Oh, oh, I got one!
When I was 17, riding a Yamaha 360 Enduro down the expressway at around 60 mph, I made unfortunate eye contact with a guy in an old white Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight. He, apparently, was genuinely ****** off at the world, and when I took the exit ramp to the east-west highway, he tucked right in behind me. I mean, right tight in behind me.
The normal response to people that do this is, of course, to 1) flash the brake lights, 2) wave them off, and then, if your 17, 3) give them the finger. By the time I got around to giving him the bird, we were well into the transition lanes onto the new highway, doing a good 55 in traffic. But he'd had enough of me and decided to forcibly remove me from my bike, the highway, and, well you know, my life.
He hit the rear of my bike, backed off a few feet, and came back and hit me again. I could have maintained if it was just the once. I wobbled a bit, but didn't go down. The second knocked me off the right side of the bike, and basically sent me rolling off down the road. I was lucky it was the right side, else following traffic would have had a hard time missing me.
Anyway, this joker pulled off to the side, looked back to see me get up and start yelling at him, and then drove off home. Of course, the trucker behind us called it in on his CB with the yaa-hoo's tag number, which was corroborated by the three or four others that stopped to assist. The Sheriff's picked the guy up at home; no license, no registration, no insurance, and, oh yeah, reckless endangerment.
I had a scraped knee from hitting the pavement (picked blue threads from my Levi's out of it for a week). The impact had yanked the face shield off my now severely bruised helmet, and ripped up the left sleeve and collar of the new leather jacket my mom had gotten me 3 weeks prior. Other than that, I was fine (read: lucky). I walked the site the next day with a Sheriff's Investigator, and could remember every detail of my tumble including where exactly the wacko had broken his left headlight when he hit me and could point out the shards of glass to prove it.
When did I ride again? I picked the bike up and rode it, bent and wobbly, several blocks to my Dad's office. Couldn't get it started after that though; had it picked up, repaired, and rode it for a few more years in college. That was the last bike I owned for 30+ years until I got my TBA. The friend that drove me to the dealer pointed out that it’s the same color as my old Enduro.
The world is full of exciting people.
