Young Blood has 9 Lives…

Well maybe it’s only 8 lives, now. Last night I was out with Hopper and YB to get a bite to eat and have a few beers. I took my truck because I won’t drink and ride. Hopper and YB both will drink and ride which I think is a bad combination.

I’ve never been a very spiritual person. I’ve never felt like I’ve been touched by God or had some epiphany which I attributed to divine intervention of any faith. However, last night I think YB certainly felt that something or someone was watching out for him.

It all started innocently enough. We had dinner and some brews and then went into downtown FTW. We all had another drink and then I decided to split so I could get up early to catch a flight to Chicago.

I get home and I can’t sleep. I’ve had two horrible nights of insomnia. But as I am finally getting ready to crash YB calls me and tells me that he’s been in an accident. Of course, the first thing I ask is whether or not he’s OK. He is. How is the bike? As he put it, mostly OK but there are chunks missing out of his wheels. WTF? I get his location and tell him I’ll be there in a bit.


According to YB he was moving at a pretty good clip somewhere around 80 or 90mph down I-30. I’m not quite clear on exactly what happened next but he must have been maneuvering to overtake someone when he hit a curb, or a curb-like structure. He said he remembered the bike going airborne, and he going airborne off the bike. He held on to the handlebars and came back down. When he landed he said he could tell something was really wrong as he had no real control of the bike so he pulled in the clutch and eased it into the ditch.


Sure enough, as you can see by the pictures the front wheel is bent up pretty good but there is a huge chunk missing out of his rear rim. I have never seen a set of rims that was messed up so bad that the bike wasn’t completely wadded up. Usually the bike is wadded up causing the rims to get trashed, but it can happen either way.

Front Tire -

Rear Tire -
Fortunately, he had some other guys stop on the side of the road with him. We were able to load his bike into the back of my truck and get it to the shop where he works. He took a work truck home.

YB is real lucky. He not only walked away from this, he has walked away without a single scratch and no other damage other than to his pride. I hope he thinks about that next time a beer is set before him while he has his bike out.