I've been lucky as far as wrecks are concearned, but I've had a few... Fisrt crash was my first ride ever on a minibike when I was 7 years old... ran right smack into the back of my grandmother's brick house... broke my nose, my bottom teeth went thru my lower lip, my top teeth went thru my upper lip, and my forehead was road rashed for almost the remainder of the summer... not to mention busted up nuckles and skinned up knees. After that I didn't ride it for almost a year, then I got back on with a whole new respect for these things. What happened was the bike was a brand new Honda QA 50 with a 2 speed 2 down auto trans, I was riding it all day staying in 1st getting used to it and all, then I was getting more confident and decided to crack the throttle open some and the throttle stuck, I panicked and stepped down on the shifter expecting neutral but it popped into 2nd and when I looked up I hit the wall at nearly 30 mph...
After that little wreck I've had a few spills here and there but nothing major... I was also wearing a helmet and gloves most the time and usually practicing wheelies or other dirtbike stunts... I remember I flipped my friend's Yamaha 175 enduro trying a wheelie on it for the first time but I just got up from that one and tried again... I think I was 17 or 18 when that happened... and back then we would think nothing about taking that bike down the back roads in pitch black darkness doing 60+ and hoping no animals jumped out in front of us...
Then I didn't wreck again except for tipping over my dad's old GS 750 trying to turn around too tight on a dirt road... but had a close call or 3 on that one... it was the first really fast bike I ever rode and I was trying to see what it could do on a back road, I could usually hit about 110 before having to slow down for a sharp turn, then one day I went down that road, had the bike just around 110 or so and noticed something different... The road crew put in a culvert and just covered it with road base, by the time I saw it I could only slow down to 80 and it launched me and the bike about 5 feet in the air... I still dunno how I did it but the bike landed back on the road and I landed back on the bike with just enough time to regain control before having to slow down for that turn... New lesson... Ride the whole road first Before opening it up... I really enjoyed that bike back when I was between 16 and 18 years old until he traded it in for a dune buggy one of my friends had.
After that I didn't have another bike to ride on until I went out and bought a used 1987 Suzuki GSXR 750... and since I hadn't ridden in a few years, this bike was just plain scary fast... Nothing like the old GS my dad had... this one would hit 90 in second gear and in about half the time it took the old GS to get there, I think I took it up to 130 or so before getting that fear of deer but the bike was still begging for more... Luckily I never crashed that one but had a close call or 2
Then fast forward another 10 years and my urge to ride came back, this time I was more conservative and got an 84 Kawasaki KZ700 that was in excellent condition, the bike was over 20 years old when I got it, but being garage kept and well maintained it looked like a typical 2 year old daily driver... Very nice, it was still fast, but no where near as fast as the GSXR was... It would top out at around 130 and accelerated nicely but not crazy fast.
By this time I was in my mid 30's and all my friends moved up to cruisers so I was the only one on a sport bike when we went out for a ride so I started researching fast cruisers and when I found out the Suzuki Intruder 1400 was the fastest accelerating cruiser you could get... Not counting the V Rod, and right before the M109R came out, it was the quickest in stock trim so I got one... and still have it.
This one I don't ride like I did the previous bikes, but it's an excellent straight line performer and usually wins the stoplight to stoplight battles with other cruisers and a few unsuspecting crotch rockets... And it can still get over 120 mph when needed. Even tho this is a fast bike I still souped it up and going thru 1st gear with the front end off the ground is an easy task... just twist the grip and let er rip... it'll also burnout all the way thru 1st on dry pavement just by twisting the grip. I really like this one but it's down for repairs (new throttle and sync cables) but progress is slow because I'm always riding the Harley Sportster or the motorized bicycle so they get the most maintenance attention for now... lol
And somewhere in there I also got a Buell Blast for my wife to learn on.. The smallest, lightest, and slowest bike I got not counting the bicycle and I wreck it breaking my hand turning it around in the street.... I was working on it in the driveway and putting it up for the night, at the time the bike had the wrong carb on it, the jetting was right, but the air bleeds were wrong, and it has an accelerator pump that it don't need so it would bog or stumble, then all the sudden it's got Power... I was slowly turning it around in front of the house and feathering the throttle trying to get it to move slowly when I gave it just a tad too much, the bike didn't bog but instead lunged forward... pointing straight at the curb so I let off the gas and grabbed a handfull of brakes, flipped the bike and tried to jump off and out of the way but the bike landed on my leg so I put out my hand to break the fall. I didn't feel it right then, but after I got the bike back upright and went to put it back in the garage I had no strength in my left hand when I went to pull in the clutch. I got the bike put up, then it started to swell and hurt. Went to the emergency room for x-rays but they said no fractures. It was sprained pretty badly and took about 6 weeks to heal and at the time all I had to get to work and back were the 3 motorcycles.
I had to ride the Sportster in every day since it had the lightest clutch thanks to an EZ pull lever I installed a few weeks earlier, but I couldn't grip it, just hook my fingers around the lever and lean back to pull it in and lean forward to release. It took about 4 weeks to heal anough for me to grip the clutch the right way and about 6 to 8 weeks to heal where it didn't hurt any more, and I had a foot peg drive into my toe nail from this wreck so it's still growing out de formed 4 years later.
So in all that... what I'm trying to say is even tho I have been riding for almost 40 years, all it takes is just that one unexpected time when ya least expect it and you're hurting for weeks if not longer.
I still ride more than I drive and I don't always wear full armor everywhere I go, but my head and my hands are almost always protected (the quick trip down the street to the convenience store I usually just hop on and ride, but if I'm going anywhere else, the helmet and gloves are on) as well as I Always wear steel toe boots AND eye protection when riding... they're a LOT more sensative than one might think. It's always a judgement call on what gear we wear when riding but just remind yourself, things can happen at Any time on any bike no matter how slow you're going.
Oh... and one more I didn't mention... One night I was done doing a tune up on the KZ and decided to take it around the block to make sure everything was ok before putting it up for the night, I had my helmet and golves on but since I was in the neighborhood and going under 30 I had the face shield flipped up, never saw it coming but hit a june bug... right in the eye, no time to blink even... That really hurt and my eye was bleeding when I got home... from about 25 mph... and everything was a blur out of my left eye for almost a month. Wear Eye Protection Always when riding too.