Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Crash!

On Mother's Day 2019 I was riding my trike coming home from church when a lady I was following slammed her brakes on hard.  I hit mine fast, but having no front brake my trike couldn't stop as fast as it needed to.  I tried to squeeze in between her car and a cement wall.  My right fender caught the wall slamming my trike into the wall and depositing me on my back looking up at the sky.  The wall was hard against my helmet and the trike wheel was hard against the other side of my helmet.  I couldn't move.  Luckily people surrounded me immediately and pulled the trike away from my helmet so I could move.  I was a bit sore but nothing broken which upheld my record of never have broken a bone in my 79 years of life.  I hope that record continues.

My trike did not fare quite as well as I did.  When she hit the wall it slammed the front forks into the wall and bent them back into the body of the trike.  Here are the pictures of the forks.




I tried to straighten the forks but to no avail. You might be able to see the fender that took all the beating.  It lost the trim as well.  Stress marks are prevalent on top of the fender and the tire shown now has a large cut in it.  It even broke my radio antenna.  Lots of other more minor stuff to be repaired as well.  The $4000 paint job is not too good either.  Most of the scars are on this fender so I will try to paint a strip over both fenders and do a little pen stripping on the body scratches so I won't have to paint the whole trike.  I can't afford to fix the forks let alone paint the whole thing.  It may not be running anytime too soon.

I am the vice-chairman of Brothers of the Third Wheel trike club of our Oregon/Vancouver chapter.  It's a bummer having to go to meetings when the guys and gals are going to be ridding on a great trip and here I am without my ride. Sad! I will try to keep everyone informed on how the repairs are going.  Thanks for reading and I would love to hear from you.  Drop me a line about anything on your mind.

If anyone reading this are interested in a great organization of trikers let me know and we can sign you up.  Our organization is worldwide so wherever you live you can join in.  Write to me at trikerman72@gmail.com and I can set you up.