The Happy Anniversary Crash

My story all happened back on Saturday, October 1, 2005. It was a normal day for the most part except it happened to be my parents wedding anniversary. My dad was taking me to work this day. See, back then, before I got my motorcycle license, my dad use to take me to work on the back of his motorcycle. We had cars but the bike was always faster and better on gas than the car. I had been around bikes ever since I can remember so riding on them never bothered me. On this day my dad had to take me to work about an hour sooner than he normally would because he was going to help out a friend of ours with his race car at Ventura Raceway, which is where I was working. So we, my dad and I, got our stuff like our jackets and helmets together and headed out the door. We put our gear on, climbed onto the motorcycle, and headed off on a nice, fun ride to Ventura…or so we thought.
It was a beautiful sunny Southern California day. You couldn’t ask for a better day for riding. As we rode up the coast on Harbor Boulevard, we leaned one way on the bike and then the other way to follow the twist and turns of the long two-way road. As we got into the city of Ventura, the sunny sky started to become cloudier and cloudier. You would think that would give you a clue that the once nice day wasn’t going to be so nice but it didn’t. We had a red light at Harbor and Seaward. So we waited there for about forty five seconds before taking off when it turned green. We ended up the first car through the next intersection which was Harbor and Monmouth coming up on In-N-Out Burger. I saw a line of cars in the number 2 lane waiting to go through the drive though but that didn’t bother me because it was always like that on Saturday afternoons. So because of that, I turned my head to the left to see what was going on that side of the road. That might have been ultimately the best thing I could have done for what was about to happen.
As we were going around the curvy road in front of In-N-Out Burger, I felt the motorcycle JUMP straight up almost as if there was an unexpected turn I did not know about! I quickly turned my head back to the right to see why there was a sudden change in direction when out of the corner of my eye I saw in slow motion a black object drive straight in front of my dad and me. All I could do was hang on for dear life. My dad tried to avoid it by steering the motorcycle in the opposite direction we were going. He clinched down on the clutch with his left hand as hard as he could while pulling the front brake lever back with his right hand until it couldn’t move anymore! But it was too little too late.
We struck the driver’s side of the black 2003 Ford Thunderbird doing between 35 and 45 miles per hour. That doesn’t seem like we were going fast but believe me, it is a lot when you hit a solid object. The motorcycle’s tire crumbled into the front fender of the Thunderbird. I was forced into the back of my dad, crushing his pelvis into the gas tank and splitting his femoral artery. I then was thrown into the air flying twenty-five feet up Harbor Boulevard before landing on my head and shoulder, cracking my helmet. My right clavicle snapped like a twig and came piercing out through the skin. I then bounced onto my right side cracking my pelvis and sliding on my back. The rough surface of the hot asphalt ground up my back as if it was a piece of meat going through a meat grinder. I luckily didn’t feel any of the pain because I was knocked unconscious when my head hit the ground. My injuries were paper cuts compared to what happened to my dad.
While I was flying through the air doing my thing, my dad was stuck on the bike and was forced into the windshield of the T-bird. The impact was so violent that it sent a chain reaction of destruction through his body causing damage to any and every thing inside him. Almost immediately his brain swelled up causing parts of it to die. Along with the brain, his spine began to swell in which paralyzed the entire right side of his body. His kidneys were sliced and diced from the sharp edges of the spine. After my dad fell off the car onto the ground, the car continued across the road smashing into a SUV and then came to rest on the sidewalk across the street. My dad’s suffering didn’t stop there. As he was lying there yelling my name, “CODY!! CODY!!” his femoral artery squirted blood everywhere like a water gun. What was so amazing about this whole thing was there just happened to be some fire fighters eating lunch across the way. They heard the crash and came running out to help everyone. The fire fighters got to my dad first and managed to stop the bleeding. It he would have gone another minute without it getting the bleeding stopped; he would have bled to death right there in the middle of the street.
The fire fighters called for multiple ambulances for my dad and me. I ended up going to CMH where I woke up an hour and a half after the crash. When I opened my eyes, my mom was standing over me. I asked, “What Happened?” She replied with, “You and dad were in a motorcycle accident” as tears started to fill her eyes. “Is he okay?” I asked. “Yes” she answered. “He is getting ready for surgery.” The pain started to get to me. Al I could say was, “It hurts!” The nurse asked me what hurt. I couldn’t really tell her where exactly because my whole body hurt. The main problem was my hip. I told her that I thought it was broken. They couldn’t do many tests except for trying to make me walk. They got me up but I couldn’t move more than about two inches. The nurse said that it would be best if I just stay over night just in case.
My dad, on the other hand, was taken to VCMC where he was rushed into surgery. The doctors were able to stabilize him for the time being but they had to put him in a drug-induced coma. Doctors let my family know that with all the injuries my father had suffered, there was a 50/50 chance he wouldn’t make it over night. He ended up not only surviving the first night but was in a coma for eight days and spent a total of three months in the hospital where he had multiple surgeries. Towards the end of his stay, he gained about 70% of movement in his right side and was able to walk the day after his last surgery.
I had surgery three weeks later to have a plate and five screws put into my shoulder to hold my clavicle together. Eight months later I had it removed so I could have full motion in my shoulder again. The only evidence left that I can show of the accident is occasional popping of bones and a few scars.
Every day that passes my dad if getting better and stronger in the areas he had once lost. This accident may have been bad in a lot of ways but something really important came out of all this and that was it brought my family a lot closer together. It’s true what they say, “You don’t know what you really have until you lose it”. Or almost lose it in my case.