Motorcycles = Danger

When I was 23 I learned a valuable lesson.  That I learned anything at 23 is amazing because at the time I believed I was bulletproof.  I was living in South Jersey and hanging with a group of guys that all had motorcycles, except me.  A Kawasaki 650 or better was kind of like your entry card into the club.  I had two problems.  One, I had no money and two; I didn’t know how to ride a motorcycle.  I could get around the money issue, I’d just take another auto loan at 18+% like I currently had on my car….problem solved.

The learning how part was a different story and was solved like this:

During that summer a housing construction project was going on in the pine barrens and they had just bulldozed the street outlines through the woods.  This left a perfect motor-cross track.  One of our friends had a racing motorcycle.  So everyone was taking turns on it blazing trails.  Finally at one point the guy who owned the bike asked me if I wanted to try.  It looked simple enough, no cars coming the other way to cream me, and we were starting at the top of a hill.

What happened next as much as it almost took my life, probably saved me in the long run.  Picture being on top of a hill, that if you go straight ahead, you’ll have a gradual decline.  But, to your left is a sheer 15 or 20-foot cliff, with a good size tree running up along the side of it.  I sit on the bike; grab the brake (very important to know where that is) and the throttle.  Without being in gear, I rev the throttle a couple of times and everyone around me, almost in unison says, “Wo-Wo-Wo, you don’t want to give it that much gas to start or you’ll pop a wheelie. (very sound advice).  So I rev it again and everyone is in agreement, this is much better and I seem to have the hang of it. (They were all wrong).  It’s too late though because the adrenaline is flowing and I’m ready for launch…literally.   I must have had a brain fart, because it appeared that I skipped back to my first revision of throttle control.  I engage the rocket engine that ‘s attached to the scraps of metal I’m sitting on and the missile is off.  What happens next, all took place in less than 10 seconds, but will always be irrevocably etched into the gray matter that sits on top of my shoulders.  I IMMEDIATELY pop a wheelie, which throws me back.  In doing so, I’m now pulling back on the throttle even more, pouring a small reservoir of gas into the engine.  I’m now moving at Mach 9.  Simultaneously, I’m squeezing the brake as hard as I can, but what I learned the hard way is that on a motorcycle, the throttle is like a super hero in strength compared to the brake.  It’s almost like the brake is really only there for show, it doesn’t really have to do anything.  I race on one wheel for about 10 feet or so with my legs flailing like a rag doll.  Then, for whatever reason (like I’m driving this rocket ship at this point?) I hit a hard left and jump off the cliff.  As I’m sailing through the air, I come so close to the huge pine tree I can almost smell the sap.  I land on one wheel go another 15 feet and wipe out in a large ditch.  I get up, check all major and critical body parts and look for my “friends.”  They’re all lying on the ground up on top of the hill.  They’re laughing so hard they can’t stand up.  They tell me, “Steve, in 7 seconds you did the three things you can do on a motorcycle.  You popped a wheelie, you did a jump, and you wiped out.”  So now we’re on level ground.  We’ve reattached the gas line that came undone during my 7 second mission to break the land speed record, and they ask me if I want to try it again.  After a brief battle controlling a stammer, I say, sure.  I get on the bike, ride it once around the track, hand it back over… and I’ve never been on a motorcycle since. 

Advice on How to Keep Your Toes

Advice on Keeping your Toes.....

Gang, as much as we all have ten fingers and ten toes, (lots of

spares) I now consider myself an expert on how to lose a few of each.

Last summer's Swiss Army Knife pre-vacation debacle where I tried my best to lose a finger due to sheer laziness and stupidity wasn't enough.

I recently went after the toes.

This year's advice goes something like this:  "Never, I repeat: NEVER  use a power string weed whacker wearing flip flops, while in a hurry."

Or put another way, "Don't do Lazy - Stupid Things!"

So I'm weed whacking....Lots and lots of weed whacking.  (Most other people would get a small lawn mower, but that would mean having to lug it around, a lot of gas, blade sharpening, tune-ups, the whole nine yards.  I’m simplifying..minimizing.  The weed whacker will do just fine.)  I’m on a mission and as I blaze new trails with my whacker quite often I’m getting pelted in the face with flying grass, weeds and other chunks of debris.   Sometimes these small missiles are coming very close to the eyes.  And I'm thinking to myself...”I have a pair of safety glasses and it probably would be a very good idea to put them on and save my eyesight.”  But that would mean dropping the weed whacker...walking around, finding the glasses...probably have to clean them.  I'll have none of that, much too big a waste of time.  You’re probably thinking, “Well he must have had something very important to get to if he’s willing to risk his eye sight.”  And that my friends is the really fascinating part: Absolutely Nothing Going On!  But if something were to pop up, I’d probably be ready…that’s if I could see.

Now I'm just about done.  I'm coming down the home stretch and I really just want this task to be over.  I'm using wide strokes as I swing the whacker side to side to get the last bit of grass.  Then I notice that I'm actually standing on some high grass and in the extreme height of laziness and stupidity figure, “I'll just finesse this last bit and manicure the grass around my feet...with the weed whacker.”  Sometimes good judgment eludes us.  What I failed to realize was that I didn't have a scalpel in my hands (Thank God for small favors) and I was tired and getting just a little sloppy.  And maybe if I had looked down at my feet hard enough I would have noticed I didn't have sneakers or shoes on...... By the time I came to that realization, it was a little too late.  Actually, it was way too late.  All I can tell you is that thick nylon string whirling at about Mach 7 can lash you quite a few times prior to have the ability to react in what can only be summed up as defense in slow motion.

Its funny how your family members can sense when something is wrong.  As opposed to last summer when at midnight I was standing in our bathroom with my finger gashed open and hoping that a little pressure might fix everything....  This time I was a bit more obvious.

First there was the discontinuation of the weed whacker motor, and then a streaking flash of pain running for the outside faucet.  If you open up Webster's Dictionary and look under the word, "Sting" there is now a picture of me... having almost whacked off the first two toes on my right foot.

The Good news is that I did not need to embarrass myself further by having to make a trip to the emergency room or see the neighborhood doctor.  It could just be my paranoia, but lately I get double-takes from anyone I walk by that happens to be in the medical field.  It’s almost like they want to say, “Hey, don’t I know you?”

Hope everyone had a nice weekend.  Stay Safe, Stay Insured,  Steve

P.S.

I got a speeding ticket late Friday night for going 58 in a 40 zone...I'm on a roll.

What I did on My Summer Vacation or.... why do we need 10 fingers

What I did on my Summer Vacation

I learned a very important lesson:  You can be lazy, or you can be stupid, but you can not be lazy and stupid at the same time,…. or bad things will happen to you.

Over the Summer we had a family vacation that my wife had been planning for months.   We flew out to San Diego, rented a mini-van and over 13 days drove up the coast of California, stopping at various places along the way.  Nice Trip.

Being the ultimate planner that I am, the night before our flight I decided to pack.  It was just before midnight and I asked my wife what to bring.  She said mostly shorts and tee shirts, but why don’t you also bring one pair of jeans just in case it gets cold or we go out some place that requires pants.  I mostly have ratty jean, but I remember from a year ago my wife had bought me two new pairs of jeans and they were still in the gift box in the bottom of my closet.  I pulled out the pair I wanted but noticed it still had the security hunk of plastic attached to it.  So much for security.

But I remember once before I had this happen to me and I was able to pry it off with a screwdriver (After the fact I remembered it was actually a hack saw I had used).

Anyway I was too lazy to go down into my basement to get a screwdriver.  But on my bedroom dresser was my EMC 20th anniversary Swiss Army Knife.  (Keep this one thought in mind if you ever think of using a Swiss Army Knife….the blade does NOT have a lock)

So I have the knife in one hand and the piece of plastic in the other…. I’m staring down at them and thinking to myself, “This isn’t a great idea.”  But again, I was too lazy…and stupid.  I wedged the tip of the knife in a crack in the plastic and began to apply pressure…. lots of pressure.  That is until, as you can well imagine at this point, the blade of the knife closed violently on my finger. 

I immediately dropped everything and put my finger in my mouth.  The very first thing that came to my mind was, “How could I have been so STUPID, I must be certifiable.” And then another thought came very quickly after it: “My wife is going to Kill Me!”

Then I thought to myself, maybe this isn’t so bad.  To test the theory I took my finger out of my mouth and applied pressure to the wound for a few seconds… and then let go.  Picture this:  Remember the very old Saturday Night Live episode where Dan Aykroyd is playing Julia Child in the kitchen and he cuts his finger and blood is spiraling out of control….  That was pretty close.

So now I have my hand wrapped around my finger and my wife walks into the bathroom.  (When we go on vacation my wife IS the ultimate planner and task master…very driven) She can tell something’s not right…could have been the over abundance of blood on the floor.  She asks very inquisitively, “What’s going on?”  Sheepishly I say, “Well we have a slight problem.”  When I show her my finger, I get the, “How did this happen!”  And it kind of went down hill from there until we both realized we were in this together. 

Our kids pediatrician lives about 4 blocks away and my wife is pretty good friends with her, so she called her.  She was out with friends, but was on her way back and said we could either sit in the Emergency Room for 3 or 4 hours or she’d stop by in about 45 minutes and take a look.  If need be, she’d take us to her office and stitch me up….which is what we did.

Once I was stitched up, (hit a blood vessel along the way, not good) and had a tetanus shot, she said, “You can’t get the finger wet for 4 days and very important the stitches have to come out in 8 days max, otherwise bad things happen when you try to remove them.”  Problem was we were going to be in California during that time somewhere along Big Sur.  Fortunately, our stop right after Big Sur was to see a friend I grew up with and his family.  My friend Mike’s wife is a nurse practitioner doctor and I thought Lisa can take them out….problem solved.  So that was the plan. 

Fast Forward to Big Sur (amazing place): While we were in Big Sur, I had next to no Cell or BlackBerry connectivity…an absolutely great thing.  But I finally got a message from my friend Mike.  He couldn’t host us the Monday night we had planned as his company had just been bought and he wasn’t going to be around.  Cr*p, now what to do about the stitches? 

We finally make our way into San Francisco and check into a hotel down by the wharf.  I walked up to the concierge the first morning, explained by situation and asked him if they had a hotel doctor.  He says, “Sure, Doctor  Savage can help you.”  From his tone it almost seemed like Dr. Savage was right down the hall in room 102.  Unfortunately this was not the case.  Dr. Savage was down by Union Square.  The concierge gave me his phone number and said just give him a call and he’d be able to fix you up.  So I call the number and sure enough it’s Dr. Savage that answers the phone….which I thought was kind of odd, middle of the morning and a doctor in the city is answering his own phone.  He asks me when I want to come in.  I said how about this afternoon.  He says sure any time after 3PM.  My spider senses are tingling.  This is too easy.

So we decided to make an event out of it and take a trolley car ride over the hill and down to Union Square.  An FYI here, the pictures you see of people leisurely jumping on the trolley car as its moving are a myth.  The real situation is, you wait on line as is you’re at Disney trying to get on Space Mountain.  And you’re jammed into the trolley like a sadine for one of the worst rides of your life.

We arrive at Dr. Savage’s office and I’m thinking we’re going to be waiting around for at least 2 hours as he tries to inject me into his schedule.  I open the door to his office and there’s nobody there but a girl sitting behind the counter.  I explain who I am and ask, “Is this Dr. Savage’s office?”  She says yes, come in and she ushers me into an examination room.  She tells me the Doctor will be with me shortly.  As my family tells it, sitting out in the waiting room: about 30 seconds after I entered the examination room, Dr. Savage bounces through the door to his office.  He’s got two large cups of coffee in his hands and the ipod ear buds lodged in his head.  He literally bounces into the examination room, we introduce ourselves and he begins looking at my finger.  He was a small man, probably in his forties, but he looked like he worked out with weights a lot.  I noticed that the skin on his hands was very tight and puffy.  It looked as if someone had taken a hypodermic needle and injected his hands with air.  I thought, “Why would that be, isn’t that kind of odd?”  He asks me what I do for a living.  I explain I work for EMC and we do computer data storage….and before I can complete my sentence he starts talking (almost in a giddy mad scientist way) about how, “We’ve figured out if we transfer all the information in your brain at 2TB an hour it would take about 2 to 3 weeks to complete….that’s after we clone you,….and then the rest would be new information.”  He’s half laughing as he says this, and he now has a very sharp instrument in his hand.  I don’t know whether to laugh along with him or just keep quiet, but I’m thinking to myself, “Buddy, all you have to do is cut those stitches out and I’ll be out of here before you know it….it’ll be like I was never even here.”

We finish up, I’m no worse for the wear, but as I’m leaving the examination room and paying, (P.S. Dr. Savage does not take insurance, so that’s $200 I’ll never get back.  I also owe our neighbors a dinner for my midnight escapade) I notice there are numerous pictures of Dr. Savage on the walls of his office with every big movie star you can think of. (Note: in all the pictures, Dr. Savage has a very slight build)  There’s Steve Martin, Will Smith, Brad Pitt, you name it….  As it turns out, Dr. Savage is the doctor on call when hotels in the city need someone and or if someone is making a movie in San Fran, the Screen Actors Guild calls him if someone is injured.  Very colorful guy, told us who pays and who doesn’t.

Anyway so you’d think I learned my lesson.  I get home, and the yard needs work, we’ve been away for almost two weeks.  I do that and open up the wound some… not big deal. Then I notice there is a tree branch I’ve been wanting to take down for some time.  So I get my telescoping tree trimmer out, the kind that has the large sharp curved blade on the end.  I also get an 8 foot step ladder out.  I extend the pole out as far as it will go, and get to the top of the safest step on the ladder.  I’m about 6 inches away from being able to complete the job.  I think to myself, “If I’m careful and just get to the top of ladder for a short time, I can finish this job.”  (Ya know, I’d like to think I’m fairly bright and I did graduate from the College of Knowledge, but I really amaze myself sometimes).  So I did it.  I’m on the very top of the ladder, sharp instrument in hand.  Naturally, the ladder starts to sway back and forth…  Finally, it kicks in exactly why I should be institutionalized.  I come to my senses, throw the tree-pruning spear in the opposite direction that the ladder is falling and land on the ground without incident.  (At last count I think I have four lives left).  I grab the ladder and the spear and walk back up to the garage and come to the conclusion that someone with better equipment, and who’s not a psycho can do this job.

I’m proud to say, that since that last incident, I think I’ve taken a much more sane approach to every day tasks.  I’ve grown.