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Friday, August 4, 2017

Guardian Angels Working Overtime


Todd Telin doesn't ride a motorcycle. He hasn't since his bike slid sideways and sent him shooting down a highway at 80 miles an hour.

"That's how fast I was going when I saw the wheel on an old truck beside me in the right lane start to wobble," he says. As he was considering his options the wheel fell off and rolled into the side of his bike.

Image result for old tire on side of road

"If it had hit the front tire I would have gone end-over-end. If it hit the back I would have rolled. That it hit the side probably saved my life." The motorcycle fell on top of him and he started an 80-mile-an-hour slide.

Image result for highway graphic

"I was wearing leathers, but no helmet," he adds, "and while I was sliding I kept thinking, 'Keep your head up, keep your head up." As it was, he slid boots first about 200-feet along the pavement, burning through his shoes, scraping a hole in his foot and taking off most of his small toe. But that was it. The second he stopped, he says he bounced back up.

A friend of his was also on that road, a doctor who saw the wheel, and saw the fall, and thought there was no way Todd had survived. He hit his brakes and drove through the median to turn around and head back to the scene. "By the time he got there I was standing. Adrenalin I suppose," says Todd. He climbed into his buddy's pickup and they headed for the nearest Emergency Room, which happened to be in a small town. There was no doctor there that day.

"Only an intern," says Todd. As they came through the door, a woman in another bed was in cardiac arrest, and the intern was in over his head. "He was scared to death," says Todd. "You could see it on his face." Todd's road rash and foot injuries, while serious, suddenly took a back seat.

"His friend said, 'I'm a doctor, do you need a hand?' and then he jumped in and they saved that woman. So maybe that was the whole point," says Todd.

Both he and the woman lived through it. Even so, Todd says he'll never again climb onto a motorcycle. He doesn't want to push his luck.



 

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