So, it’s been a while since I made my mega-post, and I feel like I need to at least say something here.

First and foremost: I’m doing really, really well. 
Second: I owe many thanks to many people, you all know who you are –  I’m glad to have many great friends and family members. There’s a few of you that I hardly really even knew that helped me out a lot in particular, namely some new friends from the ZKMC – I’m glad to have met you all and look forward to continuing to be involved with all of you. Thanks!

Alright, so – I’ve had the neck brace off since June 5th – I should have posted then But it’s been very nice having that off, and I’ve honestly been feeling better and better every day, it’s impressive to be able to feel the little differences. At this point, I think I’d say I feel at around 80-85% of what I was before the crash.

I can still almost always tell that I broke my neck – but it’s quickly becoming less and less noticible. It still gets sore later on in the day, and occasionally there’s some more sharp pain – but that’s really infrequent now.

I’d say my arm/hand sensation is at 98% – only very rarely now do I get a slight weird feeling in the arm.

Range of motion took a few weeks to slowly get back, and it’s not fully there yet, that’s the biggest thing that I notice now. I don’t know really how much range of motion (in degrees) I had before, but I can tell that I’m limited a little bit to the right as compared to the left. Up and down seems to be pretty good – I can feel things a bit differently when I’m at full-stop in any direction, but that continues to get better as well.

I plan to make another followup post covering all of my gear in detail, and the damage to the bike. I actually haven’t even cleaned the dirt off of any of my gear yet, so I should still be able to get pictures of it all to share. Then, I have to clean it up and buy a few new things before I get back to riding.

I’ve got my final follow-up appointment July 17th, so we’ll see what’s said then. I still don’t really know when I’ll be able to get back on a bike, but here’s hoping to sooner rather than too much later

Thanks again, everyone!

-Ian ‘craSH’ Gallagher

Last Friday (yeah.. Friday the 13th) I was taking an all-day motorcycle performance track school down at The Ridge Motorsports park in Shelton, WA.

That morning on the track, on the second 20 minute session, I crashed due to loss of traction on turn 2 which resulted in my taking a low-side fall at somewhere between 50 and 70 MPH (I don’t know the exact speed, but I’m confident that it was quite a bit faster than other times I did that corner and noted the speed

to be around 46-48 MPH) – there was a riding marshal behind me and he agrees I was going a good speed, but he totally thought I had the corner and was good to go.

This is the first time I’ve crashed my motorcycle on the road, and it’s the first time the Daytona 675s shiny bits have touched the ground, it was a huge shock to me when I realized what was happening, I just felt the pegs slide away from me, and my body dropped the 10-20 inches to the ground from where I was leaned over in the corner.

As expected, the left side of my body hit the asphalt first, and I slid (tangentially) ..maybe the 10 or so feet off the outside of the track, and then I was in the (thankfully huge) dirt run-out for another 40-50 feet of sliding, with the bike flying nicely in front of me the whole time. At some point, likely on the asphalt or at the transition to the dirt, my body torqued to the right and slammed my right shoulder/back into the ground. That was the pain shot. I never lost conciousness, and I got up just behind my bike, rotated now with my feet facing the track I had just come from. A marshal came up to me and helped me up, made

sure I could move, etc. and then we got the bike in to the recovery truck (yeah, I helped.)

I was definitely hurting a lot. I’ve never crashed, so I didn’t know what to expect – what’s “normal” or “fine” or what do I go to the hospital for? Once we got back to the pit area and unloaded my bike, I got checked out by the EMTs, on my own accord. They were nice enough, but really didn’t have anything to say unless I thought I needed to go to the hospital. They were two Mason County volunteer EMT Basics, and they work track events like this often.

I skipped the following three riding sessions, but rode the two subsequent ones – and felt great doing so. I skipped the final session of the day as I was feeling pretty fatigued at that point.

Once I got home in Seattle that night, things definitely hurt, the pain was not diminishing. I almost went to the ER, but didn’t for whatever reason. Saturday morning I had brunch with some friends, and by the end of my meal I had to go to the ER, I could hardly hold on to my fork without a huge amount of pain going up my shoulder and in to my neck. I got in to Swedish hospital on Broadway at around 1PM, where I stayed two nights and learned about what I had done to myself.

As it turns out, I broke my neck. Now, that sounds pretty horrible, and sure, it is – but I didn’t break it in the worst way possible at least

The technical name for my fracture is Cervical spinal fracture, C6, right side. That means the little “wing” of the vertebrae on the right side is fractured. It’s a complete fracture, so the end of that bone is just floating in my neck right now. The facet is part of the vertebrae that gives support to toe entire spine, and between each facet there is a nerve from the spinal cord. Spinal cord and nerves, those are the scary words!

Right now, the accident has caused the right-side nerve between my C5 and C6 (maybe something around C7 as well) to either compress or be twisted. This results in some numbness and tingling on my right hand/arm/shoulder. I have full range of motion and almost full strength there however, which is good. There is no damage to the spinal process or the area directly surrounding my spinal cord – a good thing

Additionally, I sustained some compression fractures of the thoracic vertebrae (e.g. the middle back vertebrae got compressed together) – this didn’t seem to concern my neurosurgeon too much, “they’ll heal fine”.

The fix.

I go in for surgery tomorrow morning (Thursday 19 April, check-in around 0840hrs at Northwest Hospital). Currently the plan is to go in through the back (posterior) of the neck, abrade the vertebrae and screw some plates between the C5 and C6 vertebrae, on both sides to stabilize things. The plates will act to keep the vertebrae together while the bones actually fuse together over the next 3-6 months. So, I’ll have some fused vertebrae on this is all over – not something I had planned for, but sounds like a decent idea right now. They said I should regain full mobility and be at 100%, as I was pre-accident within 6 months.

Sounds like I’ll keep those screws and plates in my neck. They also plan to remove that broken right C6 facet piece entirely, as once the vertebrae are fused it no longer serves a purpose to provide support. I’m going to try and keep it so I can make it in to a necklace

I’ll be in the hospital after surgery for a few days – maybe 2-3, not sure exactly though. And then I’ll be home and continue wearing a neck brace for 6-12 weeks while things are healing. No riding or doing anything too exciting for 6 months I’m told

The doctors are on my case are highly respected neurosurgeons, Dr. James Raisis at Swedish, and Dr. Daniel Lazar at Northwest Hospital/UW. Lazar will be performing the operation, and Raisis plans to be present for it. Raisis was the first doctor on my case, and he referred me to Lazar because of his particular experience in this type of procedure.

If anyone wants to visit after the surgery, the “Totem Poll” building at Northwest Hospital is where you’d want to go, and then I imagine they can direct you to me. You can also get in touch with my friends here who should be able to help out. Facility details: http://www.nwhospital.org/services/surgical_nwhmc.asp

TL;DR: Crashed my bike on the track, fractured part of my neck, surgery tomorrow, doing pretty alright and plan to be rocking it ASAP after the surgery!

Gear I was wearing (and love):

• Alpinestars GP Pro 1-piece leather suit
• Aplinestars Bionic back protector
• Alpinestars SMX-Plus boots
• Schuberth C3 modular helmet
• Spidi Carbo-Six full gauntlet gloves

I have no bruises and only about 3mm of an abrasion on my left pinky finger (small hole in the glove). The suit held up pretty well, the leather did what it’s supposed to, some stitches blew and the breathable fabric on the inside of the left arm is torn, but no skin abrasion/road rash at all.

The bike is fine, scratched left fairing and windshield, bent shift lever, scraped up clutch lever, 3-5mm off the frame slider.

I’m slowly getting through all of my photos from Greece and picking out the best to put in a set on my flickr account – you can check them out as Iget them up on this set: Greece, 2011-02.

I’ll update here once I have everything up! There’s some pretty good photos, I think. Joe has his picks up as well, here – be sure to check them out!

I’m slowly getting through all of my photos from Greece and picking out the best to put in a set on my flickr account - you can check them out as I get them up on this set: Greece, 2011-02

I’ll update here once I have everything up! There’s some pretty good photos, I think. Joe has his picks up as well, here – be sure to check them out!

While traveling in Greece, Joe also setup a blog and posted extensively to it – you can find it at http://30greece.posterous.com/ – there’s lots of great content there and detail about our trip! I have to say I didn’t post as much here as I planned to because of it, but I really should have linked to it earlier! (I shared it with family and a few people by email.)

We rented some Volkswagen Golfs for the drive from Athens to Nafplion, which was again a fun and astonishingly beautiful drive through mountains and along the coast. And the Golfs were a little more responsive and fun!
Nafplion so far seems like a great city, very clean and there are lots of shops, cafés, and taverns (restaurants) to choose from. Right after arriving, we trekked up to a castle that caught our eye to watch the sunset – which worked out pretty well, except it was closed as of 14:30 (2:30pm)! We still got some great pictures however, and it was still fun to go up there with everyone.

Now we’re off to find some dinner and plan for the coming days – we’re working out the details of our one-on-one cooking day with the chef in Athens, which just sounds like it’ll be fantastic!

Another fun thing we’ve come to notice about Greece thus far is the huge abundance of stray cats and dogs everywhere – but they’re all friendly and cute, albeit often a big mangy and thin. I took this photo of some energetic dogs we came across while driving over a mountain near Knosis.

More to come soon!

It seems like we just got a quick survey of Crete – but still a thorough one! We rented two great, tiny Hyundai sub-compacts for the six of us, with myself and Joe driving – definitely a great way to see the island. It’s pretty quiet this time of year, but we were still able to find some things to do and great places to eat. One thing that has always stuck in my mind about Greece is the iconic, bright, cerulean blue paint used on window shutters and doors, against bleached white stucco walls. It turns out, thats completely true! Especially within the smaller towns in the country-side and along the coast of Crete. I have several good photos of them, it’s fun to finally be met with something that’s been a memory for so long, and a blast to photograph it just as it was in my mind beforehand.

As we arrived in, and stayed in Chania and were leaving Crete from Heraklion, we had a nice drive up the coast through beautiful mountains and villages. We didn’t really get to see any of Heraklion, as we arrived late and all quickly fell asleep – and then woke up bright and early at 05:30 to catch our 08:30 flight back to Athens. It seems like a very big, dense city – and initially it reminded me of Mexico City in terms of the streets and buildings.

Yesterday we drove from Chania to Sfakia, a small town on the south end of Crete. It was a great destination, a really beautiful small Greek town surrounded by the amazing blue water of the Mediterranean sea. We’ve got to head out now – but I’ll post more details soon!

I write this as I’m on the flight from London to Athens, and from there we have just three hours and then we’re off to Crete to start our journey in Greece! Having a half-day in London was a good idea, as doing all of this travel in one day would have been quite a bit, if it would have even been possible.

While in London we had dinner at the Harwood Arms, the only Michelin star rated gastro-pub in London – fancy! It’s definitely off the beaten path, and it took us a bit to find it. Once we did find it, it was a rather nice place with some interesting menu items. There was a dedicated vegetarian menu, with four items, which was handy. Apparently the non-veg dishes weren’t anything to write home about! Three of us had the same vegetarian selections – onion tarts (quiche, really) to start, and roasted field mushrooms stuffed with butternut squash for the main course. Both were great, and rich. After dinner we dropped in at a pub near the hotel to try some local ale, and it was humorously disappointing! We decided that we’re spoiled by Pacific north-west beer.

Once in Crete, we’ll be staying three days in Chania, and one in Heraklion where we’ll be flying out of, back to Athens.

I look forward to Crete! It’s supposed to be just amazing, I’ll try and get some photos up as soon as I can, too. Another long day of travel!

Hello! I’ve set this blog up to post updates from my travels, currently starting off with a trip to Greece. I leave this evening, with a day pit-stop in London, and then to Athens, Crete, Nafplion, and all around!

More info soon – stay tuned for details and pictures as I get them!