John & Mick's BIG Adventure

Friday 13th Part II

This article was originally written/published on August 4th. That’s because I didn’t tell the missus any of this until then. There’s no need in worrying people un-necessarily.

Before we left Pattan, I said to Mick, “Its Friday the 13th…”
I should have kept my mouth shut.

Ten or fifteen km’s south of Besham, it all went a bit haywire when, midway through an overtake of a pick-up truck “taxi” with half a dozen people standing in the back, the pick-up driver decided he wanted my bit of road to overtake the “taxi” in front of him. I wouldn’t have minded, but, I was using it and was already level with his front wheel and he was pushing me to the thousand foot drop to the Indus river.

I saw the front wheel coming towards my leg and tried to lift it out of the way but the engine and pannier took the hit.
My left hand pannier caved in the drivers door. Everything went a bit blurry then for a second or two.

I had a very hard landing on rocks.
Something really hurt in my ribs and my upper leg. I thought I had trapped my left leg and done a forced splits as I was ejected from the bike.
People started arriving and asking if I was OK and I just wanted them all to sod off and leave me alone for a couple of minutes, but of course, they don’t.
Made feeble efforts at standing up then falling down again so had to sit there to get myself together and my breath back for 20 minutes.

Bike didn’t look too good. Indicator and screen gone. Antenna of the GPS snapped off and the GPS mount looking a bit second hand. The right pannier had burst open and some of the contents were out, Rocker cover scraped and the fairing crash bar and pannier frame/rear sub frame out of alignment, but otherwise, OK.

Right leg really hurt like hell now. Anyway, after a short rest and a drink of water we were off again. Two minutes later a guy passes me and flags us down… He wants a photo of the pratt that crashed. OK.
Half an hour down the road is where we picked up the police escort described in Friday the 13th Part I.

In Islamabad I went to the hospital, as recommended by Paula and Paddy, where they gave me half a dozen X-rays.
Diagnosis was “nothing broken, just soft tissue damage”.
I was given a shot of some painkiller by half a dozen giggling nurses, that left a huge bruise and then a course of tablets for the pain and told that “in 10 days the pain will be gone.” It wasn’t and it’s not, 18 days down the road.

Anji and Asheesh, our host in Pune, insisted on taking me to the hospital.
More X-rays.

This time I get to see them. The joint in the pelvis – the sacroiliac joint – can be seen quite clearly on the left. On the right side it is compressed and difficult to see. More tablets have been given to me and a recommendation to stay off the bike for “a few weeks”.
Got to ride down to Goa first, but that’s only another 495 ish kilometres. Then It will get some rest.

Hey-ho.

The next instalment is here

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