Photo by Drew Dizzy Graham on Unsplash

Just a Sneaky Little Peek at My Memoirs
By J. Lee Austin, MD
While I have indeed had some breathtaking close calls, it’s not like I’m a Knievel or anything. Truth be told, I actually have gone flying off motorcycles, but never while jumping a moving train or a tank full of sharks. Never understood the shark thing. Even if you fail epically and land directly in the tank, the sharks will be far too startled to eat you. Plus, that garish jump suit is just not appetizing, sorry. I did try to jump a bar ditch one time and got harshly ejected over the handlebars since I didn’t so much jump it as much as I jammed it into the backside of the ditch. As luck would have it, a buddy witnessed the stunt and almost puked from excess laughter. Typical Johnny Knoxville Jackass fan. I didn’t think it was all that funny. Butt-load of stupid, maybe.

Speaking of stupid, one early morning in ‘76 I made the honest mistake of accepting an offer to ride on the back seat of my brother’s Honda 350 motorcycle for our trip to work downtown. Sounds like fun, Rick, let’s do it.

J. Lee is a contributor to Crystal Beach Local News, and is the founder of The Good Help Network, a reader-supported publication.

As any fool knows, Stemmons Freeway into Dallas at rush hour is not exactly safe and effective, especially on 2 wheels. Zip-zipping through traffic, we smooth sailed it right along. Until we didn’t.

Just as Rick turned his head to look behind us, the car before us came to a screeching stop. I spotted the brake lights that Rick didn’t see, and thus had a sneak preview of what was about to come our way … it’s pucker time!

As the bike smashed into the car’s rear end, we were vaulted up into the crisp morning air and deposited onto the trunk. As we were performing our awkward dismount, the rattled driver scurried back to see what condition our condition was in. After a one second body inventory, we reckoned we were okay and thanked her for checking in.

The good news is that we were not injured. The bad news is that the fork got bent into a sick angle that did not permit the usual and customary operation of the bike. So we proceeded to slog-drag the compromised machine across 4 lanes of bumper-on-bumper traffic. Pausing motorists looked at us quizzically. Nothing to see here, just 2 dudes trying to get to work the hard way, move along.

The bent beast was heavy but we had received quite a boost from our sky high adrenaline levels. We were also spurred by the fact that Rick did not have a motorcycle driving license, which I learned rather precipitously there on the bustling tarmac.

“Great Scott! Is there anything else you want to tell me?!”

“Got a bag of wacky in my boot.”

“Holy crap on a stick, Rick!”

The other good news is that the roadside terrain sloped away steeply enough that we could muscle and hustle our crippled steed down the hill and out of sight quickly, thus reducing the risk of an untimely incarceration, which would have totally besmirched our otherwise spotless resumes.

With hearts still thumping, we hoofed it up the hill and hiked our way through harrowing traffic, making it just in time for work, in our humble capacity as order-fillers for the Sears furniture warehouse … just livin’ the dream, baby!

Here’s to never looking back, ~~ j ~~

“I have been off the motorcycles for 20 years now, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still do it.” ~~ Teri Garr
[JLee, Nov-18-2024]