinary effort to get me home as soon as she could and had me booked in first class on the next available flight out of town so that my trip home would be as comfortable as possible. She also coordinated a ride to pick me up from the airport and contacted the Vail Valley Medical Center so that they knew I was coming in. She covered more bases than I had thought about and once I returned home I was glad to have purchased the insurance and also glad that Whitney took such careful consideration to my well being. It was another one of those experiences with a company that actually leaves one with a satisfying taste in the mouth and makes me think that I am a little too harsh on our corporate conglomerates that run things here.

Patient meanwhile looked into my options for how to deal with my bike. The first of which was the option of leaving it there with a shop to fix it and then return in the spring to finish what I had started. The second one was to ship the bike stateside. The third was selling it there. He found a Kawasaki dealer and had the owner come by the hotel to meet me and hash out the details of my growing list of questions. Lucky for me the Charles, the owner, spoke very good English and I didn’t have the barrier of language to deal with while I mulled over the options before me. I came to the conclusion that it was best to send the bike home and finalized the details by signing a notarized legal document giving Charles the power to ship the bike home for me.

Three days passed waiting for a flight and a slight depression slid into me as the reality of that initial thought that consumed me after the crash came true. I sadly got into a cab and said goodbye to Patient after we had our last breakfast together south of America. I got to the airport with a lot of extra time thinking customs and immigration would be a hassle explaining the stamp in my pass port that said I came into the country riding my motorcycle. I was sitting in the lobby of a tiny airport when I heard the vroom of Patients BMW pull up outside the edifice. I saw him in full garb, helmet and all, stride into the check in area looking for me. He came over to me and said goodbye once more then promptly headed out knowing it was difficult for both of us to see me end my trip so soon. Immigration was a breeze and as soon as I boarded the plane it was a welcome sight to see the big seats and I ordered a glass of wine before the craft even took flight. As you can imagine many more followed before I touched down at the Eagle airpot. It all felt like a dream as I was whirled back to my homeland in the same manner that Dorothy clicked her heels and woke up in Kansas after her terrible ordeal on the damn yellow brick road. The sad part of it was that I never remembered putting on a pair of ruby red slippers…

I ended up getting a fine surgeon at home in the Steadman Hawkins Clinic to perform a few cuts and install a pin to put my almost two inch displaced clavicle all back together. I had to wait eight days for this to all go down after my initial break but I had no worry of staff infection or not waking from a poorly controlled anesthetic since the surgery was performed in one of the top rated knee, shoulder and orthopedic clinics in North America. Granted, I’m not knocking the clinic I visited in Guatemala but in comparison a week of uncomfortable pain while waiting for worry free care was worth it since my injury was no wear near life threatening. As I’ve always said when I turn in this vehicle of my life it will be have been thoroughly tested and pushed to the limits of scientific endeavors…

This chapter has come to a close and I feel like the trip was successful even though it ended in an untimely manner because of the fact that it left my mouth salivating for more. More adventure, more dialoguing of globe trotting, more unplanned days, more carefree thoughts, but mostly the desire to be more like the person I know I am and was brought here on this earth to be; living the dream…


My friend Patient all alone in the jungle now that I have left him...