Motorcycle Lifecycle: 
The Second and Final Chapter

After reading the first edition of my “Motorcycle Lifecycle,” not one person said, “Hey, I read your Motorcycle Lifecycle!” No one referred it by name and no one really seemed to know exactly what to call it. “I got your…um, your, well…your…thing.” I’m not even sure what it was. It started as a prospective article for a motorcycle magazine, but once I began, I realized it was just a big, fat letter to my friends and family so they’d know my brain and fingers were alive and well and weren’t laying somewhere on the side of the road, or on two sides of the road...
    “Scott, thanks for sending us your book.” (Not too impressive, though. One chapter, 12 pages. First run: 67 copies.)
    “I read your epistle.” (I had to look up the definition in the dictionary. Epistle: a letter, esp. a long one on a very serious subject. Okay, it may be long, but it won’t be serious for long.)
    “Thanks for letting us read your journal…your article…your essay…your opus…” (I liked Opus since I say it so often these days: “O, pus. I can’t carry anything while on crutches except me.”)
    “I loved your magazine!” exclaimed 10-year-old Danielle. (There will be monthly installments of my misfortunes that will keep coming even after you’ve canceled your subscription and moved across the country. Okay, fine. I’ll pay you $3.95 a month to read them.)

Since the motorcycle is now a dead cycle, I considered a new name. “The Invalid Chronicles.” I am indeed an Invalid and this batch of words is a chronicle: “a record of events in order of their occurrence.” If no one remembered the name Motorcycle Lifecycle, “The Invalid Chronicles” won’t last either. Whatever. Let’s just pick up where we left off: Frankenfoot and his assistant Intrepid Jones are wandering through life in the Pain Lane.

These days I am merely Frankenfoot’s servant. I pander to his every needs and introduce him to everyone everywhere, since they notice him before me. He’s a great conversation starter and ender. Once people get a good look at him when he’s been in the “down” position for awhile and has turned purple, they turn green, but not with envy. Metal sticking out of skin registers as pain to most people, but get with it, people! Body piercing is quite fashionable these days. Women everywhere have pierced ears; Britney Spears has a navel ring; I have steel foot pins with a black rod on the side and a green knob on the top.

Frankenfoot does provide grim moments.
• The day I drop my appointment book on the protruding pins. (Is there some way to shove a pain pill directly into the aorta?)
• The afternoon at the grocery store, in the electric shopping cart, leg resting carefully up on the basket, my slick cast lets my leg slip off the basket but Frankenfoot saves the day by grabbing hold of the basket with his pins. (O pus, O pus, O pus!)
• At night Frankenfoot walks in my sleep. The rest of the body is tired, ready to nod off, but nooooooo…Frankenfoot buzzes and twitches and explores new avenues of pain. I hear healing hurts more than the original injury. When a nerve reconnects, the reunion can be painful. (Great, Frankenfoot gets on my nerves all day. Do I need yet another nerve that he can get on?)

The purple toenail polish applied by my friend and resident angel Steph during my hospital stay has given way to black, which matches the hardware nicely. My painted toenails particularly bother North Carolina men. The normal comment is uttered suspiciously, with a touch of venom: “Who did that to you?” They imagine some she-devil with whips dressed in black leather, my aunt Edna perhaps. At one of my cousin’s games, a baseball-capped codger asks through his chew, “Were y’all’s [your] toes polished aftah [after] the injry [injury] or’d [or did] the injry happen ‘cause a [of] the polish?” I say, “They’re rotting from infection and ready to fall off. Shall I pull one out for you?” He spits black goo onto the ground as he departs in disgust. I prefer to wear black on my toes rather than spit it out of my mouth.

I’m learning new things to fear. Same cousin, different game: volleyball in the middle school gymnasium. I arrive early to see the teams warming up. I hobble up into the bleachers, waiting for other relatives to arrive. Twenty volleyballs are flying around the gym, each one a candidate to be punctured on my pins. Remember the booming of bleachers when you’d bound down them in a teenage frenzy? Well, today it’s very, very, very loud and comes from all directions. I make the sign of the cross with my crutches in front of Frankenfoot. Finally relatives arrive, flank me on all sides, the game starts, ahhhhhh, with only one ball. Watching the volleyball game, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, is excellent therapy for increasing range of motion in the broken neck. And it only cost $1.00, compared to official $150 therapy sessions. I’m going to submit my ticket stub to my health insurance for the 80% reimbursement.

Second new fear: I’m second in line at the post office, on crutches and carefully carrying mail, the woman in front of me leaves, I step forward, she pauses, I don’t, my crutch lands on the back of her flip-flop, she steps away, we both begin to leave the earth, but somehow grab hold of each other and remain upright. My heart is beating audibly, sending a new rush of blood down to Frankenfoot, who threatens to explode in the post office.

Most people assume my biggest fear is Getting On The Bike Again and most everyone asks, “Are you gonna ride again?” The answer is obvious. “Well, since Frankenfoot is broken, he isn’t really up to braking and he might get his pins caught in the levers. And I haven’t found a bike that has a place to carry crutches. Besides, my handicapped sticker would blow off the windshield.”

Oh, yes. The precious handicapped sticker. They don’t just give them out at the hospital. Nor do they tell you how to get one. I have to ask Invalid Strangers in the parking lot until I finally find the address of the office that issues them. Get the form at so-and-so office, have a doctor sign it, bring it back, pay your dues. A month after leaving the hospital, I finally get my treasured sticker so I can use those unused spaces we all covet. The second day I have my sticker, I park in a handicapped spot at a small mall near my home. I open the door and the wind blows the sticker off the rear view mirror, out of the car and into the parking lot. Scrapping my vow to never hurry while on crutches, I frantically snatch the crutches from the back seat and chase my sticker across the parking lot. Luckily I spear it with one crutch, about 25 feet from the car. You ask, “Didn’t anyone offer to help you?” Of course not! They all wanted that sticker on their mirror. They hoped it would blow beyond my reach. Headlines read: “17 People Battle in Parking Lot Over Escaped Handicapped Sticker.”

On the home front, Vivaldi the Cat has a midlife crisis. Yes, Vivaldi, named after the composer. Years ago, friends visited and fell in love with Vivaldi. They returned to Texas and got a kitty that looked just like him. They wanted to name their cat after Vivaldi, but they couldn’t remember his name, so they called him Velveeta. He ran away. Big surprise. Wouldn’t you run away if your parents named you after processed cheese? “Here, Velvy, come on, Velveeeeeeeeta!” Very embarrassing for any cat in any neighborhood.

Vivaldi stops eating. He barely drinks. Poor little kitty from a broken home, struggling to make sense of his life in a new state, the State of Confusion. He loses four pounds, a quarter of his body weight. I call the vet. First remedy: add some wet food to the dry and give him a treat. I buy treats and feed him a few before bed. In the middle of the night, there is intense scurrying in the black bedroom. I assume I accidentally bought a pack of treats called Kitty Kaffeine. Then it gets very quiet. I hear a soft crunch. Silence. More scurrying. More crunching. I get it. Vivaldi’s got a mouse. I go back to sleep, Frankenfoot stays up hoping to see blood.

In the morning, I look out across the hardwood floor to see a six-foot square area covered with dried blood, little dark piles and tiny unidentified objects. Did the cat blow up during the night? I shout “Vivaldi!” and he bounds happily into the room. Fine, he’s smiling from his mouse meal. I’ll clean the mess after my morning round of exercises in bed. A half hour later, I notice Vivaldi at the side of the bed, intently staring at something. I follow his gaze past the end of the bed to the blanket stand between the two bureaus and I see a twisted, bent, soggy, shaking, bloody…OPOSSUM! It’s barely crawling, leaning against the wall, broken back, front legs going one direction, back legs going another. (O, pus! O, pus! Opossum!)

Now I’m on my knees, naked on the floor except for my neck brace, trying to herd the poor creature into a black leaf bag with one of my crutches. Vivaldi wants him again. I duct tape Vivaldi to the closet ceiling. Okay, maybe I just dream that. I offer the opossum one of my pain pills. Maybe I just dream that, too. I wish I were dreaming the whole thing. Once the opossum is properly disposed (Whatever that means. It wasn’t listed in my Heloise’s Helpful Household Hints.) I clean the carnage throughout the house: caked opossum excrement, blood up the walls, urine, pus, who knows what. It takes an hour and a half. I wonder what I did in a previous life to deserve this year. Something very, very bad…and very unique. 5000 years ago, maybe I clubbed baby seals to death, perhaps hit them over the head with small children.

Although he is not officially allowed outside, that afternoon Vivaldi escapes from the house. An hour later he appears on the back porch. I open the door to let him in and he has a dead bunny in his mouth. From house cat to Hell Cat, King of the Jungle, in one day. I grab ineffectively with neck brace and crutches, he dodges effectively on frisky kitty feet, tears down the porch stairs that take me 10 minutes to maneuver and remains just out of reach at the bottom, glaring up at me, chewing his bunny buddy. I check my Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for recipes featuring opossum, rabbit and cat meat. 

The neck is still guarded by the brace. Four weeks after IMPACT, I visit another neurosurgeon who checks my X-rays, prescribes isometric exercises and schedules a return in a month. He says the bones are healing well and I only need to wear the neck brace for security. Or sympathy. Although I don’t particularly like the brace, I am apprehensive about taking it off. Hey, I have a broken neck here, you know, the same second vertebra that Christopher Reeves fractured. Deadman’s vertebra. Hangman’s vertebra. Plus a fractured third. Out in public, crutches speak gently but the neck brace screams out a warning: INVALID ALERT! KEEP YOUR DISTANCE! “Billy, stay away from the scary man. If you bump him, his head might fall off.”

I cautiously wean myself off the brace over the next few days, but I need sympathy while returning to the motorcycle dealership for the first time since the accident to request a j$400 refund of extended warranty payments on The Emperor’s New Bike. I wear the neck brace. They don’t even recognize me with hat, longer hair, mustache, and medical accoutrements. They hadn’t heard about the accident and are warm, empathetic. “Why don’t you come into the back room and we’ll talk?” [Translation: “It’s bad business to have crutches and neck braces here in the showroom with the bikes.”] They refund my money, take back unused parts and try to sell me a three-wheeler that has space for my crutches in the back.
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