Saturday, July 9, 2011

a series of unfortunate events

sorry for the lack of updates. My dad and I were planning on riding to Milwaukee with our friends Lonnie and Jason. Lonnie flew into aberdeen on Tuesday and hung out for a bit and helped me in the shop. After a while I asked him to take our 46 for a ride which also happened to be the bike that we were going to loan him for the trip. He went west on the road in front of the shop and turned around after a bit. He hit a pot hole on the return which launched him into the air, unfortunately, he came down and crashed. He broke his collar bone, his nose and 4 ribs but is alright. My girlfriend and I stayed in the hospital with him and my dad and Jason went to Milwaukee for the knucklehead reunion on the 42 and 39.

This was a pretty eye opening experience for me and put a lot of things in perspective. I love our 46 and it is one of my favorite bikes that I have ever worked on, but the bikes sentimental and personal value does not even come close to how important my friends health is. This crash could have been a lot worse for lonnie and the bike. I battled over whether or not to post this and I realized that it is a good eye opener for everyone involved, and hopefully someone else will be able to take something away from it. Please be careful when you are out riding around on motorcycles and wear all of the proper safety gear. This is serious business.






The muffler is pretty beat up. This was our prototype muffler that had over 22 thousand miles on it. Now we can say that they have been crash tested.









2 comments:

  1. Tell Lonnie we wish him a speedy recovery. Broken ribs are painful, my count was 7 (2-8 at the rib head), Tim.

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  2. Dear Matt, Carl and Brittany ~ Thank ya'll so much for taking care of Lonnie while in South Dakota. He was so looking forward to knocking this trip off of his "bucket list". I am grateful to ya'll for staying by his side until I arrived. If all antique motorcycle enthusiasts are as good of people as ya'll, then I am proud my husband chose this hobby! You guys are welcome in our home in South Carolina anytime......we owe you!
    Sincerely, Wanda

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