I was prepared to tell my fiancée that if she wanted me to quit riding I would, since I was expected to get married to her in two months. But to my surprise she encouraged me to keep going if that’s what I wanted to do; she’s the best, 100% supportive. Over the 8 days I was in hospital I had visits from various friends and family with their well wishes. My best friend Doug even brought me misc. parts of my bike he found still on the side of the road. John Bayliss even stopped by a couple of times to update me on the racing at Mosport. After finally getting stitched up with 40+ stitches in my knee I was finally allowed to leave the hospital to go home. The doctors wouldn’t let me go back to work right away so I got stuck at home for awhile. This gave me time to talk to various people and piece together the events of that night, talk to insurance companies, and go and have a look at my crashed bike.
I felt my bike wasn’t in to bad of shape but the insurance company wanted to write it off anyway so I ended up getting a brand new 2002 Yamaha YZF-R6 which I currently still own and ride.
Physically, I’m not too bad. After 8+ months of physiotherapy learning to walk again, I was able to keep my original knee even though it was suggested that a replacement one was a very close possibility. I’m missing some cartilage in my knee and have a nice scar. The knee is quite functional with the occasional aches and pains with weather and fatigue after a long day of abusing it. I still suffer from back pain and have regular visits with the massage therapist to relax the muscles with lots of stretching my back in between. All in all I function pretty well and am able to do most of the items I enjoy but some are definitely out like motocross and downhill skiing because of the type of damage to the knee I sustained.
So what have I learned?
Need to wear all of your gear. I was wearing only a jacket, gloves, helmet, with jeans and running shoes at the time. In hindsight, I think that my leather pants may have limited the damage to my leg and the boots definitely would have saved my sprained ankle & broken big toe.
Expect the unexpected. It’s amazing just how fast things happen so always be on your toes and keep those eyes busy looking for potential problems
Improve my skill set on a Motorcycle. I’m sure I maybe could have done a couple of things different in the way I reacted based on my skill set today. But I was a novice back then so off to riding school and the track for me.
Bryan Fil
We’ll leave you on a positive note with this advance ‘peek’ of our latest 30 second cruiser ad:
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