Today was a sad day.
Jana and myself are staying at her fathers house near Osnabruck, N.W Germany. We moved all of our belonging's here, ready for are move to Chichester, England, where my motorcycle maintenance course takes place.
This morning we left for the town of Bad Essen, were we have our breakfast followed by a pot of Darjeeling tea.
Once finished we boarded Jana's Ducati, with myself in the hot seat. Jana is very forgiving with my utter discomfort of riding pillion and trust's me enough to take her as a passenger on her machine.
We were riding out of Bad Essen when i felt a familiar squeeze on my right arm, this is our rider/pillion comuntication system which means take the next right. So i turned right and carried on at a steady pace, we were coming out from the village and there were tell tale sign's of spilt oil, possible from a tractor, so i cautiously road around them.
This time of year is my favourite time to bike, in northern Europe. The sun leaves all of the foliage looking healthy and green and to experiance this after a fine pot of Darjeeling is truly blissfull.
We biked around for a while before we reached the main road that would take us back to were we are staying in the small countryside town of Wimmer.
Upon reaching the Wimmer traffic light, we noticed a small que of cars and lorry, we pulled behind them and waited for the traffic to pass through the lights. We didn't move for around 10 minutes, so being a pro active biker i rode over the small patch of green that seperated the main road from the bycicle lane and slowly pursued forward. There was a a very large lorry at the front and once passed him i looked to see what the problem was. It was then that i encountered a horrific sight. There was a car that had been compleatly destoyed by a tree. The 4 wheels had come off and there was glass everywere. The 2 doors facing me had also come off and the bonnet had litrerally been pushed up in to the mid section of the machine. It was then that i saw what i think will stay in my mind for ever. Entangled in the chaos of metal was a man. The top of his head had been shaved by the roof leaving no hair, only blood and his body had become 1 with the car. I felt a dull pain from the depth's of my stomach and slowly kept on riding. The paramedics were not yet on the scene but 2 brave men had got out from there cars and were trying to make sense of the mess.
I rode Jana and myself home slowly with my mind racing at a million miles per hour. We consolled each other the best we could and had the local TV channel on for any news on what had happened. Finally a reporter came on and informed us of a 79 year old man being killed by driving in to a tree. No others were involed and they suspected he might have had a heart attack whilst driving at high speed.
The only sense to come from today is my appreciation of riding a motorcycle. If i am to have an accident i will be thrown from my bike and not live out my biggest fear of all, claustrophobia.
After seeing what we saw today i did some research on the computer on the motorbike death toll in the UK. I found out that in England motorbikes take up only 1% of road users but result in 23% of the road death's per year. The majority percentage of these deaths are due to unforseen circumstances, for example car drivers innability to see us on our bikes and pulling out into our paths. Luckily this day Jana and myself took the longer scenic route over the main road.
This goes out to the family of the man we saw today. May he rest in peace
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