So Long, Sean

One of my co-workers rides a crotch-rocket and wherever he goes, he goes like a bat out of "heck". In fact, he was bragging about hitting 160 mph (257 kph) on the highway the other day. He usually tries to hit 100 mph (160 kph) before he gets to the stop sign at the end of the block. Thursday was no different, except that he left at lunch time to go home and do some chores. About 15 minutes later, we heard some sirens and noticed that they stopped shortly after zooming past our work. We didn't think too much of it until a delivery driver mentioned that some kid on a blue motorcycle was in an accident up the street. The boss said, "Sean rides a blue bike", and told someone to drive up there and make sure that it wasn't him. So another co-worker drove up the road, thinking he might have to give Sean a ride home, or at least back to work if his bike was wrecked. Turns out it was much, much worse.

A jogger (who was the first on the scene) said the motorcycle cruised by him at a very high speed through the s-curve, and when he came around the corner, Sean was literally wrapped around a light pole. His bike missed the pole and stopped a ways away, but his upper body hit it squarely. The jogger works for the fire department and said he tried to revive him, but there was nothing he could do. Even by the time my other co-worker (who the boss sent up there) arrived, Sean was already covered up.

So it's been pretty surreal since then, while we wait for it to sink in. One of those things that happened so fast that you go, "He can't be dead- I just talked to him a little while ago, and he was fine." You have people wondering what they could have done differently. The boss, who said it was okay for him to leave early, wondering "What if I had said no, then he'd still be here today". I think everyone does the what-if/ if-only thing, and there's really no point to it. In this case, so many people had warned Sean about over doing it- family, co-workers, friends - it's just a situation where it's something he wanted to do and he did it. And now he's dead because of it. A few people had said that we'd be going to his funeral someday, but we all hoped that wouldn't be the case.

Tags: crotch rocket, motorcycle, crash