My Uncle Fred described the situation best:

My brother (and yours, or your uncle, father, husband, Brother, friend, etc) Steve, proved once again that there are only two kinds of motorcyclists: those who have gone down and those who will. He “high-sided” when braking to avoid stopped traffic on the NYS Thruway. The accident happened during the morning rush hour yesterday, June 19.

Steve does not recall most of the details except that he believes he hit the pavement at about 50 mph. He was wearing full body armor and a full-face (modular/flip-up) helmet. He suffered no “road rash.” His injuries were limited to impact related trauma: two broken ribs, a fractured clavicle (collar bone), a bruised spleen that required surgery but did not have to be removed, and a collapsed lung that was quickly treated and now seems to be functioning normally.

Steve was able to avoid more serious injury, possibly inflicted by passing traffic, due to the extraordinary kindness of a fellow biker: Kevin from NJ. He was on his Goldwing a few hundred yards behind Steve and saw the accident. He immediately pulled over, directed traffic away from Steve and his downed bike, and along with another (unknown) good Samaritan in a black pick-up, summoned State Troopers, provided them with an eye-witness account, and remained on scene until the ambulance had arrived.

Steve is resting comfortably in Surgical ICU at Nyack Hospital and the physicians appear to be pleased with his progress. The prognosis is for a full and complete recovery — it will just take several weeks or so.

My father’s accident happened this past Tuesday, while my family and I were visiting our cousins up in the cell-phone-signal troubled Adirondack mountains. We kept in touch with my mom and the hospital, and did not change our plans.

My mother was not able to make it up to the mountains, but we met in Syracuse on Friday to meet up with more cousins. We had my Grandmother’s memorial service today in Skaneateles. The weather was beautiful, the service was beautiful, and there was even a ladybug on the minister’s robe – I think Grandma was watching us and enjoyed the show. I had been practicing the closing music on my guitar for a few weeks now, and it came out great with all of our family singing, including my kids.

This past week has been a non-stop whirlwind of events. My dad is expected to be in the ICU for probably another week, monitoring his spleen and lungs, and also maybe operating on his shoulder. Then he’ll spend a few more weeks in the physical therapy center. We’ll be packing up and driving back to Massachusetts tomorrow, and then a whirl-wind week at work trying to get a project released (I haven’t checked in, so I just assume everything is hunky dorey, heh heh). Then the family packs up the car again for a whirl-wind camping trip up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I was only able to get out twice so far on my bike, 20 miles in the mountains and 30 miles in Syracuse. Still keeping up my 17mph average even with all the mountain/hill climbs.