Highside/Lowside - A Motorcycle Podcast Jan 23, 2026

S11E06: Zack Courts Returns! (And Shares His Crash Story)

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Term

American V8

An American V8 engine has eight cylinders arranged in a V shape. It's known for being very powerful and is often used in big cars and trucks.

Car

Hyundai Kona

The Hyundai Kona is a small SUV that's great for city driving. It has a modern look and is packed with useful features, making it a popular choice for people looking for a practical vehicle.

Car

Kawasaki ZX-10

The Kawasaki ZX-10 is a fast motorcycle designed for performance. It's often used in racing and is known for being very powerful and quick.

Car

KTM 990 RCR

The KTM 990 RCR is a fast motorcycle made for racing. It's built to be very responsive and powerful, making it suitable for track events.

Term

high-side

A high-side is when a motorcycle suddenly flips over, throwing the rider off. This usually happens when the back wheel loses grip and then suddenly gains it back, which can be very dangerous.

Car

Chevrolet C7

The Chevrolet Corvette is a fast and stylish sports car that many people love. It's known for being powerful and fun to drive, and it's a symbol of American car culture.

Brand

Michelin

Michelin is a famous company that makes tires for cars and bikes. They are known for high-quality tires that help vehicles perform better.

Term

hypersport tire

Hypersport tires are special tires made for fast and sporty riding. They have a soft rubber that helps cars grip the road better but don't last as long as regular tires.

Term

Power Cup 2

Power Cup 2 is a type of tire made for sports cars and motorcycles. It's designed to help them grip the road better, especially when going fast.

Term

slick tire

Slick tires are special tires used in racing that have a smooth surface without any grooves. This helps cars stick to the track better, but they can't be used on regular roads.

Term

tire warmers

Tire warmers are special blankets that heat up tires before you drive on them. This helps the tires stick better to the road when racing.

Concept

track day

A track day is when people can take their cars to a racetrack to drive fast and have fun. It's a safe place to test how well your car performs.

Term

slicks

Slicks are special tires used in racing that don't have any grooves. This helps them grip the road better when it's dry.

Term

throttle

The throttle is what you press with your foot to make the car go faster. When you press it hard, the car can speed up quickly, sometimes causing the wheels to spin.

Term

rear tire spin

Rear tire spin happens when the back wheels of the car spin too fast and lose grip on the road, which can make the car harder to control.

Term

slide

A slide is when a car starts to move sideways instead of going straight, usually because the tires can't grip the road anymore. This can happen when turning or speeding up too quickly.

Company

Motul

Motul makes oils and lubricants for cars and motorcycles. They're known for their high-quality products that help engines run smoothly.

Term

300V oil

300V oil is a special type of motor oil made by Motul that helps engines perform better, especially in racing. It's designed to handle high speeds and tough conditions.

Part

Alpinestars race suit

An Alpinestars race suit is a special outfit that race car drivers wear to protect themselves. It's made from materials that can resist fire and is designed to keep them safe while racing.

Part

Alpinestars Tech 7 airbag

The Tech 7 airbag is a safety feature in some racing suits that helps protect the driver if they crash. It inflates quickly to cushion and support their body.

Part

Alpinestars Supertech R boots

Alpinestars Supertech R boots are special shoes that motorcycle racers wear to protect their feet and help them control their bikes better. They are made to be very strong and comfortable.

Term

airbag system

An airbag system helps keep you safe in a car accident by inflating quickly to cushion you. In racing, these systems can be specially made for each driver to offer better protection.

Term

Tech Air 10

The Tech Air 10 is a special airbag system for motorcycle riders that helps protect their hips and lower body in case of an accident. It's more advanced than some other models.

Term

Tech Air 7

The Tech Air 7 is another type of airbag system for motorcycle riders, but it only protects the upper body, unlike the Tech Air 10, which protects more of the lower body.

Car

Suzuki GSX-R

The Suzuki GSX-R is a type of sport motorcycle that is built for speed and handling. It's favored by many riders for its lightweight and powerful performance, making it great for racing and spirited riding.

Car

BMW S1000RR

The BMW S1000RR is a fast motorcycle designed for racing. It's known for being very powerful and has features that help it perform well on the track.

Term

horsepower

Horsepower measures how powerful an engine is. The higher the horsepower, the faster and stronger the car can go.

Company

Akrapovič

Akrapovič makes exhaust systems that help motorcycles and cars sound better and perform well. They are popular among enthusiasts who want high-quality parts.

Car

Renault Modus

The Renault Modus is a small family car that is designed to be roomy and practical. It’s good for people who need space for passengers and cargo without driving a big vehicle.

Car

BMW R18

The BMW R18 is a type of motorcycle designed for cruising. It has a big engine and a classic look, making it great for long rides.

Car

Harley-Davidson Pan America

The Harley-Davidson Pan America is a motorcycle designed for both off-road and on-road riding. It has a strong engine and is built to handle different types of terrain.

Car

BMW GS

The BMW GS is a series of motorcycles made for adventure riding. They're built to handle both highways and rough terrains, which makes them very versatile.

LIVE

Welcome everybody to high side low side season 11 episode 6

My name is Zach and I have not been at work for a couple of months

if you're not aware I had a big old high side at a track day in Spain and

My buddies Spurge and Chase here have told me that they would like to dedicate a whole episode of learning

What it's like to crash your bike in a foreign country to go to a hospital in foreign country and to recover from some broken bones

So we're gonna be talking about that on this episode as well as what you can do to make motorcycling a better place and

BMW versus Harley in the dirt and on the street stick around everybody. It's gonna be a good one engine oil can be intimidating

Should you buy Motul 5100 300 V 70 100 710?

Luckily, you can learn more about each and every type of Motul oil over at revzilla.com slash Motul

And if you're intimidated to change your own oil, for example on that very same page

You'll probably see a how-to video with instructions on how to do it yourself

Whichever Motul oil you choose for your machine

Remember that when you buy your next batch of engine oil from revzilla.com

You can bet a few of those dollars go toward producing this high side low side podcast. That's revzilla.com slash

MOTUL

And when you're over there on revzilla.com just keep in mind that every time you make a purchase with revzilla

A little bit of that money goes back into funding the programs that you enjoy

Whether it's Zach and I sitting here talking with you on high side low side or the shenanigans that people get into

When you're out riding for a CTXP episode or maybe you just appreciate the gear reviews and the product information

Revzilla gives back to riders because that's who we all are riders

So keep that in mind next time you need to make a purchase for your motorcycle from cruisers to sport bikes to adventure bikes and everything in between

We've got you covered at revzilla.com

All right, everybody we are back spurge

You see the smile on this face our bag. Hey, buddy. It's nice to see your face, too. Yeah. Yeah, this is good

It feels right. I mean, I'm I'm recording from home

Which is a little different than usual and I have my

Foot propped up to keep my my surgically repaired ankle elevated, which is important. We're of course going to talk about

crashing and all the things that go with it because one of your

Revzilla co-hosts has had an experience lately

But before we do that search, I've been I've been I've been out for a while here, man

And I feel like we we sometimes do news topics here

We sometimes talk about it, you know the industry and the and the community and what I feel like I missed a lot of stuff

Well, you've missed you've missed a couple episodes of high-side low side

We had Lance Oliver on to talk about Harley-Davidson's we had old Harry Henning. Harry Henning came on to talk about Jixxers

And you know, he played a Jixxer bro once in a movie. So we felt like he was appropriate

Did you guys talk about that? Oh Barry Henning? Oh Barry Henning made an appearance. Did he? Excellent. Okay, cool

But no, it was I mean it was

It was definitely

interesting

Co-hosting with people that have only been guests before I think airy and Spencer and

And Lance did a great job of kind of filling in but it was it was definitely different than having

Those individuals on as like a guest with you and I versus they're stepping into to like an actual co-hosting shoe

But ultimately is what you're saying. I missed you. I think the audience missed you. I think we're all glad to have you back

Don't worry everybody. I'm back. I'm gonna rain him in it's not just gonna be

Spurge shooting from the hip left right and center. I'm gonna keep this guy under control

That's the important thing is like you're not allowed to ride a motorcycle for I mean at least a couple months

So we can't have to worry about you hurting yourself anymore. So hopefully you'll I mean in theory

I'm probably worse on crutches than I am on a motorcycle to be honest and we saw where motorcycle and got me so

But we'll dive into all of that

I mean this entire episode is gonna be a little bit of about Zach

From a centric standpoint and kind of walking through what happened and what we can learn from it as motorcyclists

But Zach did get injured at a at a racetrack and one of the one of the online

Fines that we kind of came up with is that there's some rumors going around

about

Circuit of the Americas the coda track down in Austin will be eliminating public motorcycle track days

After 2026 now, this is hot on the heels of streets of willow

in southern, California will also be

sounds like eliminating public motorcycle track days and

pit race

Outside of Pittsburgh is actually shutting down and they're going to tear out the racetrack and apparently build a data center

For artificial intelligence, which is what we all need more of

So I guess the trend so the trend here is a lot of race tracks that are like that are that are closing their doors to

There's a lot a lot of talk about no motorcycle track days here. No more racetrack there that kind of thing

And I think a dark perch it sounds dark and as Zach and I were talking about this

I think it's a good point to note like we do a common tread trends article and one of the points that I made

In there is that without people buying motorcycles

There's a lot less new motorcyclists and therefore less people to advocate for things that we like

And I think it's easy to sit back and say well, I don't do track days

So I'm not worried about it or you know, I just like to go ride my motorcycle

I don't want to have to advocate for it

But you know as we can see as this begins to as motorcyclists begin to dwindle

There's not people advocating to go do things that motorcyclists like to do

So you have a track like Kona that says hey, you know

We think we can make our revenue doing car track days and we don't need to do motorcycle track days anymore

As a potential example, so I guess I'm trying to find the positive in the new year and saying

You know, we as motorcyclists if we all went out and just got one new friend

Interested in two wheels and by the end of 2027 if every motorcyclist

Just got one other person into motorcycling

We could double the amount of motorcyclists in in America and I know that that's a lofty goal

But like maybe something maybe we could try

We could try be the change you seek in other words spurch, right?

That's what you're asking people to do is sort of like the the the more the more the merrier and the the

More the stronger the band is right? So you're sort of like you want people to to to sort of like

Step up and be good ambassadors for motorcycling so that we have more motorcyclists so that other people's motorcycling experience is not diminished

Yeah, so like for example for example at Revzilla. We're partnering with the MIC for bringing moto intro days

To a variety of locations across North America this year. We will be at Kota

I believe we're gonna be

there's a location in in

Georgia we have like a whole list that we're putting together and it's our way of saying hey

If you're moto curious if you've never come out and ridden a motorcycle before

We're gonna provide the motorcycles you sign a waiver you get like a 30 minute intro with just the basics, right?

Like just little programs like that and I would be interested to like from a high-side low-side audience perspective

We get a lot of emails and messages from people that are like, I don't even ride a motorcycle. I like listening to you and Zach

Because I'm interested right and and God help you

I'm so sorry that Zach and I are the ones that you have to you know turn to for that

But you know, I think for us like I would be interested in hearing from the audience members out there if you're someone that is

Moto curious, but you don't actually ride a motorcycle and you listen to the podcast

What would be what's standing in your way? Like what's what's the things that you need to overcome?

So that maybe we can sure think about that and and help to address it. That's a good question

So if you listen and you don't ride tell us what you need as for the

You know moto intro events where people can come who are motorcycle curious and learn a thing or two

I haven't seen any invites in my inbox for that spurge

And I'm guessing it's because they don't want the guy on crutches to be at the moto intro event

Yes, that's not like the look that people that were going for right? Is that what you're telling me?

You're you're you're not a good ambassador at the moment

I had no idea that me being out of the industry for

two months here

As of the recording of this podcast had caught have reached such havoc, you know

No, like I I crash break my ankle next thing, you know

Kota's closing public track days and I just had no idea that I just got back doing before you crash

You were actually at Kota doing a track day for a trackwriter episode and I did not crash

I'll have you know

everybody just to be clear I always talk an area about this and

we were talking about your zx10 crash and

Which was years ago, but but area was like Zach doesn't crash often

But when Zach crashes he crashes big

And I think that is the perfect transition. Yeah into okay what we're gonna talk about today

I will say for those of you that are interested in a moto intro event check out ride with us comm slash events and

It will have the events listed as we're determining the dates. So I just to round out that

We will we'll put the url up on the screen and if you are moto curious

Maybe there is a ride intro event that you could check out in your neck of the woods and don't worry. I won't be there

Let's talk about that crash and big nice

Zx10 what what memento zx10?

What memento is hanging in the Revzilla West studio to commemorate that crash Kawasaki gave us the rear wheel from the zx10

What does it look like we can well we can put a picture on screens if you're if you're if you're

Watching or listening on YouTube or or Spotify to the the video of this you can see the picture of the rear wheel of that zx10

Which was pretty mangled yeah, that was that was a that was a weird one man. I mean that was like a

You know it was I think second gear top a second gear on a zx10

About to shift to third gear like coming out of a corner and you know trust in the trash control and

I mean this is years and years and years ago trash control was not as good back then

and

Maybe I was trusting it too much or something. I don't know but

But yeah, that one got away from me and that was that was probably maybe my fastest crash

That's probably I don't know had to be 80 miles an hour something at least I don't like almost you know

5-digit revs in second gear. That's probably

That bike probably goes 100 miles an hour in first gear, so

That's probably going 80 or 90 or something. Anyway, I was a big high side

And I would luckily did not I bruised my leg pretty badly, so I limped around for a while

But in general I was I was walking later that day and I was okay, but that was a

that was a big one but

That crash differed from this one because that was sort of like a hard on the power

you know with a

100 and

Whatever 170 horsepower 180 horsepower or motorcycle

You know pushing a lot of power through the real rear contact patch

Trying to manage the slide and it got away, you know got away and flicked me over that sort of like I

Don't know it's the high side that you imagine I think or that that that is easier to have because you're sort of flirting with the edge of

traction in a way that you think like okay, well, I am risking it a little bit here whereas

The crash on that I had in this KTM press launch

It was just sort of like middle of a corner and then the back end snapped around and I didn't I

Wasn't on the on the gas super hard. I wasn't doing anything super crazy, you know

One of the questions I think I had for you

And for the audience's sake, you know at the time of recording, you know, Zach you are at home

You have had a surgery on

Your ankle

But other, you know, you are recovering nicely

Thank you, you've been home for I mean, I'm not saying that I'm asking that as a question

I'm not telling you how you're doing

But it seems it seems like through our conversations like you're home. You're comfortable

You're back at desk duty with work

And so you're on the mend is probably the way we would describe it. Is that appropriate?

That is appropriate and I suppose, you know

Maybe maybe we should back up and just sort of like describe the whole situation as it happened

In case anyone's right. So I went to the

world press launch of the KTM 990 RCR, which was held just outside Seville, Spain

at the Seville circuit and

There's a there's a first ride review actually published on first ride video on the KTM 990 RCR

I was able to get most of my work done before I crash so you can watch the video for what it's worth

Anyway, I was riding around

The the racetrack there in Spain and I went through a right-hand corner third-gear right-hand corner

lost the rear end of the

Bike that snapped sideways and kicked me classic sort of high-side thing

Flicked me down the track ahead of the bike. I landed as far as I can tell on the back of my head

and then

which kind of hyper extended my neck and cracked a bone in my C7 vertebrae and then

The rest of me hit the ground and I think I don't actually know

But I think my legs and feet kind of slapped against the ground

As you can imagine if a person sort of landing caddy wampus on the on the side of their head or the back of their head

Their legs would slap against the pavement and I sprained my left ankle as far as I can tell and I broke my right ankle pretty badly and

cracked a couple ribs

Ended up tumbling into the gravel trap and then was put in an ambulance was taken to a Spanish hospital

Was in the ICU for a few days

Where I got all these diagnoses about my broken things

And then I flew home and had surgery on my ankle and have had follow-up appointments for all of the other injuries

That's sort of a basic rundown of what happened. Well, there's a lot to unpack there

So I think my first question is

You're at the Sevilla circuit in outside of Sevilla Spain is that correct?

That's where you were that was a track. Yeah

You had a successful few laps around the track. Do you remember like what session you were in that this happened?

Not really. Well, it was like it was near the end of day. Like I said, I'd already recorded my

Review

So it wasn't like the first session out like you had time with the bike

Yeah, I was like cool in the morning and sort of like first couple sessions were good

I had ridden the track once before at the Pentagon EV2

launch, which was in February of 25

and

so familiar with the circuit had been there earlier that year and

Yeah, warmed up got up to speed felt like I was riding pretty well understood the

Understood the track pretty well

I feel like I was you know and the for the way these things work is you do the way I

Approach them anyway is like you get

Usually five six seven sessions like a normal track day except it's you know, it's private

It's just for journalists to test the bike and see how it's going

So every time I go out and I try something different. I try different setting

I try different trash control settings. I try different ABS settings. I tried with throttle maps. I mess I fiddle with suspension

If I feel like that's necessary. I'm testing the limits of the bike

I'm also testing if I feel like it's comfortable for people of different sizes that kind of thing

So I had done most of that work, you know

Over the first four or five sessions. I think it was session number five or six or something that it was in

So it was like in the afternoon. I think there was only one more session after the one that I crashed in sadly

So I had gone I had done most of my work and I was I had yeah, just done

I had just done a few fast lap or kind of like hot laps testing

Something or other. I know probably electronics and then I was slowing down. I was sort of like rolled I had rolled out of it

I was catching up. I saw like a friend on the track and I was catching up to them

And I was like, I whatever maybe we'll do. Well, maybe we'll play tag for a couple laps or something just

For the heck of it. I could see that he was slowing down too

So I was like, I don't know maybe we'll just take have some fun and ride around together

Which is fun to do with with colleagues and friends at a track day

and

Yeah, so I was sort of like I was like, okay, I'm not I'm not like trying as hard as I need to anymore

I'm like slowing down now

And as I tip through this right hand corner. Yeah, just back in back and came around on me

Was one of the things that I remember from the daily rider episode

Was that you were testing or you know, traction track track track rider? Yeah, track rider as we call it

Trust sorry, I'm trying to remember like if we called it a daily rider if we called it a track ride

I think we just called it a first ride video didn't whatever it doesn't matter. Um, there's a lot of things that we're testing here behind the scenes

Over as well as you can tell we haven't flushed them all out yet

So you I remember in that video you were talking about

Testing out different levels of the traction control. Yeah, what do you remember about the accident?

Were you still like going sans traction control? Did you have traction control? It was on was on. Yeah

I think it was on level two or three or something. Um, and uh, what does that mean for that bike? Oh

Yeah, good question. I think they're

nine eight or nine

Levels of trash control. That's stator nine being the highest. Yeah

Being like the most intrusive and the most conservative and then, you know, three two one being the least conservative where you can get the most slide out of the bike

I hadn't had a lot of slides from the tires

And uh, the tires were pretty pretty good traction. So the tires we were on were michelin

Uh, I forget what they're called. They're called like track day track day slicks or something like that

Basically, it's kind of a cool concept. Michelin has like a hypersport tires. It's called the

I don't remember. I'm sorry power power cup or something like that. Um

We can probably look it up and

Keep talking I'll find it but it's the it's the hypersport tire that's sort of like, you know

It's a sport bike tire with like not very much tread on it that that comes on the

I think comes on this ktm as a street for street homologated bikes, right? It's a street legal tire. That's like

Um, relatively soft compound, but it's very much a street tire, right?

The power the power cup two power cup two that sounds right. So so then there's I think there's called like there's a power cup

Evo track day. Okay, that's the power truck power cup

Slick or something like that. The point is it's basically a street compound. It's a hypersport street compound tire

They just don't put any tread in it. So it's a slick

So it's not legal for the street because there's no tread, but it's basically hypersport compound. It's not like a

And the reason that matters is that it's not a tire that you need to put on tire warmers

It doesn't need to be hot hot to be

Safe to use on a track. It's kind of a cool concept. It's like take this track or take this tire to the racetrack

You don't have to have tire warmers. You don't have to have

Stands you don't have to have a generator at your track day to like keep your slicks warm

But you can have slicks on your bike and it's like

Theoretically they wear a little better and it's like a good track day tire. So I like in general. I like the concept

um point is

street compound tire

slick tire and uh

And like I hadn't had a lot of slides all day

I like tried to test the traction control but eventually you bump up against your own limits

And you can't really just like stab the throttle and like, you know, you don't want to do anything stupid

You want to ease into it?

The only slides I'd had were like a little bit kind of awkward and snappy kind of like the back end

It was like hard on the power and the back end stepped out a little bit, but it wasn't something I felt like I was

you know

Uh doing very well for for new riders. Can you just explain when you're saying a slide?

Can you just give us like a 60 second synopsis of like what you're trying to get the bike to do?

Uh, right. Well, so you you can imagine like, um, you know, if you've ridden

Yeah, if you've ridden in the dirt or

Anything like that you you have surely experimented a little bit with like, you know

hitting the throttle hard enough that the back tire spins, right?

And then the and then when the back tire spins it tends to

Unless you're going perfectly perfectly straight perfectly upright. It tends to

Step out a little bit, you know

The rear tire spins, um

It will the rear tire will step out to the right of the of the left of the sorry of the front wheel track

Um, and that's the same concept you're working with on a slick tire on a track day

You're just like you're leaned way over and your heart on the gas and you get these little slides these sort of smears where the

back tire starts to step out

of line of the front tire you've we've you see professionals do this all it's you know

MotoGP riders are sliding sideways in the world superbike whatever their smoke pouring off the tire at a professional level

I am not that good a rider. So I

Have to ease up to that edge and and do my best to test the electronics of the motorcycle safely rather than just sort of like

Chuck the thing sideways because I'm not quite that good a rider. So that's what I was trying to do

um, and um

And yeah, I hadn't had like some tires. I want to pause for a second for our audience's sake because um, I

Had some private conversations with some ktm reps that said that you were actually

Quite professional in how fast you were going and you were uh challenging some of the

Potentially ktm test riders that were there and they were very impressed with your riding. Oh, well, that's good. I'm I

I'm sure they were impressed with my riding until they weren't up until yeah up until a certain point

Yeah, no, I was having I was having a good hair day. I like that racetrack. Um, and I I was I was um

Was one of the faster riders there. So like yeah, I'm I'm I'm a I'm a

I'm a relatively skilled um

A track day rider, you know, I I raced in in my younger days and I've spent a lot of time on racetracks and a lot of time on

Different race bikes were old vintage ones and new fast ones and blah blah blah

Um, so yeah, I'm I'm probably more adept at trying to slide a motorcycle and test track control than most track day riders

Um, but I'm not at the level of the point is of like a professional

Rider that you see on tv

So I have to be a little bit more cautious and for the audience to say what we can do is we can we can include some

Some moto america footage or or something to the like to kind of show

Um, I think it looks like someone slides the motorcycle. Yeah. Yeah, and I think we actually might have some of the clips from

From the track rider episode as well

But I think we can kind of showcase that a little bit to show what zacks

I'm referring to so it sounds like

You're you were coming around a right-hander

Um, it sounds like it was a high side like for the incident itself

You know, what do you remember?

You know, do you a good question? Is there anything that you recall or is it all just kind of blank to you?

No, you know those you know those like, um, if you imagine like a like a teen

Rom-com or like sort of like a teen comedy movie like a sort of now you're talking my language

What do you want to talk about which one which one I'm just as a genre if you're imagining a sort of like, um

uh, uh, not

especially well-produced

um, movie about

I don't know a person having a memory

You know those like movie scenes where it's like blurry and like, you know

Imagine someone's like waking up from a dream or they're or um, you know, they just I don't know

They were and orlando bloom is there

All right. All right slow down. Stop. Stop. Stop. So

That's basically what I have is these like weird vignette memories like I have this sort of like blurry hazy

Uh memory of like opening my eyes and seeing a gravel trap sideways, you know, like as I'm laying on my side and like

And um, and then I remember getting put in the ambulance. I remember them cutting my leathers off me

Um, did you move at all or did you just lay there? Did you know that you were hurt that you shouldn't move and yeah?

Yeah, yeah. I in fact, I don't remember making that decision

Really, I don't remember being like I I should not move. I just remember opening my eyes and being like, whoa

I'm I'm not

Of sound to mind, you know, um, and I don't really remember anything

I remember

I remember the bike going sideways. I remember it kicking me up in the air and I remember

The airbag going off

At least I'm pretty sure I remember wearing you were wearing a tech 7 airbag. Exactly. Take our 7x. Yeah

And when you say you remember it, did you remember did you hear it because I know they they pop so loud that you felt it

Yeah, no, I felt it. I just I remember feeling the airbag go

And like, you know, to all this sort of like tight

It's just, you know, it's really really quick, right? It's whatever

It's like three thousandths of a second or something like that and it inflates

And it sort of pops under your leathers and I felt like my my shoulders my arms and my chest like I felt it get really really tight

and I remember thinking

Uh-oh

Because you know when an airbag goes off and you're still in the air

that probably means

It's not all going well. You've got something that you shouldn't have done. Right, right exactly

So, yeah, that's what I remember. I remember that I at least I'm

I hope I haven't conflated that

But I'm pretty sure I remember the airbag going off and thinking like oh

And then I remember sort of like waking up in the gravel trap and being like, whoa, this is not good

and then people picking me up and helping me in the ambulance and like I said letters getting cut off and then

Um, I don't really remember much about the ambulance ride

And then I was and then I was in the hospital

I was um, I was going back recently and doing some research for a common thread article and I was rereading some

Old peter egan stories and there's one where he was talking about how he got caught in a snowstorm

And he kept he was able to barely make it back and finally he had to pull over and he said one of the places

That you don't want to be as a motorcyclist

He's like you every now and then as a motorcyclist you find yourself at a place

You don't want to be and that place is you know in wisconsin in the winter time on the interstate when a blizzard is rolling through

And I would imagine that like another place you don't want to be

Uh as a motorcyclist is floating through the air is having an airbag

At a track day and feeling the airbag off. You're like, I don't I don't want to be here right now. Yeah, exactly

And this isn't good. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, uh

Yeah, it reminds me of um airy

The other day I went into the toolbox and I got the magnet the magnet on a stick

You know the little magnet that has like the telescoping little rod that you and I picked it up and I started walking

Toward I was working on a bike

I was working on a saddlebag on a bike and airy said like oh

You never use the magnet on a stick when things are going well

And I was like correct. So that is true

I do need help. Well, I would imagine another place. You don't want to be um as a motorcyclist is

Uh in a hospital in a foreign country where you don't speak the language

That's actually this all happens. Yeah, and now all of a sudden you're coming to

You be I'm presumably you don't remember too much of the ambulance ride

But what I would assume you probably start to remember now is waking up in a Spanish hospital

Yeah, yeah, well, yeah sort of coming to and being in a Spanish hospital. Yeah

Um, yeah, I think it was this is an aspect of it that like wasn't particularly interesting to me at the time

or you know, wasn't taking up a lot of my

of my my head space, but

It is an interesting thing, right like

especially for motorcyclists you can

get hurt

In a foreign country and then end up in a foreign hospital. We talked about this a little bit in our um recovering from a crash episode. We talked to

Our our buddy luke there who ended up he was like ended up in a hospital in columbia

Yeah, right was it columbia? I think and he was like, I'm not in there like we're gonna take off your legs and he's like

Yeah, he was like, whoa want to go to a different hospital. Yeah, exactly. I don't speak Spanish all that well, but I'm sure

Um, yeah, so luckily my situation wasn't quite as bad

Um, but there is you know, one of the things that I found really interesting about it. Well, there's a couple things first of all

Being in a hospital in Spain

made me realize how

Out of my element. I am in a hospital in the united states

You're overwhelmed anyway, right like you're in a situation where you've had a trauma. Um, and you're not necessarily

You're

You're a little bit shaken

When you're in a hospital no matter what and also unless you're in the medical industry in the medical field, you know

Unless you're whatever a radiologist or a doctor or surgeon or a nurse or someone who understands

um the medical

field

Then you're you're you're always a little bit on the back foot, right?

Because doctors always coming in they're talking to you and you're sort of like I get I think I know what that means

But you're using some jargon and like

Like how long do I take those drugs and like what wait? So what's in the IV? You know what I mean stuff like that?

You're always like a little bit unsure and so being in Spain doing that

I was overwhelmed a little bit, but also I was

Not as overwhelmed as I sort of like thought I

would be in retrospect

Because it's kind of the same experience whether the people that are speaking Spanish or they're speaking medical you're you're already kind of like

Uh, what do I yeah, okay? Like I guess you guys are taking care of me and especially if you're the one that's hurt, right?

Yeah, right exactly. I mean you're not you're not all together like I've been

Uh, I've been in a few hospitals recently for you know helping my mom through some stuff and like

She is oftentimes like just looking at me being like to the doctors like you talk to him because I'm not

I can't focus on this and I would imagine yeah situation

You know, I know that you were there with some reps from ktm like even if you did speak the language

It's more like you were probably out of it. You know trying to figure out

What was going on, you know overwhelming no matter how you no matter how you slice it, um, which I thought was kind of interesting and um

And yeah, I I guess

I found myself in a similar mindset as I would have been in an American hospital, which is sort of like

These people know better than I do like I all I know is that I'm hurt

And that I need help

And like I don't have any faculty. I don't have any

Ability to move or do anything for myself. So kind of at the mercy of these people and I guess I'm

Going to paddle the same direction. They're paddling because I I I

I don't have a lot of choice except to trust them

So to some extent, you know one of the questions that I have for you specifically in this area is

You know, and I've I've had a lot of subsequent conversations with our bosses

Here about like what could we do differently next time?

You know specifically around the hospital part of it and like one of the things I know that we are prepared with

You know, and I used our trip to india for example like for those of you that don't know

You know, there's special insurance you can get when you're going to do at-risk activities and for zak and I

we both have

The the Garmin trackers and we have the at the at-risk insurance through the through the garments

Garmin it's in reach in reach. Correct. Yeah, and

And when we went to india specifically because we were going about 15,000 feet

We had to get special insurance for that that would cover us if something happened

They would come up and they get you and they evacuated out

But what I know what he means by come and get you is there's basically

You can call a helicopter or you can call an area ambulance air vac

And they will come and they'll pull you out and that's what the insurance covers

But what I never thought was all good

But it takes it is they don't fly you back to america

They fly you back to presumably an indian hospital or a spanish hospital

And you're still in this situation. So I guess from a learning standpoint like I've you know

As somebody that's gone to india with me like I felt pretty good when we were there, right?

And we were in a couple of situations where we're like

If this mountain collapses, this is not going to be good for us. Let's get let's get off of this mountain

But like

At the same time we probably felt a little bit safe because we had these buttons that we could push and they were on our body

And we knew that the the helicopter were coming at us. But like

What I don't think I ever thought of

Was that the helicopter is going to take us back to one of those hospitals where it's like this is probably not

Where I want to be

Did you have those moments and how did you work through that and like what was that like for you?

Yeah, I mean, I'm still not sure if I made the right decision, right like

Well, I mean I feel good about the decisions I made

but

And even all the doctors in spain were fine with the decisions I made

But ultimately they came to me with a piece of paper that said you need to sign this piece of paper

That says that we can cut your ankle open and screw the bone back together because that's what needs to happen

Your your ankle is broken. There's a bone in your ankle

It's broken and it's displaced and it needs to be put back together and then screws need to be run through it to hold it together

and

I and I was

You know

My first instinct which is ultimately the instinct I followed was I want to have surgery at home

I want to have surgery in los angeles where I live

and

I don't think it was born out of a huge distrust in the

Ability of spanish surgeons like people in spain know how to do surgery on ankles. They're not, you know, it's it's a it's a whatever

It's a first world country. It's like, yeah, it's I didn't have any

It was just sort of I think it was like a it was a feeling that I had that I wanted to be

Closer to home when I had surgery and ultimately that's what this spanish surgeon told me. He was like, yeah, I get it man

You know people want to have surgery near where they live

So that you can go home after surgery and not, you know, like so fine, but or even being able to communicate

With what's going on, you know and making sure that you know, I would imagine that's part of it too is like, you know

Yeah, from an easy communication standpoint

Yeah, I mean, I was lucky the the the surgeons that the the surgeon that I talked to about my broken bone in my neck

And the surgeon for the ankle

Both spoke pretty good english. Um, so definitely enough to kind of get the point across

Or get the points across. Um, so that was okay, but you know

ultimately what I learned was that

The surgery that I had on my ankle should really happen sometime in the first three weeks and I ended up having it done

after

Two weeks and five days

And if I just had it done in spain, it would have been done a lot sooner

My my if I had had that surgery done in spain my ankle would have been screwed back together

something like

let's see

A week and a half sooner it would have happened

Three or four days. I think after the accident happened instead of two and a half weeks after the accident happened

And I don't know yet if that matters

for this injury for my healing

Maybe I got much better care at the the surgery center in los angeles than in what heaven spain

I don't know. Maybe I would have gotten better care in spain. I don't know. Maybe my bone would have healed better

If it was

Put back together sooner than later

No one's told me the answers these questions and I don't know if we'll ever know but

it's certainly

A stressful and difficult situation

To be in when you have you know, you have to make that call and as you point out

If there's a sliding scale, you know, like you might be

Like where our where our buddy luke there was in that like village somewhere or whatever

I think I remember him saying that he was in a hospital. He was like, I'm not even sure if this is

Like there's like a straw roof. Am I in a hospital? I'm not even sure and and so those but that wasn't the experience that you had

Right, like you know, I was in a private hospital in civil in a city in spain. It was like it was a nice hospital

It was clean everyone was great ever

I mean, it was awesome. It was it was a great place to be as far as I can tell

So like I said, maybe it would have been better if I just got the flip in surgery in spain. I don't know

but

but those decisions are

difficult and

much more difficult when you're flat on your back staring at the ceiling and you can't move and

and you

You know, you're like hooked up to machines and your drugs in you, you know, it's like

Is there anything you would leave the audience with like

And I want to I want to talk about the transition from the hospital home

But like as you're thinking about this your takeaway is your learnings like you're better

It's a year from now

And you're going to do a track day in germany or you're going to do a track day even just across the united states

Maybe you're going to go back to vermont and do a track day

Somewhere

Closer to where your dad lives and like you're no longer going to be, you know, right outside your front door

Is there any takeaway that you have that you would say to the audience member?

If you're planning on doing a track day or an event, maybe you're going to go do

You know a a six day ride through the alps with you know, edelweiss, right? Right. Yeah, yeah

What should people have what should people be thinking about?

If they are going to be you know in a situation where they potentially could get hurt, you know

In a different country or miles away from their home, right? Yeah

I think

We we talk about this on the podcast sometimes about riding motorcycles and perhaps we'll talk about it more in this podcast

But I think that it's healthy to ask yourself how you would feel if something went wrong

Whether that's riding down a mountain road 10 miles from your house

And you're like looking at the guardrail and you're looking at the cliff next to the road and you're sort of like

What happens if I make a mistake here?

Maybe it's I think I think I would argue it's healthy to ask yourself that question

Because that will help guide you in your

demeanor and your etiquette in your and in the way that you ride down that road like

This is not a place to make a mistake. You know what I mean?

and I think

broadening that

Mindset is a good thing to do if you're going to go on a on a ride with your friends on edelweiss tour or like a

Yeah, some sort of sport tour adventure ride and you're going to ride through austria and and and

Croatia and switzerland and slovenia or whatever then ask yourself

You know, how do you what's going to happen if I if I

Hurt myself in one of these in one of these countries along this ride somewhere

And I haven't always asked myself that question

But I think that's a I think that's a smart thing to do because I think the answer to that in your own head

Is going to be really different if you're like i'm going to ride in the swiss alps

And so I might end up in a hospital in switzerland or if you're like

I might i'm going to ride across the australian outback and i'm going to be 400 miles from anything

Like that there's a huge difference there, right?

And it's not that the medical care in australia is

worse than the medical care in switzerland as far as I know, I don't know but like

the the the

the style of ride that you're on or what you're up to is

That changes the the the tenor of the conversation inside your own head as does the country you're in as you pointed out

you know spiritual I think I think it's

I think it's only fair to admit to ourselves that

If you're like, well, I might go to hospital if i'm in and i'm in germany or I might go to the hospital in

I don't know

Now i'm now i'm feeling guilty about naming a country that I don't trust

But I think without doing that you know what i'm talking about right there might be some places where you're like

I don't know if I feel comfortable either

you know with the

You know speaking the same language or i'm comfortable with the medical care or whatever

So I think that I think that's my my main piece of guidance to sort of like ask yourself

How cautious you feel like you need to be and how much homework you want to do ahead of time to mitigate

Any of those problems, which is not frankly not something I did

Before this ride in spain, you know, it's a track day in spain. I've been to the track before I've ridden a track before

I've ridden the motorcycle before I've ridden lots of motorcycles before and frankly that is a place where mistakes can be made in my opinion, you know

So I I not that I was being blasé about it

But like I I felt comfortable in the situation and ultimately I was comfortable with the care that I received but um, it's certainly

It's certainly shaken my

It's shaken my own mind up a little bit on how I'll approach it next time. Yeah, I think it's interesting even with like

You know we go and do get on a venture fest every year, right and that's out in South Dakota

and

You're remote. There's obviously

local hospitals

You know, I know I think it was airy. Did airy

Break an ankle yeah, he busted his foot. Yeah, I think he brought a bonus foot bonus foot one year and it's like

You know, there's certain accidents where they can come back for them pretty easily

But I'm just like, you know, okay

So my you know, I know that you've got a wife and child at home and you know, I'm thinking about you know, okay

So you get injured you get injured in a situation where you can't easily fly home

You can't get a direct flight out of out of you know, rapid city

So how are you gonna get back and then like all of a sudden you have a van out there and your bike's out there and like

Now you have to get that back and your wife's at home with the kid and

All these things do cross your mind and I think having

Some type of a

Of an escape plan or a strategy or something in advance should be should be something that you know

You you you aren't sitting there living in fear, but you at least have an idea of like, okay

If something does go wrong

This is the plan for how to deal with it

Um as part of your your strategy for planning a track day or a trip or a tour or anything like that

Yeah, for sure. Well

To pivot a little bit one takeaway. I would love to

Pass along to people also

Not that it is

necessarily that important having a forgiving wife

Yeah, she's your partner wife. Does that come later in the podcast?

Yeah, maybe

yeah, um

Spurgeon

What do you think? Well, maybe you already know the answer to this question because we've already talked about it come to think of it

I can but um, so if you were going to show you you're great at that

If you're going to guess how much it costs to go to

an icu for three days and

A stay in a hospital for two days and have x-rays and mris and cat scans and opioids and

food and care

In a hospital

in civil

For yeah, three days of icu and two days of hospitals day. What would your guess be for how much that would cost?

I'm just going based on

America and some of the bills that I've seen on the america. I would have guessed

Six figures based on the american healthcare system. So a hundred grand at least that would that would be my guess

Yeah, I think that's like

Yeah, even if it was half that even if it was 50 or 60 grand that's like, yeah

I think would be a decent guess. Well, it was

around $10,000

For all that

Chavang it sounds like you should have gotten the surgery there too. I know this is I mean it's funny

Like I know you're kind of kidding, but like no, no, no, I there was um

There was an article I was reading uh in a in a financial magazine and they were talking about um

medical tourism and how medical tourism is growing because

There's certain countries that are really good at certain things like you can go to

I forget if it was like holland or something and they're really big and like knee replacements

And i'm screwing all this up, but don't sure whatever but like my point was like, I remember um, I have a really bad right knee

And when I was originally meeting with the orthopedist, um, they're like, listen, we don't do knee replacements until you're 45 years old

You know, we just don't do that and I remember being like, I think that's kind of ridiculous that

At 39 I have to wait another six years before

I can get the relief that I need for my knee where I can go out and run again or whatnot

And so it's it's interesting where I'm like, oh, I could also just fly to

XYZ country right and pay $14,000 out of pocket

And just get a new knee and get a get a seven day vacation out of it. You know and then like

Just got to fly back when I'm done. Yeah

Well, I was I was served at one point in the in during my convalescence. I've been served, um

An article maybe it wasn't like apple news or something. I don't remember where it was

but the headline was like

I ended up in the hospital in spain and

This one fact shocked me, you know, like some yeah one of those click click baby

You know, but like having just ended up in the hospital in spain

I clicked on it because I was like, I wonder what you're what the big takeaway was and the big takeaway was how cheap it was

That was the thing that they couldn't believe they like ended up, you know in the hospital

And like when when the time came to pay the bill, they were like, what how do you which I think

But let me ask you a question because I know that you did have some hiccups were like

They weren't sure if they were going to accept your insurance. They did ask you like, hey

You need to sign this certificate that you would be willing to pay

You know, there were a little bit of like

International waters you had to navigate. Yeah, for sure. I mean the the payment was cheap ultimately, but it was or you know

it was relatively affordable, but

it was

Different in so much as I had to pay up front

For some of it. Yeah, like they literally wouldn't admit me until I had a notification. I had a

Letter from my insurance that said that I was a covered member of their plan and they would cover

my care or

I gave them money with a credit card or cash or whatever

And so that's something that you get back to your advice, you know, that's something that you could theoretically

Premeditate a little bit is you could

Get proof of insurance or get proof of care

from an insurance company

I don't know if you can do this, but

some sort of blanket

Proof of coverage if you're going to go somewhere so that you're you're just saying say like to my insurance company

I'm going to Spain if I get hurt there. Can you

Can I have some documentation that shows that I am a member of your plan or whatever?

So so you woke you woke up in a Spanish hospital

You're they're they're asking you they're asking you for money

You weren't there alone, right? Like I know chris from chris philmore from kcm was was there with you for a little while

I know your dad your dad ended up flying

Yeah, I was alone there for a day or so because kcm folks left

The day after it happened

Understandably because that's when everyone was leaving so like I really blame them for that

And then my dad showed up

A day later a day and a half later or something like that

So I was I was there alone briefly

But my my dear old dad did show up and

In shining armor

He was he was on vacation in France as it happens. So I texted and I was like, hey, I'm in I'm in a hospital in spain

Are you busy and he was like, well, we're gonna go home in a couple days

But I could just come hang out with you and so my my dad came and hung out with me and your dad's no stranger to

Racing on a motorcycle track. So he he he got me into this whole thing. So really he owed me. It's his it's his fault

I blame I blame timco

So you you're there you you make the decision that you're not going to

Get the surgery in spain. Yep. Your dad is with you to help navigate travel

You know, what were some of the considerations for for getting home and then you know

We'll we'll maybe take a pause from motel and then get into some of the post crash recovery from back home and and how that went

What was your question? How did they get home? Yeah, so like your dad's there you're navigating the hospital

You decided you're not going to get the surgery there. What what considerations did you need to make?

traveling with a

fractured neck

Broken, you know broken ribs broken angle, you know fractured ribs broken ankle

I don't know I got well

Well, and you had and just to be clear too to paint a picture for the audience

You had broken one ankle but also sprained the other so it wasn't even like you could hobble on one ankle, right?

Like yeah, I had crutches. I could move on crutches a little bit

but

Yeah, wheelchair kind of like wheelchair was so much better

Um, and luckily there's wheelchair services are readily available in almost every airport and from almost every carrier

And air france was kindly helped me with a wheelchair

In civil at from civil to paris um

And uh, yeah, so that worked out. Okay. I I did want to get I wanted a

I wanted the nicest seat I could afford for the flight back because I've I ended up flying

civil to paris and then paris to lax which is like an 11 hour flight with

You know, I wasn't in a great I wasn't in great shape

But also don't you have to keep your foot elevated and there are certain considerations with the surgery and other things?

Yep, so they gave me yeah. Well, so as you know our our our buddy tim who uh, who were

we are

secretly trying to

Convince to be on the podcast at some point and introduce you all to him

But he I'm secretly hoping that he can like adopt us as his surrogate children at some point too

Yeah, he's only got he's only got three kids. Come on tim. I mean, what's two more? What's two more? We're potty trained

so he he helped me with

With uh

getting um

Getting some extra care from for through his connections with delta, which was very nice of him

And yeah, I had to stab myself with uh, a syringe every 12 hours

I think for with a blood thinner in the heart, right? Like just like in in that rock

in my tummy in my tummy flab actually, um

Yeah, this the Spanish doctor said do this every 12 hours so that you're because you're there's a danger for blood clotting

um, and so it was on a blood thinner

Medication and so yeah, there's there's a lot to a lot to juggle a lot to worry about and again

It's one of those situations right where you just have to sort of trust the doctors that they're giving you know

They're giving me this medication and they say this is what I should do

And uh, I fortunately had some consultations from outside the country with um english-speaking doctors from friends

That helped me through that. Um

but

Yeah, I mean

You know, ultimately I was super lucky, right? Like my dad came to help me

Well, first of all, I ended up in a good hospital as far as I can tell

second of all

Uh, my dad came to help me

third thing I had friends

that helped me um

and with connections to doctors and uh and other uh, you know medical personnel that gave me advice, um

And I was ultimately treated quite nicely by the airline

So like these are I pulled every string that I could because I was

You know not in a good not in a good way and I say pulled every string people offered to help me

Which was super lucky and it was a work. It was a work. It was a work

Right, and I was working so that's making some of the some of the financial impact a little bit better

But and even in even kudos to our our cmo. Steve and our ceo. Zach like when I originally message them, they're like

Do whatever you have to do to get the boy home. Get him home. You know send send air force one send air for get get this guy home

Right. Yeah, so I had a lot of support which is which is uh fortunate for me. Um, and I you know, it's not like I can

Tell you how to do it from that standpoint. You just have to uh

Get a job in the motorcycle industry

Make sure you have a company credit card that'll cover all your motorcycle accidents. Exactly. Yeah

Yeah, I know but I think that answers like like it takes a village at times

Right, and I think that's one of the things that is maybe a little bit scary for people getting into motorcycling to begin with

Right, you know, yeah, one of the one of the complaints we've heard about motorcycling is like

I don't know who to go ride with I don't know

Yeah, exactly people are people are lone wolf right people in these situations people are often

They're like, well, I don't have any riding friends like none of my family does it

None of my friends that I just sort of do it on on my own and that does make it a lot harder

You know my my situation is a lot easier from that standpoint. Um, so I think that's a fair thing to

um to consider

but but yeah, I I

I think that

One of the reasons that we decided to talk about this for the over the course of a podcast was to um

You know like

Bring to light or talk about some of the things that might be

scary or weird or um off the radar

When you are riding a motorcycle or you know, if you have an experience like, you know, breaking a bone or hurting yourself

because

There's a lot of stuff I didn't think of

When I like when I needed to get through get home get

Through all these, you know jumped through all these hoops. Um

And you're right ultimately spurred, I think, you know

that the having having help from people from from

In my case co-workers, but in general friends and um

And family that's like pretty important

So I want to take this opportunity to say like I think part of what I'm interested in for this episode

Um is to hear from the audience like like it's it's one thing as we break this down from zack's perspective

Um, if there are any of you out there listening that have other little anecdotes to add

About like what your situation was or an incident that you learned from

Yeah, questions. Yeah, or questions is another good one. Um, feel free to leave them

On facebook or spotify or shoot us an email the high side low side at revzola.com

We are going to take a quick word break from our sponsor motul

And then we're going to come back with some of the uh the post crash recovery

With uh with zack and uh get on with the show

Physical health mental health and of course the gear I was wearing

It's hard to believe that high side low side has been around for 10 seasons

It's truly remarkable to take a minute and look back and see how far we've come

So much of which wouldn't have been possible without the sponsorship of motul who has supported us since season three

Not only has motul been an amazing supporter of this podcast and motorcycling in general

But they've given me free reign to come up with wacky ads as I see fit

They never balked when I referred to a Stallone classic over the top to let folks know that their oil tasted like

Or when I researched neon green drinks like the fuzzy leprechaun and hammered hulk to drive home the dangers of confusing their

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For everything they've done to help us make it through 10 seasons of this podcast

And for everything they do for all motorcyclists out there

We thank you

Okay, so we are back

Talking about zack post crash from the ktm launch in severe spain zack

One of the things that I I think was eye-opening for me and through my discussions

It sounds like it was a bit eye-opening for you was

The severity of the broken bone aspect here, you know, I think for myself

You hear, oh, I you know, I broke a bone and I've broken bones in my toes before you know and like

They just they heal. I mean toes are resilient

I mean they they were like, do you want to even have those worked on?

I was like, no my toes on my right foot are just like wonky now and I don't care

Um, but it sounds like with this particular bone in your ankle like

It was pretty serious and it wasn't just like, oh, we're just going to stitch you up and you're going to be fine

Like you're facing some serious, you know potential risks to recovery and and what was that like for you?

And maybe could you speak a little bit of that to the audience?

Um from how that played out for you

Um, yeah, I mean, yeah, I guess I guess like I guess

You know

I'm not going to say anything that you don't already know dear listener, but

You know, not all broken bones

Are created equal, right? Like they don't uh

They're sometimes it's complicated. Um, and uh, yeah, this is one of those ones, you know, like I broke my ankle and um

And the doctors in spain were like, you know, this is a pretty bad break and you're going to need to have surgery on it to

Put it back together and I was kind of like, okay

But I don't think it was until I got back to the us and talked to the surgeon that ended up fixing my ankle

um that I appreciated

That this bone

In my ankle, um

Which for what it's worth. I believe it's called the talus bone

um, which is sort of the central bone in the middle of your

ankle where your tib fib come down your from your leg and kind of connect to the ankle

um as far as I understand it and uh

It doesn't get a ton of blood flow. So there's their concerns about vascular

activity and not helping the bone heal

So even when they screw it back together and it's one piece now, it's sort of like not a guarantee that it will heal

properly, um

In fact, it can not heal at all and the bone that has been broken can just like

Die and collapse and then you don't have an ankle anymore and

You got to have it

Fused or you got to have an ankle replacement surgery or

Uh, yeah, it could be really bad. Um, and

Uh, I think there are two there are sort of two simultaneous

You know trains of thought or um

Emotions around this for me anyway, which is like

one is that it's really

hard to be hurt

When you've been hurt before

Because you know how long you know that the road is long and it's

tough to come back from and it's uh

Like you know, it's not going to be fun basically. Um the story we often tell in our household. My wife has had my wife played

um division one college sports and she

Has had seven knee surgeries now in her life and the most recent knee surgery she had

was uh number years ago and she

Came back from the hospital after having her knee surgery and she was sitting on the couch and she was just like really bummed out, you know and

And I said something like

Your knees fixed now like they did the surgery and like now you just get to heal like this is so good like now

From now on you feel better and better and better and like so

You know try to have your chin up and like feel good about the fact that you're getting better

And you're gonna be better sooner than later, you know

And she basically said

I know what it's like having knee surgery you idiot

I'm not sad because

I don't know

What's next or anything? I'm sad because I know how long this is gonna take

And I know I know what I'm I know what I'm facing right now

And it's really hard to be excited about that

Um, and that's something that can hit you right out of the gate

I tore my hamstring a couple years ago riding dirt bikes with airy and

And like on the van ride home. I was just kind of like bummed out

All right, not even he like found me on the side of the trail and I was bummed out and he was kind of like

you know, uh

Are you okay? And I was like, yeah, this is just gonna suck for a while

And he and I on the van ride home from that dirt bike ride. We're talking about how

When you've been hurt before you have an appreciation for like as soon as you get hurt, you're like, uh

It's sort of like the feeling of like

You know, you're like driving down the highway and a rock comes off a semi and like hits your windshield and cracks it

And immediately you're like son of a like now I know I got this like phone calls

I gotta make and it's like things I have to pay for it's like

It's not even the fact like you're not hurt and the windshield is gonna be fine

You just you know, what you're facing which is like all this homework and and like stress and money and like you're like

Damn it. You know, it was funny because your wife was one of the people that when I hurt my knee the second time

You know, she was one of the people that I talked to because I was like, hey, they want to do this oats procedure

And she's like, oh, I've had those

Yeah, and she's like she had one she's like, uh, it doesn't always work

And like you should and like that was part of like my decision to either get it or to not get it

And like yeah, she was she really kind of helped walk me through that but it's yeah

I remember the first time that I had I busted up that knee and then the second time I did it

I keep I keep hurting the same knee and the second time was a was a pretty gnarly

off-road crash and

I remember laying there just being like I don't want like I don't want to deal with this

I just don't want to deal with this, you know

Yeah, and so that that that sort of vein of

Of emotion is tough and if you

You know, whatever it happens it happens when minor injuries happen too. You're just sort of like this is annoying

I had that is the point and then I also had this thing where the surgeon

was like

You know the surgeon said

This is a life-changing

Injury that you have there like and he gave me all this data

Like did you realize it at that point like before before the words came out of his mouth?

Had you realized how severe it was? No, I don't think so. I don't I don't think I really understood

I think I sort of thought like

I I felt like I had seen x-rays of the it was a it was a broken bone that it was displaced

But it wasn't like shattered like no one was using words like like shattered or pulverized or crushed or anything like that

It was sort of like yeah, you have a broken bone in your ankle and I guess

maybe maybe just the sort of like

confidence I have in modern medical

technology or whatever sort of like you have a broken bone in a joint

you

It it heals and then your joint works again, you know

Not that I was completely blind to the fact that I might have

It might be arthritic or painful or whatever, but you know when talking to the surgeon, he was very clear about like

This might not work and this is the surgeon back in america, correct? Yeah, exactly that ended up working on it

And I appreciate his candor because he was giving me

Scenarios, you know, he wasn't just sort of like yeah, it should be fine

And then in a year have it be like, oh, yeah, did I not tell you this might not work?

And I would have been like what the heck man, you know, he got it. So I appreciate that he served me with all the information, but it was

It was

I don't want to you. What's what's right word? It was

Extremely difficult to hear him talk about

my ankle

in a way that was sort of like

This really just might never be the same again. It really just might not ever work

the same ever again

And I'm a person who like, you know, I played sports my whole life. I played college sports

I I a lot of my identity is rooted in

in being uh

Adept and athletic and um, I'm definitely more of a jock than I am a

Smart person if you will and so I I don't

it's really really difficult for me to think about the fact that

I might just like never be able to do some of the things that I've always done in my life, you know

How did you wrestle? How did that?

How did that play into the mental portion of your recovery?

um, I mean before the surgery, I think it was especially hard right because there's like

Unanswered questions about how the surgery will go and then unanswered questions about how you'll heal and etc. etc

layered on top of this

rhetoric from the surgeon which is

Yeah, I don't know man. You might just be kind of pooched here

Uh, which that was that was really hard. Um, and also you're just like

Not in a good space in general like you feel

Helpless you feel useless you feel like you can't

You know do regular everyday things. Um, like it's not your I'm not looking forward to going to sleep

I'm not looking forward to eating

I'm not looking forward to showering

Like everything is just hard and not good and I need help and hurts and

Yeah, it's just so you're already not in a good headspace and then

You're you're staring down the barrel of

Of uh, yeah, someone telling you that like and to be fair, let's be let's like put this in perspective too

We we did an episode. Oh, yeah, we did an episode last season

with people who

Lost limbs. Yeah, had

Third-degree burns over most of their body and they lost limbs and like this is not that bad

So I'm not I'm not I'm not pretending that this is like no, but I think it speaks

But it speaks to the sliding scale of like yeah, and I think this is really important because I think

You know Zach and I were talking about this in pre-production for this episode

And I think to the point of the episode we shot last season

Where it is motorcycle accidents to the extreme

Yeah, you know, I think that's almost harder for people to relate to

Where you can listen to someone's story and you can feel empathy for them

But in the back of your mind, you're like, I'm never going to have to deal with that

And and it almost allows you to disassociate the risk, but

listening to

Someone like yourself who went and did a track day as an experienced track dive rider

Had a host had a high side

Was wearing the appropriate gear which we're going to get to here in a second

Yeah, and still

Is in this life altering injury state

It might not be that you're going to lose a leg

But you might not be able to play soccer anymore

You might not be able to go for a run with your with your son

Like there are certain implications that might change the way you live your life. Yeah, and and I think that

Dear audience

Is potentially almost more relatable

Because even with something which seems as benign as a broken ankle

It had

All of this implication on how you live your life and how you do your job and you know

You know, you're sitting here right now and I think it's important for the audience to know like

You can't ride a motorcycle again for a little while

And so you're trying to figure out like what desk duty operations you can do and luckily high side low side isn't a physical requirement

You know, so you can kind of come back here and shoot the s*** with us

But like it it it is something that perhaps if the audience is out there listening

Maybe this is something that is more relatable because it's not to the extreme of what could happen

But it still does affect you

Mentally and physically and there has been a recovery process back

And I guess if you had to take away for the audience on the mental side of this

You know, if you had to do it again knowing what you know now

Is there anything that you could

Say that might make it easier or is it just something that people would have to go through?

Yeah, it's part of it right is is having to go through it

And I've gotten a lot of messages from people from from acquaintances friends

Um and people that I don't even know saying that like oh, I had this experience and this is how I got through it and you know

Um that kind of thing and so, you know, like I said, it's not a unique thing that I'm going through

As far as having to navigate this is probably a good time

Let you know that I wrote you a get well card. Um, and I just I never mailed it. It's still on my desk

But I want to show it to you right now

Um, I look at all those words you wrote for me. Yeah, I I dated it 11 15 25

Uh, and then I set it on my desk to mail

And um, and I haven't I haven't but it says recovery takes time and it's a snail and a turtle a snail and a turtle

I see that and and um, well, yeah, send it to me. I'm gonna I'm gonna mail to you. Don't worry. It's gonna be like an early

Christmas card at this point. So

yeah, um

Well, yeah, I to answer your question about like, what do I tell people to get through nothing that I haven't said already

Honestly, I think it's just it is the kind of thing that it's important to consider, you know, like and as as we're, you know

We're gonna we'll get into this um in a few minutes here

but

You

You're never

faced with exactly what your

Challenges are until you get to them

so it's impossible to

Look into a crystal ball and ask yourself the specific questions

You need to ask about a specific injury that you might have in the future because you don't know what that's going to be

but it does

it is important to

To to ask yourself if it's worth it because this kind of thing can happen and as far as I'm

concerned sitting here. I'm you know, I'm

Still grateful and optimistic about my life. Um, but

It could be different and it's I think it's an important thing to ask ahead of time if you can, you know

and going into this situation, right like

You weren't you weren't doing something you shouldn't have been doing

You weren't being reckless. You weren't riding without the appropriate gear. You were wearing

Uh, correct me if I'm wrong here, but you're wearing a custom alpine stars race suit with a tech seven airbag

Uh, you were wearing alpine stars super tech r boots. That's not about right. So like

One of the questions that popped up on a recent social media post

I think pat McHugh day was like, I want to know what gear zack was wearing that didn't save him like you were wearing

All this all this stuff. You're wearing top of the line. Yeah all this stuff aside. I mean I was wearing I was wearing a

I was wearing a

I was wearing

Technically, you know, I was wearing I was wearing a publicly available

airbag system

You know, I was wearing a

Yeah, sort of midline airbag system that any old person can buy but aside from that I was

Pretty much wearing like what a professional racer would wear, you know, and I for those of you that aren't familiar with the airbag systems like obviously if you are

Mark marquez, you might have a more custom

Tailored airbag system. Yeah for yourself. Those guys have those guys have they have some version of tech air 10

I think which like covers their hips a little bit

And so like I didn't want to say right out of the gate that like I was wearing what marquez was wearing, you know

But like kind of oh, I mean almost

So for those of you that aren't aware the tech air seven

Is the newest in the tech air line and it's basically a step above the tech air five

But it stops short of the lower body protection around the the waist and hips with that the tech air 10 provides

um, so

Realistically considering your injuries weren't to your your buttocks or your hips

You know the the tech air seven

Gave you as much upper body coverage as you would have had

With the tech air 10 and then my point is that like you were wearing

Everything you could possibly want to be wearing for a track day

Yeah, I mean I could theoretically have been wearing a more expensive helmet

but

I don't really have a lot of qualms with the work the helmet did

Like I don't which helmet was it was it a 60?

Uh, no, I was wearing an r1400. I was wearing my daily rider helmet

And I would to be to be clear. I would normally have been wearing a track day specific helmet

Most like I would have been wearing um

Something probably with rotational protection like either um a 60 or a uh

Alpine stars. Yeah helmet

If left my own devices, but I was recording audio and the r1400 is a much quieter helmet

It's designed or you know, we've designed the one that we have

Or had designed the one that I had uh for um for the best microphone quality

And so that's why I was wearing that helmet, but it's the helmet that I trust 100%

I mean I wear it around all the time. I think it's a I think it's a good helmet. It like it fits me well

I think it's high quality um

and uh

And I don't have a lot of problems with how what it did to my head

I just certainly don't blame it for the broken bone in my neck. Um

And I ended up with a couple cracked ribs on my left side

I can only assume that that would have been a lot worse if I wasn't wearing an airbag

I don't know

I think that's the takeaway here, right? Is I don't have you know broker collarbone

I don't have any hurt damage to my shoulders, you know, nothing to my to my chest or back

Aside from the the small injury to my ribs, which honestly hasn't hasn't been that bad. Um, so yeah, I I

You know, we you never know with the crash, but

I certainly feel like

You know, if someone was sort of like do you think the airbag helped or would you been fine doing that with no airbag?

I I I

I believe that it helped a lot

I believe that I would have been much worse off without it and and to to that point

um, I think it bears uh mentioned for the audience that we have

You you have sent off the airbag to Alpine stars one of the one of the benefits of the Alpine stars airbag system

With the the technology that is baked into it

Is that you can send it back to Alpine stars and they can pull all the the crash data off to help paint a better picture

So not only, you know, were you running a camera?

You know while you're filming, you know for daily rider or for track rider

Uh, but like that it doesn't show much

So being able to paint this picture of it'll be interesting to see what the data says when you get this back from Alpine stars

Yeah, and we will we will follow up on that

Uh in a future episode. Yep. Yeah in a future episode. We'll follow up

With anything we learned from the data

Um that I get back and of course I'm fortunate

We are fortunate because we are in the motorcycle industry. We have we have access to

Some some engineers and some

Data analysis at Alpine stars that not literally every Alpine stars customer is um

Has access to but we the what we're gonna try to do not to pat myself on the back

What we're gonna try to do is help you learn from my mistake

Or well, I think it's interesting because like we like even when pat and I you know

Go through and we we get to download on all the new tech air stuff

That's coming out for like the pdp reviews and we go out and we ride in it like

We don't intentionally crash in it, right? So there's certain things we're like, oh you get all this data back

And we're like we're gonna take your word for it. Um, but now thanks to you

Yeah, you're welcome, you know, we're gonna get we're gonna get to see how this actually plays out and hopefully it'll inform

You know future reviews as well as we will share it with the high-side low-side audience

In a in a segment in a future episode once we have that information

Zach, I know on high-side low-side we've talked a lot about and not just high-side low-side

I know that it's an ethos that we both believe in that

You know track riding is a very safe place to ride a motorcycle. Yes

And track riding you're not dealing with cars or pedestrians or

Animals wildlife. Yeah, usually. Yeah, you have a very

Safe place to practice going fast on a motorcycle

and in

inevitably

There's probably going to be people out there that are going to make a comment about

Oh, if you weren't doing a track day, you wouldn't have had to worry about this and track days aren't safe or oh, you were going too fast, right?

Talking to

The insurance companies that that kind of called me and had some questions like that was one of their questions

Like, you know, oh, should he not have been doing this and like trying to explain to people like what you're doing and why you're doing it

And how you're doing it

Has anything shifted for you and I kind of feel like I know the answer to this but like

You're wearing all the gear

you're at a racetrack and we've

Often said like riding a motorcycle on a racetrack is a very safe place to test test your limits

Anything that you would want to leave for the audience or anything has changed from a perspective with this. I don't know a few things I guess

That come to mind

You know years ago

college roommate

Was sort of like

Loosely into motorcycle he was into motorcycles a little bit like not as into it as I was but he was into it. He had a gsxr

When I met him and he had had like a one of those sport bike before that his first bike and

and

He got into club racing. I was club racing

in college and he got into it

and he got an sv 650 and and uh

Started racing and did you know bought bought the best gear he could afford and um, you know

But went about it in a way that you would

Expect a person to do or you know hope a person would do it

Long story short. He low sides in I think a practice session

And it's like pretty innocuous crash. I don't think it was like that big a deal

but the bike slid into the air fence ahead of him and then he slid into the bike with the top of his head and

compressed his spine and broke his back

Pretty badly. He's he's he's walking and talking now and he's okay, but it required a lot of titanium around his

spine and and surgery and like it was a really really nasty injury. Um, and

I've been thinking about him

more lately because

this crash that I had

I do feel a little bit hard done by it

Engine like

You know from the standpoint of the universe and like it's important to remember that the

Punishment doesn't always fit the crime, you know, like you don't it's not like

Oh, you're doing something really stupid. Well, you know, yeah, you broke your collarbone. That's that's what happens when you do that

Sometimes it is that right like sometimes. Oh, yeah, like I got hurt and like well kind of sir

but like what about friggin um

Our buddy, uh, jeff can I read there? Didn't he break his tib fib like in the paddock?

It's like he'd like jeff over at zero miles an hour jeff and I were so my buddy jeff and I on my 40th birthday

Uh, we went out and we did a local hair scramble or a timekeeping enduro race

And we were finishing up the last test of the day

And we were literally coming in

off the trail

riding through like the the parking area

To like line up for like the last little like around the parking lot and then we're done

he came out of the woods

And there was like a random piece of plywood on the ground and he went over the plywood

the wheel spun out

We were going five miles an hour

and

He he broke his he broke his ankle and like multiple places

He was out for the entire season had a really rough recovery like didn't ride a motor couldn't ride a motorcycle for almost a year

I mean, he was wearing like he's wearing good gear too. He's wearing a moto boots

Jeff's where he was wearing like

I think the garnier 12s like

500 600 dollar motocross boots. He was wearing knee braces wearing neck braces wearing a full rig wearing

You know, uh, so yeah top of line leot helmet like just everything you could possibly wear and it was just like

It was a freak accident the bike slid

He went to put his leg down the way the bike was sliding on this random piece of plywood. It just

Snapped his leg. Yep. I got a message from someone who said

I broke my my leg so so bad

I stepped wrong coming down the stairs from

My patio or something. Yeah, they're basically like I just stepped wrong on the stairs and fell

And I had to have surgery and plates put in my lower leg and you're like, oh my god

And so the point is and like and I'm wearing everything like yeah, and yeah

so, yeah, I think I think that's a it

It's it's important to remember that like

You don't always get the

You don't always get what you give, you know

But even when I've had crashes where I like walked away and I'm like, wow, that was lucky, you know

So like I just you never know is the point when I was talking about, you know, my second knee injury

I hit uh, I was I was racing off-road and I was trying to do a narrow area

I hit a tree and I hit the tree in a way where it stopped the bike

And I went up and over the handlebars and my right foot

Caught on the handlebar and it tweaked my knee backwards

And um, I was wearing knee braces. I was wearing full $800 knee braces

And uh, somebody said something to me like, oh, I guess the knee braces didn't work

And it was very similar to your experience in the fact that I was like

I can't imagine how bad this would have been if I wasn't wearing knee braces, right?

Because I was able to eventually walk away and I was able to recover enough where I didn't I I

Ultimately decided not to have surgery. I can't run the same way anymore

Um, and eventually I'll probably end up having a knee replacement when I hit 45 or I go to holland

But like it is one of those ones where like

How much worse would this have been if you weren't wearing an airbag or if you weren't wearing $700 boots or $600 like

Yeah, I know that's I mean my ankle broke really badly. I was wearing $650 boots and you're sort of like

Would it have been like what what what better what I could have been wearing better boots as far as I'm concerned

Yeah, and I don't like would have been a lot worse if I was wearing cheaper grab your boots

Or like maybe maybe it was just been the same because like it's just the same

You're like you just never know but I think spurred to answer your question to get back to sort of where you're going with this

which was

You know, what does the future look like and what's the outlook look like?

I don't really know

I don't know if I'll feel different about like maybe when I go to the next track day and I'm like leaning through a corner

I'm just gonna like not have

I'm not gonna be able to

Like to pull the trigger the same way. Yeah to trust the bike or trust myself or even though I just don't think that there was

I mean, that's that's that's like ultimately

To get back to the crash itself

I don't know what went wrong

I don't know what I don't think I made a really big mistake

To be honest, I don't think and I don't think that

Like it was a warm dry day on a nice new racetrack on a new motorcycle that has lots all the safety features

um, I don't like

I'm not sure where I would end up going if someone said like well, you have to blame something

Yeah, like it has to be some piece of equipment or some environmental thing

You know, I I don't really know and then that's like that's that's one of the hardest things about

This crash for me, you know mentally and looking forward to sort of like

How do how do I?

Yeah, how do I um

You know, uh

Bring bring myself around to to feeling okay about it except that it's what I've always done

And I think I do have faith in in myself and in general and the equipment that I ride and I try to be

measured about stuff, you know

So I I think I think it's going to be I'll be really interested to see what happens when I get on a motorcycle for the first time

Am I going to be just like overjoyed to be back on two wheels or am I going to be thinking about my

You know my family and you know, I think I think it's going to be a blend of those things and um

and unfortunately for me, I'm

Pretty much unemployable for any other job. I think so. I think this is all I got

I gotta that's fortunate for us though. I mean for the high-side low-side audience and for me

I'm lucky to have you in this between a rock and a hard play situation

Um, you know, it's interesting that you mentioned the not knowing and the mental aspect of the comeback. I remember

I had a very simple crash on a track with the with the ninja 400 and I low-sided and I knew what I did

I was like the the track was cold. I was heavy-handed and enthusiastic to like, you know

Probably hit things a little bit too fast right in the first session of the morning

And I I knew what I did

and mentally

I was able to put the bike back together and I finished at the last three sessions of the day

But mentally I was so unstable. I was like, I just didn't I lost the faith in myself and that that track day was actually a warm-up to go

down to barber

and and do a

Press ride for the new

1000 rr, right, which is like a pretty serious motorcycle

Yeah, and I and I had only ridden at barber once before and I'm not nearly at at the level that you're at from a from a track perspective

Regardless and so

I remember that was probably one of the hardest press events that I had to do because I had just crashed a week earlier

I was mentally in my head about it

and

You know, they're putting you on a 200 horsepower, you know

Rocket ship and I was just like it was a really it was really hard for me mentally and I really struggled with that event

I really struggled with coming back to track days from that and that's when

That was in a situation where like I knew what I did

I knew what went wrong

But it's still like every time I'd go to squeeze the brakes or every time I'd go to to throw it into into a left-hander

You know, I would just I would doubt myself a little bit. I would doubt the tires

I would doubt the bike

And I had somebody, you know, I was funny because I had talked to dillon code

Who runs california super bike school not long after that whole incident and he was like

You mentally have to start trusting the motorcycle again

You know, it was like you mentally just have to to know that like sometimes

Things things happen, you know and and you this is mental at this point

And it's not the physical that you're coming back from it's the mental so it sounds like you know on one aspect

You're coming back from a ankle injury

And you're still a little bit uncertain as to how that will affect you but also like the mental side of like

I don't think I did anything and I and with someone like yourself

You've crashed enough motorcycles to know like, ah, that was I know what happened there

Yeah, I have a pretty good. I have a pretty good map normally. Yeah of like, you know, we

Most people who ride motorcycles eventually get a pretty good map of like, you know when you make a mistake

And and I think I'm I've analyzed that those situations more than most people and I've and I've been riding

For longer than a lot of people and I I've had I've written I've had more experiences on motorcycles than most

motorcyclists so I

I normally am very comfortable being like, oh, yeah, I know what went wrong there. I know

How I made a mistake and I know

what happened

So yeah, the that unknown is tricky before before

I allow you

To get a little bit of your confidence back

By trusting your instincts with the engine sound guessing game and you haven't played in a few episodes

So you might be rusty probably I I trust you. Um, is there any

Final thoughts with this that you'd like to leave with the audience if the audience is going to take away

anything from

You know listening to us, you know

Talk about this incident and and how it affected you. What would you like them to leave today?

With

I don't know. I don't know

That's a bigger question than I was expecting I think, um, yeah, I don't know. I think, uh

I think

Just the the the discourse

The conversation with you

Is a is emblematic of what I think should be happening

Inside the mind of and in the life of all motorcyclists, you know, you should be having these conversations with yourself

I think it's important to ask yourself

Um, what how you'd feel in x y z situation and

How you think it would affect yourself the people around you, uh, your mindset your I think I think it's yeah

I think that's the that's the big takeaway and I'm not trying to like scare people away or you know, because I don't think that

I don't think that, um

I don't think that's the point. I think the motorcycling has this

Real stigma in our society

Um for being dangerous and to a certain extent rightly so it's dangerous. Um

But I don't necessarily think that, um

Other activities carry quite the same stigma or carry quite the same

You know, um

Mental uh

I don't know this sort of um

Dissonance that gets passed along to people that you love and people in your life, you know, it's like people

Who know someone who ride a motorcycle feel very affected by that, right? Um,

and I think more so than

someone who rides a bicycle or uses a power tool or

Um, you know goes downhill skiing or something like that other things that are you know, I'm not I'm not gonna get into the statistics of

Of how dangerous those things are but the fact is you can hurt yourself doing those things. Um, and motorcycling has this

um, you know has the stigma attached to it. Um, and uh

And so I think that it's important to consider

all all the all the risk reward of of everything that you do and but especially with

with riding, um

and uh

Yeah, I hope whether it's the conversation or the

Data we get from that airbag. I hope that um my experience can

teach people

A thing or two about about how they feel and about how um, how much they care about

Um riding and and the joy that it brings them and the places that brings them mentally or or physically

Yeah, I would I would just like to say that you know, you made the comment about like you're not trying to scare anybody

And I think one of the things that you know, we talked about going into this episode is that

We're not trying to scare anyone, but I do think

Making sure that you're prepared, you know, whether that's you know, uh adding a uh international insurance or yeah

International insurance adding an airbag to your track day arsenal. Um, you know

Making sure that you have a plan if you're taking an offer, you know

If you're taking an off-road ride by yourself solo and you're doing it without an in reach or without a way to communicate

If something happens like there's all these little things that we're all guilty of

And maybe when something like this happens, it just helps you reevaluate

a way that we could make little changes in our own life to

Make a hobby that we love so much

Uh, a little bit a little bit safer. Um, or at least help us mitigate some of the risk a little bit better

Yeah, or have it be almost like a little a little more understandable or better known or more open to those

Other people in our lives who care about us and that kind of thing. Cool

Um, is it is the track is that the suit behind did you crash in that alpine star suit or was it the no

That was the other ones are still okay. I actually have the suit right here. I think

If you just give me a second. Yeah, was it the one that you made for it was the one the the drickston one

No, that one's right behind me there

That one's still in one piece

Actually, I'm picking up a large black plastic bag

That's from spain. I actually haven't looked in here yet

So you're you're getting this in real time

high-side low-side audience for the first time zack is opening up

His uh, his track suit that they cut off of him. Oh, wow. It looks like it's like legitimately like

How did how did I guess you probably don't remember but like what did they use to cut it off scissors

But like really aggressive scissors burly scissors. I guess but yeah, here it is

There's there's the proof that it's mine the little oh the little z money logo z money

Can you hold it? Can you hold it up a little bit towards the center of the camera? Oh?

Wow, look at that

Yeah, and you hadn't crashed in this suit previously right so that rash is all

Yep, that's all

That's all from this one. Can you hold it a little bit towards more the center of the area? Yeah, there you go

Oh, wow

Yeah, I actually haven't looked in here. Yeah, so there's a lot of abrasion on my

on my back

Or on my butt kind of so like, you know, I must have slid

There does your butt hurt at all held up pretty well. What's that? Does your butt hurt at all?

Did you injure anything that is none of your business? Oh, did I injure it? No, no?

But pain

Uh, or like any back pain or anything really? Um, aside from I mean my neck right that was broken hurts, but um

You're gonna keep playing that card. We get it. You broke your neck

I didn't think I was allowed to call it a broken neck until the spine surgeon started calling it that and I was like

Oh word. Okay. Am I allowed to call it a broken neck? Um

Yeah, so I mean yeah the the impact on the hump is pretty heavy too, right?

Like this is the yeah, this is the top of the hump so I landed pretty hard right there

And like my helmet, there's my helmet and it's right here somewhere. Um, it's pretty scuffed up

So I think I landed landed pretty hard on my helmet and then but yeah, like my boots dude my gloves

Hang on my gloves are right here

Zach's rolling around in his office chair like yeah, I'm really sure you're mobile in your office chair. Yeah. Yeah, my gloves are

Practically new yeah, I mean like no

Which makes sense, right? No hand injuries like I didn't this one has like a couple little scuffs right here, but like

Yeah, and my boots look totally fine. Basically

And I have a broken ankle. So it's just like yeah, this is that's not there's not a

I wonder what a rhyme or reason, you know

Did you land did you land directly on like the soles of your feet and that it was like the compression or you don't they don't

No, the doctor seems to think that it I landed on

Like my feet kind of slapped against the ground. So like the the back of my heel

You know like near where your Achilles is that kind of like that part of my heel

slapped against the ground and so the the pressure

The impact of my heel hitting and my foot being forced up and my leg coming down

broke that um

Talis bone gotcha

But yeah, I do wish I had it on video

I mean, I don't like think it would be super fun to watch but it would be you know

You're always curious or like how did yeah what happened, you know

Um, that would be cool. Yeah, but like I said, I know that you said that you had some some potential video footage

But it was all like forward-facing. It wasn't like there was a person shooting in the corner that nothing that shows me

Yeah, yeah, actually. Yeah, which is like, yeah, no, that's mostly what you can learn from

Um, all right. Well, hopefully let's hopefully the audience's takeaway is a positive one

I like the the kind of angle about, you know

Helping to maybe have you plan ahead and and mitigate some risk to your audience again if you've

If you've got some information that you'd like to, you know

Throw our way for how you've mitigated risk or how you've come back from a crash, you know

Or any questions you have for zack specifically. Yeah, please feel free to shoot us an email the high side low side at revzilla.com

want to

you know

Let you know that I think

The outpouring of comments that we've that we've seen towards dear zack so far has been, you know

Really heartwarming even for me as a co-host. I should have said that too. You're right

I've gotten a lot of messages from a lot of people and I've seen a lot of comments on the on

Common thread and youtube and whatever and people seem to care that I they missed you man heal up

And I appreciate that I really do I really do. Thank you

They missed you and they missed you because you were so much better than anybody else at the engine sound guessing game

Which is a perfect segue to kick off

The first engine sound guessing game was zack back a quick. Thank you to our friends at acropovich

Acropovich provides premium exhaust for your premium motorcycle if you want the best

In your engine sound. Well, you should look no further than an acropovich exhaust

Without any further ado zack. Do you remember how to play the game?

I think I do

We we listen and we do our best to try and figure out what the heck the motorcycle is. Is that right?

Yeah, and if you're playing at home, uh zack and I do not know what the engine sound is we're playing against each other

But we're also playing against you audience. Uh, so please if you think you have a correct guess scream it out loud

Make your neighbor is uncomfortable

If there's a person next to you on the highway and you're sitting in traffic

What do they think you're yelling about and why are you listening to some engine sound?

Cranked up in your stereo speakers without any further ado zack do the honors

Play today's engine sound

Let's do it

Hmm

Sounds lumpy

Uh, yeah, uh, why don't we start with the basics, right? How many cylinders you're hearing?

Guess honors your zack's been zack's back. Oh, I'm the guest now. Yeah zack's back boy. I'm

You thinking you're thinking too. Is that what you're thinking? Yeah, I think in two. I think two

And after that, I don't have a lot of what configuration to you thinking seven to 270 crank p twin or you're thinking p twin

Could be either one. This is the thing. It's this is the thing

There's a problem with all these manufacturers throwing 270 crank p twins out there. Exactly. It's like

It used to be so much easier

So obviously and again, we what we like to do here on high side low side is remind ourselves every now and then that

There are new audience members that might not be as adept to what we're talking about

So when we talk about a p twin, we're talking about a parallel twin the cylinders are side by side

And they go up and down right next to each other with a v twin

Looks like a v

I'm making all kinds of weird hand motions like i'm a like i'm a referee in a football game

But yeah

But because of the way that if you if you if you run a 270 crank parallel twin

It sounds at times like it is a like a v twin like a 90 degree v twin because

360 minus 270

Would you like a hint before we let's take a second listen?

Or do you want to take any random stuff? I think so. Yeah, yeah, let's do hit number one and get out of the way

Well, we're both wrong

By like two cylinders. So this is actually a four-cylinder engine is the first hint. Wow. Okay. I am rusty

But you and I are usually pretty good about guessing at least the amount of cylinders

And I would have never guessed that that was a four-cylinder engine. I agree. Uh, so, uh, let's give it another listen. Shall we let's do this

I mean

What's that v4

Yeah, it's got to be a v4 and I feel like it's got to be

I feel like it's got to be a ducati

v4 because

the

The ducati v4 is

Designed differently than

most other

v4s

Or you know different than say an aprilia v4

Not just because the angle of the v is different, but because the firing order is much different

So in the same way that like, you know, a parallel twin can have

Uh, the the in a parallel twin the piston the pistons

Can go up and down with each other or they can go up and down opposite each other or they can go up and down sort of like

180 270 360

exact so um

And the v4s can do the same thing except obviously it's more complex that way because the firing order includes more cylinders

and um, but the bottom line is in in layman's terms

A more conventional v4 that you might find that you find in like say or in my mind a more conventional v4

That you find in say an aprilia rs v4 or tuono or something like tuono v4

um the firing order in the of all four cylinders is a little bit more linear

And in the ducati, it's lumpier. So it's like sort of like a big bang style where the

Cylinders fire closer to each other and then there's a larger gap

between the

Ignitions so what that means is that the v4 kind it can sound almost like a twin

It can sound kind of lumpy like that and lumpy is actually the first word that you use to describe this engine sound

I believe and I remember actually

The very first time I rode

This new ducati v4 was 20

2017 or something like that

And

I remember when it started up and idled

I thought the first impression I had was like, whoa

It doesn't sound like a v4. Yeah, it sounds it sounds kind of like bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup

And then when you rev it up, you're like, whoa, it could it it it revs so high for because like the honda v the honda v4

Sounds so smooth compared to this. Yes agreed. Yeah

So that's my guess I did this whole spiel about ducati v4s and blah blah blah

Um, the only can I throw out one alternate idea? Oh, yeah. What about do you remember the modus?

So for a while there was a company down in like alabama. Yeah, yeah, yeah

That was doing like the half court

They would take like a half of a corvette block and they were making these wicked like v4s out of them

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was the that was the sort of like marketing spiel around it was that it was like, uh, you know

It was it was half of a american v8 basically

But I just don't remember I don't let me road one of those we used to have a modus dealer

Like I remember we have had friends that had them. I just don't remember what they sounded like and I don't remember if that was

Yeah

Yeah, it could be I I've been I've been wrong many many times before

But I feel like that one also kind of had a heavier crankshaft. It was a little bit lopier

This sounds kind of like sprightly and quick to rev

Yeah, which is much more. I mean this sounds energetic to steal a to steal a term that you use often and it's one of my favorite

Terms that I've stolen from you in the past, but vicious. This has a vicious sound to it. Yeah

Okay, well, let's get hit number two. Shall we?

all right

producer chase trying to curry favor with the uh returning zak quartz

final hint

this

engine

was featured

in one of the first ever

Daily rider episodes

For those of you that are not aware

In addition to hosting your favorite motorcycle podcast

zak

for the last five years

Has hosted a program called daily rider on revzilla's youtube channel where he tests out motorcycles

In an everyday environment riding from from home to the office per se, right and and you have a route

It's the same route every time

And you you take the audience on a little

Everyday route to talk about motorcycles. What was one of the first?

ever

Daily rider episodes. I mean, I don't remember

Well, you said you said

I mean, how long ago did you ride this ducati? Was it for a daily rider? I did

Oh, no, I mean when I first rode that bike was before

Well before daily rider was a thing

but

I did ride

Was there a new multi strata v4? Yeah, was there a shot of you for that? I rode but I don't think

There was a street fighter v4. So those are the but it's it's polygala v4 multi strata v4

And street fighter v4 right is are they do they use it in anything else?

Well, there's a diaval v4 now, but um, but that didn't come until later

So, I mean, I guess I would say I go street fighter v4

that's my

That's my guess

All right

Well, I will scroll down

And I'm I trust you at this point like this is your engine sound. Uh, it's your world, baby

I'm just living in it. Well producer chase kind of kind of you know

Through it all in my shoulders now being like well, you've ridden it before is that well in fairness before

I would just like to say to the audience because now I've scrolled down. I know what the answer is before we even got to hit number two

Uh, you were pretty

Spot on with the fact that you thought it was a ducati and you know

You ducati has a different sound than the aprilia or the honda

I threw out some random alabama made modus that they hadn't made for the last, you know, six years

Um, it is a 2020 ducati street fighter v4

All right

Si I want to say thank you for sending in an audio clip of your motorcycle

uh, si goes on to tell us that it is all stock

no mods and

Zach rode the 2020 v4 s on the third episode ever of daily rider, which was about almost five years ago now

Yeah, in fact, maybe more was it maybe yeah, it's about five years ago. I suppose. Yeah. Wow. Wow

So Zach my question for you, uh for the uh, the daily rider fans in the audience

You know, I know that you are you are nursing yourself back from an injury

Um, what what is the plan for for daily rider?

Do we have an idea of when you think you would be able to return to delighting people with that giggle of yours?

The loose plan right now is to hopefully be able to walk in early february

Uh, hopefully be able to start riding again in uh late february

So like early march mid-march early to mid-march

All right, that's we're hoping for um, and um

Yeah, we'll see we'll see what I get on my hand my hands on first. Maybe I'll even uh, maybe I'll

Excuse me. Uh, maybe I'll even

You know get my hands on some three-wheelers or something

some some handy capable motorcycles now that I'm um,

Now that I have a a foot that doesn't work quite right, uh good opportunity to test some

Some can-am some harley trikes. I don't know right. I have it on good authority

So while you are out one of the things you missed was spencer robert

uh helped us co-host an episode and

What we found out was spencer. We had what was called spencer's choice

Not sophie's choice and spencer let us know

Um that he was between two motorcycles. He was between a uh harley davidson

Um live wire. Yes, or a url sidecar. Yes, and uh

I guess it's safe to tell the audience at this point that uh, spencer didn't choose between the two

He just bought them both because that's the kind of

Baller that he is

But my point is is that maybe what you do is you fly out to to arizona

You can ride the url back and do like a a whole daily rider experience of what it's like to how many times

Will the url break down between arizona and los angeles and are you going to make it back in one piece?

Well, hang on

Hang on hang on. Oh, he's his brain is his brain is I could see the wheels turning here

No, I thought I I thought I did a url daily rider. Did I not?

I feel like I feel like you did but I mean two two two times a charm. I did an mc commute way back in the day

um, but uh, but

But but no day there. I wrote I wrote an article about the uh about the url

Recently, there's a common tread article. I thought didn't you didn't you do an episode because you had your dad?

You know, isn't it like your dad with you? Yeah, my dad was with me. I really thought I did but I just searched youtube and I

didn't find it so

Uh, there is a common. I remember the common tread article. Maybe that's what I'm thinking

Remember your dad was your dad was part of it. Right. Anyway, um, I'll do my best to get back on the horse here with the with daily rider and um

And you've had enough time to recover. I think the audience is giving you enough leeway. It's time to start, you know

Pulling your weight around here again. Yeah

Um, especially now that you've you've sounds like you've lost some weight

So you're you're trimmer than ever, you know as far as pulling weight around. Yeah, exactly

Um, okay. Should we get on to the give away a t-shirt? Yeah, let's give away a t-shirt

We got some we got we got grant here who uh, who sent in a lovely

Uh, was it email? Yeah, I think so

And um, and of course, you know, if we choose your your email your comment your question whatever

from uh

From apple podcast reviews from spotify comments from youtube for my email inbox. Uh, we'll send you a t-shirt

So grant's the winner this time around spurgeon

Why don't you talk us through what he asked?

Grant wrote in and said currently you can buy a used bmw r18

And a used harley davidson pan america with low mileage for less than buying either

a r1300 gs from bmw or say a harley davidson road king

Even used pricing

Can be close

So why wouldn't you buy the quote-unquote wrong bike from both manufacturers instead of just buying

One of the right bikes that is is a gs really that much better than a pan america or vice versa

And would a normie like me

Even realize what i'm missing out on

Surely the utility of having two different bikes is better than just having one

This is a great question. So the question here is do you buy?

a used r18 and a pan america

For the price of either one r1300 gs or

One harley davidson road king

right well and

And ultimately the question here is sort of like

Everyone or whatever there is a lot of

institutional knowledge and belief that

A bmw gs is the best adventure bike you can get and so

There's sort of attacks there right like gs's have decent resale value people. They're desirable

Right, they sell a lot of them blah blah

And those people those people haven't ridden a ktm yet, but that's another podcast altogether. Well

Right, I mean or you know, whatever the point is you can get lots of bikes

For less than doing same same reason you like why not just buy a ha to shadow like you want a harley sportster

Yeah, fine like you can pay x thousand dollars for a harley sports or or just buy a ha to shadow

And you're gonna get a v-twin motorcycle with a low seat height that

Rumbles down the road and so like who care you want a road king just go buy a yamaha

What was it the eliminator I think was like their their big touring bike there for a while eluder eluder

You know and you could and you could find them for half off, but I think

Grant it's a great question. Yeah, and to be clear grant people do this. Yeah, people buy honda shadows

that that probably

Might rather have a harley sportster, but they're sort of like I don't really care

I just want a cruiser and this is this is fine

And those people can ride around and be perfectly happy because the honda shadows a good bike

And I think you know if I'm going back to I was I was fortunate enough to to go to the pan america press launch and I think

You know the pan america is a mighty fine motorcycle

And if you can find a decent one and use shape, you know

I I think that it is a bike that you know as you put it a normie like yourself

Could probably have a lot of fun on um same with an r18

But we actually are I didn't actually but zack and airy did a a ctxp episode an important thing to mention here

Where you actually tested this theory and you put uh r1300 or was it an r1250 at the time

It might have been an r1250 at the time. It was r1250 gs versus harley pan america and then a um

uh a harley soft tail

versus a bmw r18 and basically like you know bmw at harley's game harley at bmw's game

And where did you find what's the deal?

What we found I remember if you don't but you giving you the guest honors here correct me if i'm wrong what we found is that

The gs is better than a pan america and a harley soft tail is better than a bmw r18

That they're they're better more satisfying more capable motorcycles to use in their respective environments

but

I don't think that there's a lot of like

Hard data that you can point to

That says one is better than the other you know like we rode

The bmw gs and a harley pan america on dirt roads. We rode them through ravines. We we jumped them

We we rode down dry creek beds. We

Tested them as adventure motorcycles and then we rode them down the street and whatever and like

Would I rather be on a gs to do all that stuff? Yeah, I would I think it's a better machine

But like can you do it on a pan america? Yeah, totally. It's like it doesn't it's it's it's uh

I guess

The easiest way to distill it is it's sort of like close enough

And and I think you have that opinion. You're totally in the you're you're totally

Within your right to to to have that opinion and and grant I think a lot of this comes down to how are you using the machine

Like if if you if you want an adventure bike to push to an nth of its life off-road

Yeah, you you might be better with the bmw

But if you're looking at like getting a touring adventure bike that you want to you know

Tackle some fire roads on and have a good diamond

Right and you also want a cruiser in the garage and the way that you can do that is by doing an r18 pan america combo

Go for it. You know and and does the r18 sacrifice a little bit of cornering clearance compared to the harley because it's got

massive cylinder heads hanging out the side like yeah, but like

If you're if you're not pushing it like a sport bike because you've got a pan america in the garage to ride a little bit more aggressively like

Yeah, you it all just comes down to how you want to use the machines, you know

I also think that while for me the harley soft tail was a better cruiser

and more satisfying than

The bmw r18. I do think there's an irony in the fact that

Harley marketing is all sort of about like

Be your own person and like stand out from the crowd

And the truth is if you have an r18 you're going to be like

A lot like less likely to see someone else on one of those than a soft tail or a road king or whatever

Even though, you know, I like I said, I think the harley is just a better the soft tail is better than an r18

But yeah, the the big takeaway here grant is that

Go to youtube type in bmw versus harley ctxb and you will find

Hang on hang on i'll tell you what you'll find you will find

Uh, I want to be specific about this and this is important. You will find

16 minutes and 26 seconds of the finest

Uh analysis of this question

That I think you'll find on the internet and then grant you can throw it all out the window and

Just do whatever makes sense for your individual riding style

Because I think I think it's a great question and I think

Having two

Random different bikes in your garage at times, you know

Might you know allow you to expose yourself to a little bit of a varied motorcycling terrain and I think that that's cool too

Take everything we say here at high side low side with a grain of salt because it's all just for your entertainment

Right, right exactly and if you want another reason to watch the episode

It involves airy

riding with a fake mustache on

And

And actually me too. I think we both had fake facial hair for that one

So unlike unlike the most recent sturgis episode where zackcords grew a real handlebar mustache for the episode

So there's a lot of great content out there as you're trying to make it through the winter doldrums

If you're not fortunate enough to be able to ride all winter long

Whether that's because you don't live in southern california or you've injured yourself

Uh at a uh motorcycle event like our our friend zackery has uh grant shoot us an email

To high side low side at revsola.com. We need your address your preferred shirt size and

The style of high side low side shirt that you would like. That's what I meant

Um, yeah, well spur joe, uh, this has been fun friendly reminder everyone to leave a comment

Um on youtube on spotify send us an email high side low side dot com if you uh would like

If you have questions about if you have really obvious burning questions that

We just did not answer about crashing a motorcycle or crashing a motorcycle in a foreign country or anything

That we could have talked about in this episode feel free to send it in

And we'll do our best to address it

Um, and at this point spur joe, I just want to know what your what what's your big takeaway today here?

What do you got for me? I

Uh, you did not realize that medical care in spain was so cheap. Did you?

That's that's one takeaway. Um, no, I think what I have realized is um

You know, and I kind of alluded this a little bit in the beginning, but

It's it's good to have you back. I am glad that you have friends and colleagues

Who were willing to step up and and and join us? I know I want to give a shout out to lance oliver

Uh lance

Does not love doing the podcast we ask him to join us once in a season and and he

begrudgingly joins us he just he um

He doesn't necessarily get as much joy out of it as I think he does with just writing an article

But lance is is good at it and lance stepped up not once but twice

Um to to fill in for you while you're out. He did yeah, and it's it's one of those ones where I think for me as a co-host

I don't realize how much I rely on you

And the the back and forth that we've developed over the years because like lance and I

Talk every day on the phone, but it's different when you know, you're hosting a podcast together

and I think

By the time we got to the the harley episode lance was finding his groove a little bit more as a co-host versus a guest

airy did a great job spencer did a great job with interviewing ryan

but I will say

For as appreciative as I am for everyone that stepped in to fill your shoes. It's uh, it's just good having you back

I've I've I've missed you. That's nice. That's nice. I appreciate it, man

Well, yeah, you you you sort of stole one of my points that I wanted to circle back on at the end of the episode here

I just wanted to say thanks to lance. Thanks to airy. Thanks to spencer

Thanks to everyone around the office here who's pulling weight that I'm not pulling these days and I'm happy to be

Back in the high side low side podcast chair. I'll be it with my foot elevated

Was it was it awkward stepping back into the like like coming back and kind of like shifting your mental gears back into like

All right, we're gonna turn a camera on and we're gonna get back into you know doing this

Was it was it difficult? It's a good distraction if nothing else and uh, you know feels good to be

productive

If you agree that the high side low side is indeed a product

And and that in that sense it feels good to be

To be back back working again, you know

I feel we can probably just leave the audience with that let let them decide is is is zack

Are we being productive?

Are we productive

This podcast or are we just providing data for a memory card and a computer to hold that is making the world's

Dumber, we don't know that's for you to decide

Um, yeah, I think I think we could probably call it there spurge. I I am excited to be back

I'm grateful to you and chase and um

everyone who pitched in and uh, I hope that we

um, learn something in the coming weeks and months about um

About you know data from this crash and we can share that with the audience, but in the meantime, I'm happy to be back

I'm happy that you guys uh, didn't fully replace me and uh

And I'm happy to be back in the um earbuds and car stereos of all you out there

Well until next time high side lows audience

Zach is back

You

About this episode

Zack Courts returns to share his harrowing experience of crashing at a track day in Spain, resulting in multiple injuries including a broken ankle and cracked ribs. Joined by co-hosts Spurge and Chase, they discuss the challenges of recovering from a crash in a foreign country, the importance of motorcycle safety gear, and the mental hurdles of returning to riding. The episode also touches on the broader implications of motorcycle advocacy and the need for more riders in the community. Listeners are encouraged to reflect on their own riding experiences and the risks involved.

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Original notes

Can you imagine crashing a superbike at a press event in a foreign country? Zack can! Zack Courts returns to the show and shares his experience (both on and off the track) at the KTM 990 RC R press event in southern Spain.

Spurg & Zack also discuss changes in motorcycle policy at the Circuit of the Americas and whether or not a high BMW price tag is worth it off-road.

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