October 5, 2004 - First Track Crash Report

MTC Track Day

All day I had a bad feeling. In fact, I got to the track, in the first session, by the second lap, I was going to pull in and go home. Anyone knowing me knows that this is extremely strange coming from me, who rides at trackdays 2-4 times every month, all year round.

When I saw Larry, he came in, and mentioned that he had a bad feeling about today. I gasped and shared with him my feelings as well. We came to the conclusion that we both should be very careful today if we’re going to be riding…

By the end of the day, nothing bad had happened, it was a beautiful day...I had been riding very conservatively all day long, and was raring to go when the boys asked me to go out and play with them on the track.

We headed out in the fast group, there were 3-4 of us, I was leading, and I was picking up the pace as we went along. We became the group that was lapping everyone else on the track and it was obvious to everyone else not riding – we because the focus of the moment. I come up behind an old friend of mine whom I know I can pass, but couldn’t get a clean outside pass (no inside passing allowed at this trackday), so I stayed behind him for 3 laps. Coming up onto the 4rth lap, still behind him, I got impatient and decided to not brake for T1, and be past him before T2. I go for the pass and when I was next to him on the outside, I see that he’s going wider than I had expected and the pass would be closer than I thought was polite for a trackday….in full lean, I touched the front brake (rear brake was out of commission), and the real fun began.

All eyes had been on our group for all these laps. All eyes saw my bike and me lowside, hit the dirt at 120mph, at an angle, and get pitched up in the air, cart wheeling out into the desert. I remember touching the front brake. I remember wondering why the ride had gotten so bumpy all of a sudden. Then all of a sudden there was a whooooosh! And Silence. I was thinking, “Hey! That wasn’t half bad!” and opened my eyes….to see myself high in the air…and beginning a long and fast descent. My thought at that moment was “Whoa! I was flying!”….then….”ahhh crap, this is gonna hurt….”.

I remember sliding on my face shield across the desert, watching the rocks fly by 2 inches from my face….the only thing separating my face and those rocks being a thin piece of plastic. I watched as the face shield got torn off finally and I closed my eyes tight as debris started flying into my face. I rolled over onto my back to get my face off the desert, but I was still flying so fast that the effort sent me tumbling. I curled up into a tight ball and tried to relax all my muscles and just go with the flow. After a long, bumpy ride, I came to a halt. I opened my eyes, made sure I had really come to a stop, did a quick inventory of my parts, and raised my head up to see if I was in the impact zone. Seeing that I was so far out in the desert, I couldn’t even see the track, I remembered the familiar phrase – “If I can’t see it, then it can’t see me…”. I then looked for my bike. I saw it a few feet from me, to my right and I realized it was totaled. Feeling a sense of great loss overcome me, I laid my head down again and waited for reinforcements.

This was my first track crash. Three years of riding, 2 years of riding on the track 2-4 times every month, 120,000 miles on bikes later – this was my first track crash. I knew this day would come sometime…and lately I had known that it was coming soon – I had already taken steps to make sure that the crash would be as easy to bear as possible, but it was still a great hit. 2 months earlier, a friend asked me why after all this time of Toro being my track bike, was I transferring all parts from Toro onto Sevruc, making him my track bike. I told him – “I’m gonna crash on the track soon…not now, in a month or two, and it’s going to be a bad one, the bike I’m riding will be absolutely totaled. I don’t want that bike to be Toro (clean title), I’d rather it be Sevruc (salvaged title & whom I’ve never really liked anyways). A week before this crash, I cut my hair 17 inches… people always wondered what would happen to me if my long ponytail caught tangled in the bike in the event of a crash…

Looking at these pictures of the bike after the crash, you can see that I did a pretty good job. 120mph low side into the desert is a little harsh on a bike. Sevruc and I were cart wheeling, tumbling, and flying into the desert, stopping about 80 feet out, no longer visible to anyone from the track or pits. When I crashed. Everyone knew it was me who was flying up in the air and the track came to a halt. Several people stopped right on the track to run out to me (NOT a good thing as I would berate them later for not being safe!). The staff didn’t even have to stop the track, everyone stopped themselves…those who didn’t, rode in to yell out for assistance. The ambulance and staff were at my crash site in moments.

What injuries did the bike suffer? Lemme put it this way, the only thing on that bike that was not bent/beat up was possibly the engine.

What injuries did I suffer? Bah. Nothing that prevented me from being fully functional. Yah, just the usual…fractured ribs, fractured fingers, right wrist, concussion, bumps and bruises.. Nothing significant. Eleven days later I was racing….but that’s another story…