First Man Out

This was an interesting week, to say the least. Already on my agenda was an image analysis set for Tuesday (which I prepared so diligently) and a midterm in my positioning class set for Wednesday. My home life has been jostled around a bit, since my wife had some much needed surgery, so her mother moved in to help. For the meanwhile, my wife is disabled, so that means that I have two women to take care of! The great part is that Mom has mad cooking skills and that I always have food waiting for me! The downside is that there is an endless stream of pots and pans to wash :( C'est la vie.

I showed up for my hospital shift on Tuesday, image analysis all set and ready to go. While walking in to the hospital with my co-student, we had an interesting chat about how he wasn't sure that he was going to be able to continue with the program, since the commute was killing him. If he was looking for sympathy, he was talking to the wrong guy- my commute is just as long, but on an even worse series of freeways. Then the conversation switched to the lousy job market and how hard it was going to be to find an entry-level X-ray tech position. I told him that in two years, the whole thing could be turned around and that if you're good, you'll be able to land a position. I had heard through the grapevine that he was considering dropping the program, so this conversation wasn't really a surprise to me.

After getting settled down for my shift, I tried to hunt down my image analysis X-ray from the file room, but the patient file had gone AWOL. I asked the most knowledgeable office person I knew to help me, and still we came up with squat. Great...now I had to come up with plan B. My original analysis was going to be on a hand, so I figured that I could just find another hand X-ray and I could use my narrative analysis for the proxie X-ray. Well, later on in the day, when my clinical coordinator showed up for the analysis, that was a no-go and she was not very happy about it- in fact, I had actually caused her to waste a trip out to the hospital. Now I get to do two analyses on my next due date!

But earlier in the day, my co-student (who was already uncertain about his future) decided to quit the program right there on the spot. He performed a bad chest X-ray exam (already double-exposing the same film cassette and was on his way to making another exposure) and got royally landed on by the "supervising" technologist. Yeah, after doing the same routine X-ray for five weeks, you would think that the guy would know what he was doing by now, but nope. After getting reprimanded, it only took about five minutes before he came back and said that he was leaving. And sure enough, he did. He walked right over to our clinical instructor and handed in his hospital badge. He stopped by the X-ray suite to say "good luck" to everyone, then walked. Well, without clinical hours, your classroom hours don't mean shit, so it was indeed the end for that poor chap. But from what I saw from him over the past five weeks in the hospital, he wasn't cut out for that kind of work anyway, and I'm pretty doubtful that he would've made it anyway.

Everything happens for a reason, or so they say.

Rainy Day Motorcycle Crash

So it was bound to happen. It was raining out off and one all morning. Classes were done for the day. I put on all my gear- jacket, pants, boots, gloves and helmet. I got on my bike and headed for the freeway. The road seemed dry, but still I was cautious. The on-ramp to the highway 280 begins with a tighter than 90 degrees turn to the left.I took it slow and easy until I cleared the turn, then as the ramp curved to the left and climbed up to the freeway I rolled the throttle on responsibly. Well, even though the pavement didn't seem wet (maybe a little damp), the two days of rain probably washed a lot of oil to the surface. I had thought that the oil would've been gone by now, but things took a turn for the worst.

Just as I started to get on the gas, the rear tire began to spin and the back of the bike started to whip around. I cut the throttle and tried to do a correction, but the bike fishtailed and high-sided me off the bike! I landed on my stomach and slid to a stop. The bike slid on it's left side and stopped in the middle of the on-ramp. I ran over to the bike to pick it up. Luckily there weren't any cars right behind me. But fortunately, the first car to come up behind me was my classmate, JP! I rolled the bike to the side of the road and gave it a quick assessment. The front signal had been ground off. My CRG clutch lever got the ball ground a little, as well as the left fairing. My Givi case got some abrasions too. But my Woodcraft rearset took a beating! Half of the peg had been ground off, the toe peg got way ground off and the shift arm was bent back. (I later found that the left plate was distorted too! I must say that I'm pretty disappointed with how little an accident could totally destroy that rearset!) As for me, I was intact. My helmet didn't even hit the ground. I got some light abrasions on my Joe Rocket cordura suit and my BRAND NEW gloves (only used them twice!) got wasted! but they did their job. By looking at the markings on the pavement, I would say that the bike probably slid about 25 yards before coming to a stop- and that's going uphill! I would guess that I went down at about 30-35 MPH.

I tried to start the bike, but the carbs were flooded, so repeated tries eventually killed my battery. I put a lock on the front wheel. JP was able to give me a ride to the nearest AutoZone, where I picked up some jumper cables and an allen wrench set. Before heading back to the bike, I took JP out for lunch, since he was so generous in giving me a hand.

We headed back to the bike, where we successfully jumped the bike and got the motor warmed up. The foot controls on the left side were a little mangled, but it was ridable. My right ankle was starting to get sore and stiff, but I was able to ride home.

After looking over my bike, it's going to be okay. It's probably going to cost a couple of hundred dollars in replacement parts (not including the road rash on the fairing), plus a new pair of gloves. I'm glad that all my safety equipment kept me safe. I will definitely have to be more careful when riding during the rainy season- I totally misjudged the wetness on the road, the incline of the on-ramp, the torque of my motor. Will it stop me from commuting in the rain? I doubt it. I just need more practice.