Yesterday the surgeon said my fractures are healed, i'm totally weight bearing. Yesterday in pt I tried walking with a cane... it was wobbly, but not as wobbly as when I started with the walker. Now I have to get a cane. I'm cleared to drive. I drove my friends from Chicago to the airport just now, then I went to the bank, then I came home.

Alot to be positive about, which is good, cause there's always something around the corner that'll try and get you down.

That's been a quick recovery, Phil. I'm sure it doesn't feel like it, but the last person I know with similar leg injuries took well over a year to get to this point. Good on ya... a LOT to be happy about.

yeah, that seems like a unusually quick turnaround. You have some serious life to live

Thanks guys, it does feel abominably slow to me, so it's good to get others perspectives on it.

Tonight I played steel in a rehearsal. First gig back from the dead on Monday night.

Saw that on FB. Fucking awesome news, Phil!
You are the baddest of all badasses.

That's got to be diffilcult. Fine motor control on the hips and shins... damn man.

Christ, you know it ain't easy

I can barely do it healthy after 3 beers.

Good on ya, Phil.

great to keep hearing better and better news

cosign

Hey Musicians - stay off of motorcycles, k?

One of my best friends here in AL was killed Sunday morning riding his bike. Proverbial "Other driver didn't even see him" accident.

His wife is at UAB hospital while they try to figure out if they can save her leg.

Huge Bruce, Replacements, O3CGR fan who almost made it with a band, and then figured out a way to make a living playing 5-6 nights a week around here, and custom framing pictures.

We had grown very close over the last few years, and he will be missed.

Sorry to hear it Dave.

Yeah, that's beyond awful, Dave. My heart goes out to you, man.

Read that as my wife, first time thru, & thought Ol' GAR had a Bobby Petrino situation on his hands. Not that there's anything wrong with open marriages, but those would seem to be something for nobody... &, oddly enough, Hegel-O's (& for which I could better see GAR busting Hegel's hipster balls, not partaking himself).

Really really sorry to hear it, Dave.


I maybe ride once a month these days, if it helps. Since I moved locations at work, it's a 13 minute bicycle trip each way, and when I have a rare meeting / class out west I motorcycle it. What's gonna get me is a car -> bicycle accident one of these days. I have to start picking better routes (ie not going the most direct way) to get away from the worst drivers.

Very sorry to hear, Dave.

School starts next week, and I was all worried about how I'm going to make it through a day. Then I read this and I'm glad I have days to try and make it through.

Scariest part is that he was a very experienced rider. Just wrong place, wrong time.

Be careful out there, guys.

I am so sorry to hear about this, Dave.
Much love and sympathy to you and the rest of his friends and family.

I actually witnessed one of those wrong-place-wrong time motorcycle accidents many years ago--late-80's, on the stretch of I-70 between St. Louis and Columbia, MO. It was pre-cell phone, so I pulled off at the next exit and called it in. Have no idea if the rider survived; gave it a 50/50 shot.
Scared me off of bikes forever.

Those accidents that NOBODY could avoid are very, very rare. They certainly happen, but they're not as high as people usually think. There's a shit-ton of humility I had to learn over the last 8 years to finally get that. Following too closely, launching too quickly at red lights, ... there are a lot of little bad habits that one day put riders in a spot where there's (now) nothing they can do to avoid a crash. I had to read about / listen to people who have ridden several hundred thousand miles, over decades, and never have trouble, to figure that out. 99.999% of the time, you actual do control it, it's just subtle and up-front. No, you can't stop a camry from blowing a red light, but that's RARE and when it happens, where was your bike, where were your hands and eyes, how much room did you have, did you already have an escape plan for that intersection in your head... that stuff. Riding safely for decades is a LOOOOT more work than people think.

Everytime I ride (serious here), I say to myself "one day I might get clipped, but today is not that day," and it focuses me on making that come true. I also picture a crash, and what would happen both to me and at home. I get a littile pissed at people who ride without ever really taking it this seriously. Sorry for the tangent. This stuff makes me think. I have to believe there's something different about me and my habits versus people who get killed, or I would have to quit altogether. I have to believe I can get those odds down to "killed by lightning" or else I'm just being selfish.

I didn't take any silly chances, I thought. I felt like I had a healthy respect and was always thinking about escape plans. I just bit it maybe because of gravel on a turn I'd made plenty of times but was still wary of. What do I know? I don't think you can ever get it down to zero, even in a car, but I felt like I was meticulously careful. I don't do things I can't excel at.

At least I didn't die, but I can't claim credit for that one.

I'm not trying to hijack your thread at all, but at the funeral today his dad confirmed two things: 1) There's nothing he could have done about it. 100% the other guy's fault. And 2) He "took a safer way home" because he had a passenger. Truly a case of "when it comes your time to go."

And this dude had ridden across the country before - died a mile from his house when some asshole blew a stop sign and plowed into him.

But make no mistake, Phil - I'm glad this isn't the second funeral of an awesome musician friend I've had to go to recently. Just seeing you in the hospital was hard enough.

A few weeks back in Boise the brother-in-law of my wife's coworker was killed on his motorcycle when a lady ran a 4-way Stop. Total freak accident but the lady was unfamiliar with the area and just drove straight through.