Cycle News

CN III CROSS RUTTED P130 BY JEAN TURNER A DETAILED ACCOUNT I could see the sun nearing the horizon in my rear view mirror as we sped up Highway 395 toward Ridgecrest. I turned to my friend Jon in the passenger seat. He had a crumpled-up paper towel held to his face, which now had visible bloodstains on it. His jersey also showed drops of blood from the open gash in his chin. "Do you want another paper towel?" I asked him. "No, that's okay," Jon casually responded. "I want them to see the blood. That way they'll get me in faster." "They," of course, was Ridgecrest Emergency. It was kind of twisted logic, but I saw his point. After all, it was a minor injury, and we had already discussed the possibility of waiting for hours on end in the emergency room (we've all had that happen before). After the accident, my brother Mark and I did a rock-paperscissors match to see who would take Jon to the emergency room. Needless to say, he won. The second I lost, actually, Mark didn't hesitate to add insult to injury. "There's an Arby's right by the hospital on that main road in Ridgecrest," he began explaining before I even realized I lost the rosham-bo. "Bring me back four... no, five roast beef sandwiches and get lots of extra packets of barbecue sauce. Yeah! And a large Dr. Pepper." With very little regard for Jon's welfare, the rest of our riding buddies promptly chimed in with their Arby's order. And this, of course, would fall entirely on my shoulders since Jon would be heavily sedated at this point. Jerks. We were pleasantly surprised by the empty waiting room as we walked into Ridgecrest Emergency. In fact, nearly the entire facility was empty, so Jon was taken straight in. To further speed the process along, I accompanied him and filled out his paperwork while the nurses began cleaning him up. I worked my way through the pages of paperwork, stopping occasionally to "eeeeooow!" as the doctor pulled sticks and gravel from Jon's open wounds. The last paper to fill out was an insurance claim, and a quarter-pagesized box at the bottom read: Please describe IN DETAIL how the incident occurred. Capitalized and bolded, just like that. "Well, alright," I thought. "You want detail, you got it." "I'm going to need a few more pieces of paper," I said to the nurse. The following is the story I wrote on the insurance claim for an audience of one: Kaiser Permanente (This is what happens when you tell a journalist you want something "IN DETAIL"): It was a cool, Mojave afternoon – high sixties with a light breeze. Conditions were good, though a bit dusty and rocky. We had just finished lunch at the White House Saloon in Randsburg, one of California's last living ghost towns, a former mining town from the 1800's gold rush and a fun, historic place to visit. They actually still mine borax in the Rand Mountains above Randsburg, but I digress. Mark had the hot pastrami; Jon and I had cheeseburgers. With full bellies, we began our ride back to our camp in California City. Mark was on a 2003 Yamaha YZ250, I was on a 2006 Gas Gas 300 EC Dealer Edition and Jon was on his 2001 YZ250 pile of crap. Not that the 2001 YZ250 is a pile of crap – '01 was a great year for the YZ. It's just that Jon doesn't maintain his bikes very well and his is waaay overdue for a top-end rebuild, among other things... Jon had been trying to keep up with Mark all day, and despite a few spills in the morning hours, and my warnings to "just ride his own pace," Jon still really felt that today was the day he was as good as Mark. We actually made it back to camp without incident. Ironically, it was after we returned from a day of riding, and the guys were screwing around on the mine jumps near camp that "the accident" happened.

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