It's somewhere after 4:00 in the morning. I'm on a ride to go visit my girlfriend (at the time). I'm wearing full gear: helmet with full face shield, gloves, leather jacket, and hiking boots with good traction and sturdy ankle cover. I'm wearing stretchy jeans today, which should probably be a different, thicker material, but at least they fully cover my legs.

It's just getting light out. Dawn is coming. The twilight is looming up from the horizon and starting to illuminate the road and surroundings better.

I'm the only one on the road. I love rides like this. I smile to myself as I do a fun little wiggle and breathe in the cool morning air.

I decide that I should test my stopping distance, because it's good to know how long it takes to stop and how the bike handles in the process. The road is my testing ground and with no other traffic, this is a perfect opportunity. I'm doing about 55 mph, and I hit the brakes. Both the front and the rear.

It takes a long time to stop. I notice the feeling of the grip and handle of my tires as I slow down. I wish I could stop faster, and I wish the bike handled better, but I've got the hang of it. I speed back up and continue on my journey.

It's pretty cold this morning, and the wind is cutting into me a little more than I would like. I've been riding for about 45 minutes and I've got another 45 to my destination. I think the scrolling digital bank sign in a town I’m passing says the temperature right now is somewhere in the low 50’s, so I decide to stop and put on my rain suit as a windbreaker, then get back on the road.

Back on the highway again for less than 5 minutes, I'm out of the town and heading back into rural farmland. I'm doing about 55 and have just finished rounding a curve. The foliage here is already pretty thick this time of year. There's a decent distance between the trees and the gravel shoulder, about 50 feet... and what should leap out from them as I watch but a deer running at full speed.

Immediately I hit the brakes.

I blink.

The deer has crossed much of the grass and is making its way onto the shoulder and is on a direct collision course with me if I keep going how I'm going.

I brake harder... and my rear tire starts to wobble.

I miss hitting the deer but lose control of the bike.

 
Luckily, by all accounts, the bike laid down as gently as could be hoped for. It went down on its right side and slid away from me on the road. I don't remember how I disengaged from the bike. I just remember the feeling of the bike shuddering under me, and then the feeling of falling over and hitting the ground. It was sudden and it was hard, but it didn't hurt. I think my eyes were closed because I don't have a video byte of it in my head. And then I was sliding along the pavement with my arms out at right angles in front of me, looking forward at my motorcycle sliding away toward the other side of the road with a shower of sparks flying off it. There was a semi in the oncoming lane which was far enough away to not be in danger of getting involved in the accident.

Based on some measurements in Google Earth, from the point where I started laying rubber to where the bike finally came to a stop was about 330 feet. The motorcycle went down and was sliding for about 215 feet of that. The whole thing - from seeing the deer, to standing up and walking toward the shoulder - was over in less than 10 seconds.

Later when I was looking at the damage to my clothes and gear I found that there were holes through the back of my rain suit jacket and pants, and my leather jacket and hoodie were scuffed and ripped low on the left side, so it's possible that I did some kind of full 360 roll off my bike, touching down briefly on my back side, but I don't remember it at all. I'm not sure how the damage would have gotten there otherwise.

No one had been following behind me when this happened, but the moment I came to a stop on the pavement, I got up and walked to the right shoulder. I didn't want to risk being run over if anyone came rocketing around not paying attention, and I wanted to make sure that all my parts were still working.

When I was sure I had made it in one piece, I looked around and made my way over to where my bike had stopped halfway into the gravel shoulder on the other side of the road. It slid a lot further than I did.

I've experienced moments of fear of imminent death before, but this wasn't one of them. Not a week prior to this, I was riding along on my motorcycle and had just passed a truck in a passing lane and was back in the right lane riding near the dashed line again. A deer shot up without warning over an embankment onto the shoulder just in front of me, but it stumbled and fell down. It was right there next to me, in my lane starting to get up as I passed. Right away, I looked in my left side mirror and the deer had already gotten up and crossed over into the next lane.

Maybe it was surprise more than anything, but my whole body tensed. There was no time to react. No time to slow down. Immediately a surge of adrenaline rushed through me and I just started yelling to myself in my helmet: "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. HOLY SHIT. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. SHIT, Shit, holy shit!"

At a stoplight further down the road, I was in the left lane. The truck that was still following behind stopped in the lane to my right and rolled down its window. The driver exclaimed to me, "I saw that fucker and thew on my seatbelt!" I laughed and agreed that it was a close call.

But in this moment, there wasn't any of that. I saw the deer early. I had time to react. I went into utility mode. I wasn't scared. There was no fear. I felt calm; just going through the motions.

There's a deer. It's running toward the road. I need to slow down. I'm still going to hit it. Brake harder. My tire is wobbling. I'm losing control. I'm sliding on the pavement now. I've stopped. I need to get out of the road. Am I ok? I think I'm ok. Go back to the bike.

The semi was stopped and the driver had gotten out. He hadn't seen the deer, but saw the sparks flying off my bike and didn't know what was happening. He said there was a system installed in his rig that automatically stopped when it sensed an oncoming collision, so perhaps it was a little closer to being involved than it had seemed.

I'm in shock. I must be. I ask the driver.. "Should I call this in? I should call the police shouldn’t I?" He says that's up to me. I think to myself: Can I just pick up the bike and keep riding? No... No I should call this in. I don't know how hurt I am, and I don't know how significant the damage is to my bike.

I call in the accident and they ask if they should send an ambulance. I tell them that my injuries aren’t immediately life-threatening, but I don't know the extent of them, so yes, please send a wee-woo wagon. The wait isn't long for the sheriff to show up. They take our statements, and pick up the bike and move it further onto the shoulder out of the road.

I wait around for the ambulance to show up. It takes a while, and my hand is starting to hurt more as the minutes tick by. My body is starting to shake uncontrollably and I feel cold. The shock and adrenaline must be wearing off, though it is still quite cold out. I call my girlfriend and tell her don't worry, but I was just in an accident. She's very reasonably shaken by this, and I let her know that I'll text her where the ambulance is going to take me.

The wee-woo wagon shows up and I climb in back. The medic takes my blood pressure. Whatever the numbers, they tell me that I have better blood pressure than most of the people they see on a regular basis. That's fun. We chat calmly along the way to the nearest emergency room. I make a comment that I'm glad that I can be an easy call for them. I imagine their job is rather tough, so I'm glad that this wasn't a bad accident where they would have to scrape me off the road.

 
My injuries were thankfully rather minor. If I had hit the deer, it would have been much worse, if I survived at all.. Most of the motorcyclist who tango with deer on the road don't make it out alive.

Lots of general swelling and bruising. I had road rash on my right knee which had taken off a couple layers of skin, and a small friction burn on my right forearm near the elbow. Even though I was wearing a thick leather jacket that was still intact, the friction was great enough that it transferred through it. I got an X-Ray on my left hand and they said I had chipped a bone in the knuckle of my pinkie finger. My left shoulder was hurting, so it got X-Rayed too. I thought they said I had burst or ruptured my bursa, but "Shoulder Contusion" and then later bursitis was the official diagnosis.

It took a month or so for my hand to stop hurting. It was still swollen a week later. I work on a computer for a living. Pecking at the keyboard was a bit rough but manageable until it healed and calmed down. I notified my employer that I was going to be a bit slower at work for a while until recovered and was glad when they were understanding. I still feel an odd pain in my pinky knuckle on occasion, especially when it's cold or I work myself too hard.
The skin on my knee took almost a month to fully grow back. The scar from it is actually very minor now. You'd probably only see it if you knew it was there.
It took around a year to get full mobility back in my left shoulder. It also likes to act up a little on me sometimes, but hasn't been an issue for a good long time now.

 
To add insult to injury, not a month later in June, another deer ran out in front of my Camry and slammed into it. It was totalled as well. Two vehicles wrecked in less than a month. I like to joke that deer really like me and come running out of the woods to tell me hello.

 
I had a towing company move the bike from the side of the highway to their lot. My girlfriend-at-the-time's dad had a trailer, and we went to there the next day to pick it up. I didn't care that I had just been in an accident and left arm and hand were not good, I was already eager to get back on the bike. It started up just fine when I hit the ignition. I tried to drive it up the ramp into the trailer bed, but didn't quite make it on the first try. We got it up there somehow and strapped it down.
 

People say that I was lucky, but it was a combination of factors. The fact that it happened at all would fall into the unlucky category - riding around dawn in a heavily deer-populated area increases risk for these kinds of accidents significantly. I may not believe in "luck" as a force in the world, but a lot of things lined up in the right way where I was able to walk away from this with minor damage:

The roads were dry. It was on a straight, flat stretch. The road was wide and there was decent visibility. There wasn't any nearby traffic. If I hadn't been looking to the right when the deer came out of the woods, I might have been a second further along before I started breaking and would have hit it. I wasn't driving fast. I was trained and had practiced well enough to know to use both brakes and stop in a straight line (DO NOT Swerve & Brake at the same time). My reaction time was swift enough that I was able to slow myself down a lot before losing control. For a motorcycle accident, this was just about the best possible way to go down. And I care about myself well enough to wear safety gear.

Change any one factor and things could have been much, much worse.

All amounts in 2019 US Dollars:

• Wee-Woo Wagon: 1207 $ (reimbursed in full by insurance)

• Emergency Hospital Visit: 5719 $ (reimbursed in full by insurance)

• Towing the bike: 124 $ (reimbursed by insurance)

• Follow-up doctor visits: 190 $ (reimbursed by insurance)

• Estimate to repair the bike (7577 miles): 3612 $

• Value of the motorcycle (Totalled): 3077 $ (reimbursed by insurance)

• Safety Riding Apparel: 383.92 $ (reimbursed by insurance)

Total cost without full insurance coverage (without replacing the bike or gear): 7240 $