October 20th: Ryan S. Benefits Ride

I started uploading images from this event. Unfortunately I crashed shortly after so obviously I got side tracked.

The ride was to support a fellow brother who was taken down on his bike one Friday afternoon. He was wearing a helmet, leather jacket and gloves. All of which saved his life.

For those of you that don't know Ryan S, he has been bound and determined to make SportBike Freestyle as big as possible since early 2002. He has been in the game for quite some time and has accomplished some really big adventures in the last 6 years. He has traveled to China 6 times with people from our team, and he even brought over Tony L this year also to perform at the Shanghai MotoGP Championship. He has traveled to Indonesia once, Malaysia once and Singapore twice ALL to promote sportbike stuntriding. Ryan is one of the few American stuntriders that has devoted his heart and hard work into this sport, stuck with it and never given up. Lots of our dreams are his realities.

Ryan lost his left foot and will need to wear a prosthetic for the rest of his life, among other long term injuries such as broken collar bone, internal bleeding in his brain and various broken bones. He is on a very long road to recovery and needed the support of the motorcycle community behind him. This man has been a rider all of his life and has supported motorcyclists from all walks of life.

The turn out of the ride was great. Around 200 bikes showed up show their support. We gathered and rode into the hospital parking lot where Ryan was waiting for us. Now, I don't know if it was in the plan for us to stop in the parking lot, because from what I heard he was just going to be rolled to the window of his room. And we were just going to ride by.

But we did stop in the parking lot, where Ryan shared a few words. He was very touched and the expression on his face was worth the long ride to the meet. From the hospital we parted and went to a nearby town for a stuntshow/bbq.

All in all, great ride. Great cause.

Well, it turns out I needed to replace a little more than anticipated. My front end took a nice beating.

I lucked out though, a seller on ebay was parting out a bike just like mine. Apparently he dumped it on the left side and was selling his right. I managed to get all my replacement plastics from him.

It's been a few days since the crash and I feel a lot better. My finger is still a little stiff but that's about it. I don't think at any given point in time I was actually angry about the crash. With the amount of riding I did I figured it was bound to happen. Better in gear on a back road taking a curve than trying to show off doing a wheelie through an intersection right?

Any crash you can ride/walk away from, you really can't really complain.

I think the only disappointment I have was I was trying to rack up some miles on my bike before winter hit. I read to register an out of state bike in CA you need at least 7500 miles, or have owned it for at least two years? My season started in May and I only managed to put on 5500 miles. So I don't know.

Me and a buddy went down today.

Came in a little too hot on a corner. All of us were still able to walk away, his bike came out a lot better than mine. I still managed to ride it home. Took mostly body damage. I was fortunate enough and landed right between two telephone poles into some bushes. Got real lucky.

I didn't do a full assessment of the bike, but from the looks of it I'm looking at a right fairing, rear tail, tank cover, shift lever, windshield, both mirrors, front master cylinder. As I was riding home (with no shift lever/front brake) my adrenaline started slowing down and I began feeling the pain. By the time I got home I felt like complete shit and didn't feel like looking at anything. My right knee/shin is incredibly sore and my left middle finger is killing me.

No rash though. Wear your gear peoples.

Took a few pictures of the bike after we dragged it from the bushes and cleaned/taped it up. They came out like crap, I was still pretty shooken up.

Could've been worse, I'm okay and ebay has my back.

boo? my family hates this mask me.