It ain't always sunshine and rainbows.

There goes that little switch in my mind, no alarm clock needed here, eyes open and the rest of the body doesn’t linger in a comfortable sleeping position. Was at the coffee shop by 5 am getting some work done. Pulling in the streets were empty and I only saw 2 people in the several blocks I had to travel. They stumbled on home from wherever it is that they happened to fall asleep after having a few too many drinks last night. My friend came to see me off. Here he is Mr. Wallstreet and I, a bearded, fighting biker. Made me smile and thank the man for being able to connect with so many different people and build some amazing friendships.

From Montreal I had 350 miles to travel to Toronto. This 350 miles tested my every riding ability. The rain came hard, and the crosswind had me riding tilted, leaning into the direction of the wind, the entire time. Once in a while the wind gust would blow from the other direction and my lean would take to into the other lane before I had time to correct myself. I dared not go speed limit and snuck behind motorhomes and slower moving tractor-trailers. I could see nothing of the road and had to rely on the taillights of the vehicle in front of me. If I got too close it was dangerous for my stopping distance. If I got too far I would loose the taillights in about 60 feet due to the heavy rain and water being kicked up by the constant flow of cars. I am sure my every muscle  was tensed up waiting to correct the bike if something was to go wrong.

Made it to Toronto and had 2 stops here. The first fight of my career was with Amir from Black Devil MMA. He was out of town so I put his gym off for number 2. My 5^th fight was with Usman of Warrior Muay Thai, he was available so I put his gym first.

Got to the gym a bit early and introduced myself to a few of the people there. The gym was longer than wide. The entrance opened up to a matted floor and beyond that a well-kept boxing ring. Warmed up a bit and did some much needed stretching. I could still feel the tight hamstrings for the technique we worked on with Vladislav Koulikov. I was glad to see my previous opponent come into the gym, especially after chatting with two of the fighters and them mentioning a little injury he had. I was really hoping to get some work in with Usman. Class consisted of a warm up with some ropes, then we shadow boxed. The majority of the time was spent doing some freestyle padwork. It’s a great feeling when both pad holder and partner are in tune with eachother and the padwork flows. Worked in the usual punches, kicks, elbows, parry to a clinch entrance, and knees. Usman helped me work on a nice combo that helped me open up my lagging right kick a bit more. It went switch kick, land forward, cross, hook then right kick. I have a tendency to not open my hip up as much on my right kick and the forward momentum help me out a lot with this. Then I got to gear up and spar with Usman a bit. Felt good to get in the ring with him, last time I was pretty beat up at the WKA’s and when we fought I was not on my “A” game. I look forward to a fight sometime in the future with Usman. I want to make up for a poor last performance and respectably give him what any fighter deserves; a worthy fight. Unfortunately  the head coach was no in and the team asked if I could stay until the next days class to get more work in. I broken-heartedly declined as I still had a lot of miles to ride to the next destination.

We finished around 9:15 and I headed straight to Black Devil MMA. By the time I got there it had closed, but I wanted to keep my promise to my first opponent and pay the gym a visit and give it my respects.

I was contemplating about not writing about this next portion of my trip but then I felt like I would not honestly share with you the entire experience of the trip. So I chose to have some “journalistic integrity” and let you know about it all, the good and the bad. I had to gear up from Black Devil as it started to rain again. As soon as I was rolling it started to rain HARD. I usually put my ear buds in and have Siri direct me to the next location. I ate through all of my data and was not able to receive live GPS direction and needed to look at my phone to find how to get out of Toronto. My phone was located in my tank bag under a weatherproof transparent pocket. This wasn’t as bad as holding onto the phone but it still forced me to be distracted from the road. This was the first factor that led up to… well you will see. When the rain started the temperature dropped enough to have my goggles fog up from the cold rain evaporating from my face. So here I am trying to get out of a city that I have never been in, its raining cats and dogs, my goggles are fogging up, and I am looking down at my phone from time to time to find out where I am going. The last part of this equation was a pair or trolley tracks. I made a right turn onto a street and ahead of me the right lane was occupied by parked cars. I started to merge left and could not see the trolley tracks that were parallel to my path of travel. I took the tracks way too shallow and my tires caught the track and as I tried to ride out of it the bike started to fold on its left side. I tried to correct it and held on harder to the handle bars and this only made matters worse. My grip on the handle bars accelerated Cindy even more as she started to pull away from me with my hand still gripping the throttle firmly. Just before she hit the pavement I looked down the narrow strip of pavement that I had in front of me and prayed that I wouldn’t hit any of the parked cars to my right and oncoming traffic to my left. All I remember was hitting the ground, head whiplashing onto the pavement and helmet eating all of the impact. When I got up and looked back I had slid about 50 feet ahead of Cindy and she lay motionless in between the parked cars and oncoming traffic.

It was a busy street block and several people ran out from restaurants to see if I was OK. After looking back at the narrow miss of obstacles from both sides, I went over to pick up my tank bag that had been torn, thrown off, and slid even further than I did. I set it on the curb and went to get Cindy out of the middle of the road. Picked her up with the help of a scooter owner that came out of one of the shops and rolled her over to the curb. The saddle bags had taken most of the impact and the damage wasn’t too severe. I had broken my front and rear left turn signals, a foot peg, and the left side view mirror. I assured everyone I was OK and started Cindy up cringing with the hope she would run with no problems. As she lit up and her pipes sang I was relieved. Now to make sure she rode fine, my heart raced as I put it into gear and thought about how the rest of this trip would turn out is she would have a limp in her step. One block, 2, 3, and 4… she seemed to be doing well. I pulled into a well lit gas station to assess the damage further. It was exactly what I had seen in the dark and rainy street. I took a breather and slammed a protein shake.

I looked at the map to try to memorize where to go to get out of the neighborhood I had found myself in. Jumped on and headed out, I wanted to get out of there as soon as I could. Just my luck, with every turn that I made I ended up streets that had more and more tracks. I tried to stay away from them but had no choice but to cross them several times more. A few more turns and the tracks kept adding up. I was heading right towards their spawning grounds. All the tracks ended up going to a rail yard and a depot, and I just happened to end up right where I did not want to be at the moment. A few more turns and the tracks started to lessen. I finally made it out to the freeway and hit it hard without looking back.

The temperature fell quite a bit by now. Crossing the Burlington Lift Bridge I could feel the coldness coming from Lake Ontario. I was planted like a rock, and the stinging rain and near freezing temperature had no effect on me whatsoever. I was still in shock from what had just occurred. I wanted to get out of the populated area, get into a hotel, shower, and sleep.

The rain was indifferent to what had just happened to me and kept coming down hard. I found a little motel in the middle of nowhere and parked Cindy and unpacked the entire load she was carrying. I brought in all the saddlebags and pull out all of my belongings and scattered them throughout the room. Everything was wet and I needed to dry out as much of it as possible while I slept. I opened up my maps and searched out a Harley Dealer and planned out a coarse of action for the quickly approaching next day. I said a prayer of thanks as things could have been a lot worse and the sleep came easy.