A Motorcycle Incident

On June 9, 2014 I went out start my motorcycle, which had been sitting unused for 4 months while I was in Indianapolis, and therefore had a dead battery. I jump-started it by pushing it down the slight slope in our driveway and popping the clutch. It started just fine, and rather than riding it the remaining 20 feet to our carport to let it run for a while I decided to push/walk it there. Unfortunately it was hot and I was sweaty, so my hand slipped off the clutch lever and the bike jumped ahead. At that point the correct response was to let go, but unfortunately my instinctive reaction was to grasp the right handle more tightly and try to regain control. The right handle of a motorcycle is the throttle, and my grasping the handle while the bike was jumping ahead served to accelerate it. So it dragged me along on my knees and left forearm for a bit and then fell on me. As a result I dislocated my right shoulder and I went off to the hospital in an ambulance, with Kathy following in our car. The shoulder dislocation was corrected, and I was scheduled for a followup visit to a shoulder surgeon on June 11. The followup revealed that a piece had broken off my armbone at the shoulder and it needed to be re-attached if I were to be able to regain the use of my arm. I had surgery to do this on June 12 and spent 2 nights in the hospital. I expect to have my shoulder immobilized until the end of July and then begin a long period of physical therapy, which should result in fully regaining the use of my shoulder and arm. I don't yet know when I'll have enough function to be able to sail safely.

Since I was not actually riding the motorcycle I consider this to be a heavy equipment accident rather than a motorcycle accident. Nevertheless, no matter what I call it, it does remind me I'm not as young as I once was, and my bones are more brittle than they used to be (chances are good that at age 40 this accident would have resulted in a dislocation but no break). So I decided to ditch the bike in favor of a convertible.