first motorcycle accident

Posted on | June 29, 2007 | No Comments

last night i got a really horrible phone call.

no, i’ll go back a bit further.

yesterday morning, the day dawned clear and perfect (and freezingly cold)….the first day without drizzle and lowering clouds in at least a month.
maurice covered himself in leather and kevlar and took off for a glorious day of dry sunny motorcycling.
at around 5pm, on his way home, he approached a crest in the highway.
a campervan with a tourist at the wheel, came over the crest on the wrong side of the road, about 30 metres ahead of maurice.
everyone was doing around 70 kph.
maurice braked hard and had nowhere to go.
there was a sheer drop off the road and he didn’t want to head onto the wrong side of the road for fear of traffic coming along behind.
he dropped the bike and the campervan swerved back onto it’s own side of the road.
there were witnesses, police, an interpreter and an ambulance.

a bystander called me and said your husband is on his way right now to the local hospital in an ambulance.
i threw myself into the car and drove 25 nail-biting minutes to atherton.
when i arrived, he was lying in a neck brace, white as a sheet and very quiet.

after a bit of investigation, they removed the neck brace, put a sling on his right arm, gave him painkillers and i took him home.
x-rays this morning showed a collarbone in about three pieces and no other damage, thankfully.

naturally, the rental company is saying their insurer is not liable.
i don’t know about that.
what is third party insurance for, after all?
looks like a little time-consuming project for me over the next few months…..fabulous.
i just love spending time with ombudsmen and lawyers, especially when i have a business to run.

the beautiful shiny motorcycle has minimal damage.
brake pedal…..brake fluid thingie….saddlebags….minor minor stuff.
maurice’s riding gear is destroyed however.
a brand-new $700 leather jacket.
a brand-new pair of steel capped boots.
a brand-new helmet.
his kevlar jeans wore very well and are perfectly ok apart from a bit of a graze on the knee.
so, it seems that good gear is worth it’s weight in gold.
he is very happy that they aren’t picking chunks of gravel out of his backside right now.

it leaves us in an interesting soapmaking position.
he cannot use his arm for at least a month.
i do the mixing and he lines moulds and pours the soap….which involves hefting up almost 20 kilos of raw soap and pouring it evenly into two moulds.
i have been fortunate enough to call in some help for the next few days and for the rest of the month i am pretty much going to have to halve our batch sizes and tough it out on my own.

i wonder if he can pack orders with one arm……hmmmmm….

we were so looking forward to going riding together next week (my bike finally arrives on tuesday!) and now we are delayed for another month.
o the irony!

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