My Evil Knievel impersonation

Since I was 10 and into my early teens, my friends and I explored San Francisco on our bikes. We rode miles in all directions, from Twin Peaks to the beach, across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito to name just a few. St Francis Woods, Stern Grove and Mt. Davidson were popular travel zones, and into the Haight, Golden Gate Park and so on. Laguna Honda Hospital had some great paved roads that we could ride and was like a small city in itself. Helmets weren’t even a thought in those days as we peddled viciously through the streets of the city.

I was 15 in the summer of 1973. My friends, Steve, Kent and I decided to take a bike ride as we had done many times on a clear day. My bike had been stolen earlier that summer, so I borrowed my sister’s bike, which I later learned, belonged to her friend, Loël.

It was a typical cool day in San Francisco, which, to anyone outside the city, would be considered ‘freezing’, but the sun was out, and so that meant the roads belonged to us. We started out at Tower Market and rode up to Twin Peaks to take in the view. Aside from the usual parked tour buses spewing out vacationers wearing shorts and Hawaiian shirts, there wasn’t much activity that day. After a brief visit, we rode down the north side of Twin Peaks Boulevard towards Clarendon. The winding road from the top of Twin Peaks made for an inviting speedway where there were barely any cars on the road that day. We glided down the paved asphalt and leaning into the turns, I felt the wind on my face and a feeling of freedom as we soared down the smooth pavement. We reached Clarendon Avenue and turned down to 17th & Clayton. From there, continuing down 17th Street and across Roosevelt Way, we worked our way over to States Street. For those of you who don’t know this area, Corona Heights is part of the Castro/Upper Market area and just north of Eureka Valley. States Street stretches a few blocks and is a long gradual downhill slope that passes by Randall Museum and ends at Castro Street.

As we headed onto States Street, I could see the smooth, vast inviting roadway that seemed to beckon us. Kent had a speedometer on his bike so we could gauge our momentum while picking up speed and gliding down the middle of the street between the parked cars. Steve Immediately started peddling faster and hurried ahead of us, as if to challenge us to a race. We took the challenge and began peddling harder. Kent and I were almost neck-to-neck, but he managed to get ahead of me because he was determined to catch up with Steve. At last glance, Kent’s speedometer read 58 MPH when we approached the soft curve in the road. Steve was not in sight but I could hear him yelling back at us from the distance. I couldn’t understand what he was yelling because his voice echoed against the rapid stream of houses and parked cars.

As we leaned into the curve in the road, is when I saw the speed bumps. ...Three of them in a row. Kent was on my left and just managed to swerve to the side and barely miss them. I didn’t stand a chance. With no time to react and at nearly 60 MPH, my front tire hit the first speed bump and bounced it five feet into the air. Just as it came down to meet the second bump, my rear tire hit the first one which catapulted me head first towards the pavement. I made impact with the road and I heard a ‘crack’ as I tumbled and rolled, eventually onto my back, but still sliding rapidly on the blacktop. As I was sliding, I looked back and could see my bike tumbling behind me. Almost as if in slow motion, it tumbled end over end until It finally made impact with a parked truck and wedged itself underneath. I watched fabric from my jacket blowing in the wind while being shredded down to my skin as I continued sliding down the asphalt.

What seemed like an eternity probably took less than 10 seconds and I finally came to rest in the middle of the street. I laid there motionless, staring up at the sky as clouds rolled above me with an eerie silence, and wondering if I was still alive.

Then, I saw Kent and Steve standing over me, along with an unfamiliar woman. She happened to be leaving work at Randall Museum and witnessed the accident. While I very slowly tried to sit up, Steve reached out to help me raise myself, so I took his hand and heard a “crack”. At that moment, I experienced intense pain in my right shoulder and I yelled out a scream. I was in shock but managed to give the woman my phone number. She immediately called my dad and he drove over to get me. If this had happened today, I would have taken an ambulance ride. By the time my dad got there, I was a bit more composed. He helped me into the truck and put the mangled bike in the back. Steve and Kent rode their bikes home and my dad drove me to Letterman Hospital in The Presidio.

When we arrived at the hospital, they rushed me into the emergency room and started cleaning my wounds, scrubbing the embedded gravel out of my skin with antiseptic while I endured the pain. I was then rolled into radiology for X-rays which revealed I had broken my clavicle and fractured my skull. They inserted a large syringe into my shoulder to numb the pain and I could feel the needle making contact with the broken bone as I let out a muffled groan. After a night in the hospital, I was sent home the next day wearing a shoulder sling for the next 6 weeks. Recovery was slow and painful when I started my first year at McAteer High School, and boy, did I have a good story of ‘what I did last summer’.

...Sorry about your bike Loël, “I owe you a new bike” will be engraved on my tombstone.