Tragedy last night, 6-30-06, San Jose, CA.

CBR600RR_uel · 07-01-2006, 10:17 AM

bad news and thank God, it didn't happen to me....

but anyway, tonight, my friends from work took me on my first group bike ride through twists and turns through mountains and canyons. there were 6 of us total.

only 5 minutes up the mountain, we begin to go through a few bends. to give you an idea of how sharp the turns were, there were yellow signs cautioning to reduce speed to 30 mph. some, i think are as little as 25 mph.

being the least experienced, i was the slowest one in the group. i was second to last. the last dude was purposely behind me, making sure i was ok. the other four were about 5 seconds ahead of us. in fact, there was an SUV separating the two of us from the four other bikers out in front.

i kept watching the bikes and SUV ahead of me until i lost sight of them as they rounded the turn. all of a sudden, i see brake lights from the SUV. i slowed down and stopped. at almost the same time and on the opposite side of the road, a truck/trailer was also stopped.

i looked ahead and saw my friend face down on the side of the road, his silver cbr600rr totaled. it was basically a head-on collision/sideswipe with the side of the trailer.

they airlifted him to a san jose hospital. i just got back from the hospital about 30 min ago. the report:

-broken ribs
-collapsed lung
-bleeding inside lungs
-broken back
-severed aorta (life threatening)

they are currently performing surgery to repair the damaged aorta.

this all happened tonight, friday evening.

before we took off for our ride, i took a few photos outside the gym where we all work at. these photos were taken minutes before left. the pic which shows the tails of our bikes, shows my silver 600rr (the one on the end) and shane's (the one who crashed) silver 600rr.

i was the least experienced of the group. shane was the second least experienced. he got his silver bike only a few months ago! and now he's in the hospital and that bike you see is totaled.

sorry to tell you guys this. i'm not going group riding for a while.....

CBR600RR_uel · 07-01-2006, 10:20 AM

early this morning, i received a call at 2am when i was asleep.

Shane didn't make it.

he was 19 yrs old. just a few weeks ago, he told me that he was leaving for USMC bootcamp in october. he was a fellow personal trainer at the gym i work at.