Motorcycle adventures

I was over at Tams place this morning and she had a comment on a m/c accident she had and that immediately transported me back to 1983 Corpus Christi Texas. I was working for a company installing slip liners in the sewer system of Corpus Christi. I was car pooling with a great big Hispanic coworker, neighbor and friend, Bobby Hinojosa. He showed up one morning on a Honda Goldwing. Great! I jumped on the back seat and away we went. Things went good for a couple of days and then IT happened. Coming down the other side of the harbour bridge the rear tire blew out. Bobby kept that bike and us up when it tried to go down 3 times but it finally got the best of us. As it went down I kicked off from the back seat, interlocked my hands behind my head and landed on my back, sliding down the highway. I got my ankles crossed and was riding my wallet and one boot heel when I hit a crack or something and then I was tumbling over and over. All I could see was all the traffic behind us with smoke coming off their tires and brakes, headlights flashing back and forth as the swerved to miss us and each other. WHAM! I smacked into the concrete divider, Bobby hitting it 15 feet further down. Both of us jumped up and started running hard. The traffic all came to a stop and we crossed back across all three lanes to the other side. After catching our breath and thanking the Lord for that salvation we picked up the Honda, pushed it to the next exit and over to a warehouse dock. We used the phone inside to call the mechanic at work who picked us and the bike up. We delivered the Goldwing to a bike shop and picked it up that evening and motored on home. Ahh, the resiliency of youth. If that happened today it would take me 3 or 4 days to get all my parts working in sync again. Back then I put in a 10 hour day at hard labor and thought nothing of it.
I also used to ride those dangerous to youth, three wheelers. I took many trips to Wynoka Oklahoma to the sand dunes. On one excursion I was leading the pack, following the perimeter road when I crested a small rise at high speed the bike did a slow roll over to the rear. My full face helmet acting like a plow in the sand, filled my mouth and nose with the grit, the three wheeler recovered and proceeded to drive over my back, leaving black marks on my t-shirt. I sat up spit out the sand, cleared my eyes, started the 250R ( similiar to this one) and off we went again. My brother in law and I used to jump over the crests of the bigger dunes. I earned the nick name of Wally (as in Shirah) and brother in law became known as Oscar (as in Meyer). We would approach the steep back side of a dune at around 65-70 mph in 5th gear. About half way up we would downshift to 4th and blast over the crest at about 55mph. I could fly that 250R over 150 feet down the shallow side of the dune. What a ride! I hate now feeling all the wrecks, fights, accidents and stunts I had as a young man. Every morning I have to stretch, flex and take a hot shower to get moving. Then take glucosamine and some over the counter pain pills then anoint my self with analgesic pain relieving creme, Knees, shoulders, elbows, wrists and hips. And I'm just 45. My orthopedic surgeon, after looking at some film of one of my knees wanted know how old I was and what the hell I had been doing. I told him just playing.