Day: 68 – 70
Date: 09/06 – 11/06
City: Modesto, California
Miles ridden: 0
Cumulative miles: 6107

The night was short and I wasn’t really interested in breakfast but we went anyway. I looked around a bit when we were walking to the breakfast room. The hotel looked really nice, particularly the pool and the spa, but that didn’t seemed to be important this morning. All the tasks on hand and the unanswered questions made my head spin:
Call bike insurance, call travel insurance, find out where our bike went (In all the turmoil Sigrid put the business card of the tow truck driver into my top box, but my bike went onto the tow truck yard), get our hands on the police report, make an appointment with a surgeon, find an alternative means of transport that fits into our budget… Do we still need a budget? Is that the end of our trip? Does the travel insurance cover the treatment here? And so on, and so forth.

Anyway, that was the first of many following breakfasts where I didn’t have to do much, everything was provided by Sigrid. Hrm, it’s not all bad after all J.

After breakfast we started to prioritise the tasks at hand. It was Saturday, so there wasn’t  too much we could do since police station, towing company and the orthopaedic centre where closed. So I did the only sensible thing. I took painkillers and slept for the rest of the day.
Sunday morning Sigrid informed everyone – our family, our friends and the bike and the travel insurance, of the accident. The travel insurance indicated that I might have to come back to Australia to get the operation done since it was not an emergency anymore. That would be the end of our journey, a bit short for my taste. I don’t want to go home yet, but I can see the insurance point L.

We started to figure out if there would be any possibility to continue our journey, and came up with a couple of options. It all depended when the wrist would be operated on. Sigrid organized a car as of Monday for a couple of days and I, well, I slept most of the time. I’m guessing it might have something to do with the strong pain killers.

Monday morning, we called the orthopaedic practise that we got referred to from the hospital. There was no appointment available for the week for the recommended doctor, but with another doctor the earliest one would be on Tuesday. We took the Tuesday appointment. Around noon the car rental company picked us up and we got a good size car and were mobile again.

In the meantime we figured out where my bike was towed to, so we made our way to the place to pick up some of my stuff.  Sigrid actually took my clothes at the time of the accident, which I wouldn’t have thought of at all. Looking at the bike really brought home how lucky I was: The grinding marks at the windscreen brackets, the mirrors and the lid of the tip box…  The bike must have flipped over.

The windscreen completely disappeared, must have been left at the accident scene. Other than that, most of the damage was on the left hand side, which coincides with my broken wristJ. The plastic of the Bark buster hand guard was ground through but the aluminium bar did its job and protected the lever.

The damage on the left side: The tank had some scratches (cosmetics); the gear shifter was bent – this was the only bit which needed fixing to make the bike drivable again – And the left rear indicator was broken,

the pannier lock was ground down and the pannier was leaking water on one corner – each pannier is a tank and could hold 3L of water –

The gear rack had some grinding mark from where the pannier dislodged from the bike

The bash plate and the top box had some grinding marks as well.

On the right hand side there was hardly any damage, the only bit was a small grove on the tank from the handlebar, but there was no hole so it is more cosmetic as well.

Our tent and a dry-bag holding our heated vests, gloves and other riding gear were on the pillion seat. The dry-bag was fine,

but the tent bag lost the bottom and the tent had holes. As we found out later it has actually five small holes on the tent floor.

So after having a look at the bike, I was keen to get back to the place of the accident, since I still haven’t figured out what happened. Sigrid navigated us back to the place. It was easy to find, since there was still the pillow on the side of the road. Maybe it’s a permanent fixture for motorbikes riders ;).
Looking at the road, it had a lot of snakes and track grooves, but nothing that we had not encountered before with the same speed and luggage, so I’m still puzzled as to what actually happened.

The most annoying discovery was that roughly 50m after the location of the accident the snakes and the track grooves stopped, so if I had controlled the bike for another 3 sec……..