Luckily, lucky Lenny lives

In the pursuit of new experiences and having to overcome challenges, huge risks are taken by me and my fellow two wheeled travellers. Very little of the riding here I can say that I’ve actually enjoyed mostly due to the amount of Lorries on the roads, the driving standards, the old cars and the lumpy roads. Most of all though is the sad story I learnt of only months before I left the UK for this, my third trip. After bidding farewell to my friend Mick at Cape Town he went on to Buenos Aires, Argentina and he too stayed at Dakar Motos until his motorcycle arrived from South Africa. Also staying there was an Australian KLR rider named Adrian Kemmis, of similar age to me and Mick and chasing the same dreams. Mick even rode with him for a few days but a week or so later Adrian got hit by a truck in Curitiba, Brazil and died. Over the years I’ve been more than aware of the high risk in what I do and although it gives my nearest and dearest worries I think that it is just a small part of what makes me who I am. This though has been the first time that I’ve started to wonder what will happen to all of these words and pictures should I suffer a similar fate. Maybe it’s time to tick off some other things on my quite small bucket list I reckon and save some more of these for when I’m older..?
And so Lenny...What was he doing? Maybe it was the classic ‘just eaten’ or even the ‘lady in the tight jeans’ but whatever in attempting to cut across a dual carriageway in order to double back after a lunch and fuel stop he inexplicably made half a glance to see what was coming. Not enough clearly, as he rode out to the outer reservation while I saw what he hadn’t and then has to await the full horror of what was about to happen...
The car trailer truck was never going to be able to stop or avoid an oblivious Lenny and once the fully locked up truck with smoke, horns and tyre squeals thundered past me I had the most gut renching few seconds as I waited for bits of bike and lumps of Lenny to appear from under the 30 ton object. Over the top of the trailer though, through the dust and smoke I caught a glimpse of Lenny’s bike jacket and once the truck had finally stopped miraculously Lenny appears from the central reservation on two feet!! I cannot and will not ever be able to understand how he survived this nor will I be able to grasp exactly how lucky he was to survive this episode. I should also mention that the truck’s skid marks in the picture are only about half of what they actually were, about 50-75 meters in total. The end result was a scuffed up Lenny, a rear ended KLR saved by the pannier rack/panniers which was just about rideable despite a broken brake lever, bent handlebars and a pile of scratches. It appears that the truck shunted Lenny along and finally off the road with him ending up a couple of feet away adjacent to the truck’s rear trailer wheels. I should also note that despite being in the middle of nowhere help appeared immediately with officials on the scene very quickly. What a lucky boy.
As he keeps reminding me (especially after the mosquito horrow show in the Amazon)..."The worse it is the better it looks on the blog." Hmmm, well in that case then just think how much better this would look had a different outcome happened(?!)