Josh is down

[misterprofessionality]

Hope your gradually feeling better, Josh. This may be a case for ABS, I don't know. I tend to always count one thousand one thousand two one thousand three at least on a bike. It's tough with a car in front and behind sometimes. New England tends to be fairly quiet in the countryside so I can pull over if I have to. Florida on the East Coast has been terrifying to ride at rush hour and my brother and others stopped riding for that reason til he moves to Northeast Georgia where I had a peach of a quiet ride on his Duc Multistrada. These people who pull out in front of us (and those in front of us) make it tough.

Silly as it sounds- ABS may have saved my ass, I don't know. Don't remember much.

That being said it is 4 weeks today since I crashed and I am still in a lot of pain although a little better every day.

I loved riding a motorcycle- have done it since I was a small child and I am in my mid 40's. I guess I was lucky to never have injured myself before.

This was my first (and only) wreck on the street. I used to fly off dirtbikes and quads all the time with jeans and a t-shirt when I was 12-14-16, etc and amazingly just got up and kept riding.

This is different. It is not worth this constant pain and sacrifice both to me and my wife and family, much less my job and finances.

And before you guys say suck it up- I was a medic in the Army. I am well aware of suck it up, keep moving. This is different.

What keeps sticking in my mind is that I wore the best gear I could- top dollar leather jacket & pants with chest pads, spine pad, shoulder pads, elbow pads, hip, knee and shin pads, etc etc- and I must have went down relatively slow as there isn't much damage to the bike- and I still hurt myself quite a bit.

Pretty much everybody wears less than what I did, and I'd imagine a lot of crashes involve higher speeds or impacts with something- car, deer, tree, guard rail...

If it hurts this much with what I did, how much worse could it easily have been? Uggh.

You're touching on a truth that the ATGATT crowd has a hard time with. I've been in wrecks with gear, and without, and I gotta tell you, even the best gear seems like it only mitigates abrasion and slides. a helmet will protect you from a blow to the skull, but only up to a certain velocity (which is surprisingly low), and it doesn't really protect you from a broken neck. I guess this why I kind of shrug when people ask me why I don't wear armored pants over my jeans and armored boots instead of converse ect. i'm dressing for a slide because i know the gear isn't going to do anything beyond that.

All that said, you may not feel it in your bones, but i'm certain the extensive expensive intensive gear you wore protected your skin, your brain (where it counts), and your pretty face. it's because of the gear that you won't be laid up as long as you could have been, and it's probably because of the gear that you still have the choice of whether or not to get back on.

I hope nobody is really telling you to "suck it up" because that's unfair. It's tempting to say that to somebody in your position, but it's really hard to jump into your shoes because most people go through their first crashes pretty early on. you rode for a long long time without ever having this experience, so it must be a much more extreme shift in perspective. Kind of like the Chicken pox.