Often times, when I look back, it still seems as surreal as when it happened. I have said in the past that you could get used to anything, but in this case the lingering after effects have a semi-death grip on my psyche.

On September 20 th of this year, my wife Susan and I were in an accident, one that seems to have left an indelible mark on both of us. It started off, as most of these types of stories do, innocently enough. The weather was crappy—rain and cold. Minnesota in September can be a fickle bitch, and she can change her mind more often than an old woman in a meat market. The rain and gloom cleared by the time I got off work, and the temperature shot northward of 70 degrees. Considering it held steady at about 50 for most of the day, it appeared that the old bag finally made her selection of pot roast and let the poor butcher go back to his office to where the bottle of Bushmills was waiting.

Susan was hungry, and I had no argument with running down on the bike to our favorite bar and grill for a mouth-watering French Dip with waffle-cut fries, no onions thank-you, but put some Swiss and mushrooms on it please. We dressed appropriately for being on a motorcycle and made our way out. The food was delicious as it was advertised in the window, and after our son and one of his buddies stopped in on their crotch-rockets, we all had a pleasant time hashing out the finer differences of computer operating systems; what the next great computer game was going to be (I'm PS3, he's Xbox, so we butt heads a bit), and discussions of the general joys of riding motorcycles. We have a cruiser, or had, as you may be already suspect. Think comfortable bark-o-lounger chair as opposed to I'm-young-and-there-ain't-nobody-gonna-catch-me-‘cause-I-be-going-so-fast on a bike that looks a little like an alien insect. For those of you that ride, you get it. We are of the old people sect; slow and watch the scenery.

The two young-un's took off, the whine of the hyper-charged engines trailing off in the distance. Lucky little shits have fuel-injection, and my old bike was made in the time of carburetors, so it needed time to warm up some, or she complained as much as that old bat spying the butcher's thumb on the scale. We scooted out of the parking lot, heading for home, with that peaceful, rested feeling after you have had a good meal and better company. The second light on the main road that took us to our suburban house turned an ugly red, so I slowed down and stopped behind a white Chrysler. My feet were planted firmly on the pavement, and my wife was talking about our daughter-in-law-to-be, wondering of the second son was going to ask her to marry him in time for us to enjoy (or despise) some grandkids. I moved my head slightly to the left to make some comment that is now forgotten when a sudden ooffmmph occurred. I thought, as I flew off the seat and over the windshield of the bike, “Wow.” That's it. They say your life flashes before you in these instances, but I only had time for the wow before I slammed into the white Chrysler in front of us.

The other thing they say in these situations is that everything goes into slow-mo mode, and in that they are correct. I vividly remember every micro-second of the flight from the bike to the end of that car.

It lasted an hour.

My chest made a sizeable dent in the trunk of that car, and my face caught the edge of something I don't know. Either way it fucking hurt. A little blackness after this—I can't quite put the pieces together until I became aware of screaming (me, of course), and looking over to the other side of the bike to the still figure of my wife lying in the middle of the street. I tried to get a breath in to yell for her, but it was catching somewhere just outside of the reach of my lungs. This was odd, since I had been screaming the whole time; perhaps the involuntary was stronger than the voluntary. I started to crawl to her over the glass and chunks of car and bike straining to see some movement. Just make some movement goddammit so I know your alive, I thought. This gave me enough strength to yell, and she murmured something unintelligible, which brought a shit load of endorphins to the forefront to get me crawling faster. She was alive.

After about eight years of crawling I finally made it to her side. She was okay, but in pain. No bones sticking out of leather or jeans, a good sign if there ever was. By this time, I heard in the background people calling 911 on the cell phones, and others rushing in to help. I looked up to see a young man silhouetted in the remaining headlight of the truck that hit us. I said to him, “What the fuck were you doing, you goddam idiot?”

No answer, of course. He looked like he was going into shock at the sight of the two people lying on the ground, who, probably to him, looked like they were close to death. I gave up assessing blame; I simply hurt too much, and Susan was still lying there moaning in pain. One thing of note: He was driving fast enough where the rear of my motorcycle was wedged into the front of his truck, much like taking a hot knife and slamming it into a stick of butter. The posted speed limit on this road was 50mph—I suspect he was close to that. Another note: Susan and I swear that we heard no squealing of tires before the impact. He just drove right into us. I wrote a letter to Yamaha Motor Company thanking them for saving our lives. If they hadn't made the frame of that bike so sound, we would have been crushed like a party balloon filled with water tossed off the roof of someone's garage.

I won't bore you with the recovery part except to say that it sucked, and still does. Simple things like going to the bathroom become an Olympic event, and neither of us is going to even get the bronze.

We are alive, though, and still kicking, although for quite some time, and even now, a strange depression creeps in and we have a hard time shaking it off. It's winter in the northland, so motorcycles are the furthest thing from our thoughts, but spring will be here soon, beckoning to us to hit the open road.

Scary shit, now. I still get nervous when some doorknob tailgates me on the way to work, and I'm in a car with walls on all four sides. I'll get another bike, that I know, but there will always be that little annoying bug that dances lightly on the back of my neck, waiting to sink in a stinger and draw some blood. I'm hoping that writing all of this down will help, I'm a writer, after all, and writing is therapeutic to some degree. I didn't write, or more clearly couldn't write, after this accident. Writers, even when they don't publish, still write. It's what they do as much as they draw breath. This has been one of the few times in my life I couldn't—up until now.

I thank you, o' faithful reader, for putting up with this shit. I normally write a humor column, and this has been anything but. I'll make you a promise: The next column will have the same irreverent, sarcastic and caustic humor on which you have come to expect from me. It is my job to make you, the reader, smile, or at least make you think about the stranger side of life, one I so much enjoy pointing out.

Slow but sure I'll get back on the road. There are many more adventures than time, and I want to fill you in on the weirdness as I see it, and by God there has been some notable dorks out there lately, all of whom need to get their just desserts.

And I'm just the guy to do it.