Back in 1975, I came off the back of my friends 250 J Yamaha on the 303 near Lopen Head at just about 100 mph. We were both launched off the machine and John tumbled along the hard tarmac as his bike disintegrated and he ended up on a life support machine for three days.
My experience was a little bit different. On feeling the bike disappear from under me, I felt I was falling, falling, falling, (it was near midnight and obviously dark).
By chance, my body, initially traveling at 100 mph, found itself tumbling along a flightpath exactly parallel with the road … with a razor sharp barb wire fence inches to my right and the unyielding hard kerb and tarmac road a few inches to my left.
My bouncing body kept absolutely level on a course between those two points … and a row of sapling trees spaced every few yards acted as a gentle, speed reducing device to slow and eventually stop my body cartwheeling along that verge.
The bomber style leather jacket I was wearing, (with Levi jeans and denim clogs!) was ripped from my back and they found the peak of my crash helmet deep into fields one side and a straw / denim clog on the far side of the other field … so my body must have been spinning and twisting like it was in a threshing machine.
I was fine though and apart from phoning my boss at 3am in the morning to say I probably wouldn’t be in for work, (which I did in shock and can’t remember), I was otherwise right as rain.
John made a full recovery after contracting amnesia and not recognising his sister or mother, asking who the people with the big noses at the end of his hospital bed were.
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