A Memorial Day to Remember

  • Published
  • By Lt Col Michael Tiemann
  • 60th Aerial Port Squadron Commander
TRAVIS AFB, Calif. --  Sometimes things are completely out of our control. I contemplated that fact while pain coursed through my body as the morphine started to wear off.

Dazed, I pressed the little button with my thumb to send another dose of the concoction dripping into my bloodstream. For a moment, I was in control. That was Memorial Day weekend in 2008.

A few days earlier, I was riding my Harley Davidson V-Rod through the Blue Mountains, northeast of Sydney. It was a fantastic Aussie afternoon with crisp blue skies, temperatures in the low 60s and very little cars on the road. "What a great way to spend Memorial Day weekend," I thought.

The bike was running great and I was having a blast cruising lazily down a familiar country road. Lunch an hour earlier had provided a good break. I felt comfortable and relaxed as I calculated the ride home would be another 90 minutes. I'd have a short break at the river ahead that I would cross by loading my Harley onto the barge (or "punt" as my Aussie mates referred to it) and waiting as the captain ferried us across the river's slow-moving current.

I was joined on the punt by a couple of other riders on BMW touring bikes and we exchanged compliments on each others' rides as they made fun of my "Yankee" accent. If they only knew how strange they sounded. We said "cheers" as the punt docked and we rode off in separate directions. I started up the winding hill from the river basin and that's the last full memory I have for about the next 36 hours.

The police and eyewitness reports said I went into the left-hand corner at the posted speed limit of 35 mph. The corner itself tightened up as you went through and I was unaware of all the gravel at the turn's exit. From pictures shown to me after the accident, I could see where my V-Rod had slammed into the rocky mountain face into which the road had been cut. It looked like I bounced off the rocks a couple times and scraped the right side of my bike pretty hard against the jagged, brown boulders. After about 50 feet or so, the Harley and I came to rest in the middle of the road. My injuries were pretty severe: two broken ankles, six broken ribs, a broken collar bone, punctured lung, a torn ascending aorta (the largest artery in your body) and a stroke caused by the tissue that tore off my aorta. Later in the hospital, the heart doctors told me that only about 10 percent of aortic tear trauma patients survive, not very favorable odds.
 
I felt lucky.

Thankfully the road was popular with the motorcycle crowd and as soon as I went down, two fellow riders stopped (so the strangers later told me when they visited my hospital room) and began giving me life-saving assistance. I was obviously in shock and was unaware of the severity of my injuries. My Aussie attendants worked hard to keep me calm and restrain me from trying to get up to see what had happened. I can't imagine the result if I'd made it to my feet and tried to walk on two broken ankles with my aorta leaking blood into my chest. Mercifully, I blacked out.

During the next few hours, I enjoyed an ambulance ride to a large clearing along the mountain, a helicopter flight to a Sydney trauma center and an emergency surgery to place a stent in my torn aorta. After the ER team stabilized me, my broken bones were screwed back together for the long healing process. That entailed six weeks in the hospital, three months in a wheelchair and physical therapy that lasted more than two years.

Despite all of that trauma, if you had looked at me laying in the ICU, you would never have thought I'd nearly died in a motorcycle accident. I didn't have a scratch on me. All of my PPE was in-place at the time I hit the mountain: Full-faced helmet, heavy leather jacket, full-fingered leather gloves, riding pants over my thick blue jeans and steel-toed boots. I ruined a lot of nice riding gear, scratched up my favorite watch and totaled my V-Rod, but I survived.

Anytime I see a rider cruising along wearing a helmet, T-shirt and "cool-looking" torn up jeans, I just cringe. Smart motorcyclists have a motto: "It's not if, it's when."

I learned four years ago that control is a variable prospect. Be prepared and ride safely because your survival depends on it. Make this Memorial Day, and each and every day, one to remember.