Dying for a thrill

[DonJuane]

No level of disrespect in any manner is meant for the poor young lad driving the motorcycle last Sunday afternoon seen lying on the too-long and snaky road through GTO’s best mountains on the way to Dolores Hidalgo. The sight of one of these accidents can burn an impression in one’s mind to last a lifetime, especially when we saw him laid out on his back across the pavement while surrounded by a score of his companion motorcycle club members as they helped direct traffic and as everyone waited anxiously for the ambulance to load him aboard and get him to medical facilities.

I’m not sure what was up on this road this past weekend but things seemed to have gone insane. The road has served as a nice get away during the times of Covid, a way to escape the city and end up at a lone restaurant or down some road for a picnic, but none of that was happening this past weekend. Still anyone who has driven the road knows that it’s a much safer bet to instead head toward San Miguel and then cut over to Dolores Hidalgo at the Pemex station – thus what makes it seem so impractical for the level of use it was getting this past weekend. There was bumper to bumper traffic with car after car passing in any no-passing zone that looked to provide more than a few meters of a view in the distance. If this was not enough, we must have passed 200 motorcycles (or they, us) on this road with them all in a motocross race of sorts. They were all moving at a tremendous pace with one motorcycle after the other spinning around each curve with their frames and bikes tilted to between a 35-45 degree angle. Here tension was in the air and well before I had pulled over after seeing the red flashing lights behind; it’s no surprise then that the white car behind me darted into the oncoming path of the ambulance which forced it temporarily into the ditch. Luckily there was no oncoming traffic to hamper our 3-abrest autos as the ambulance passed the car as the car was passing me, all happening at the same time on a 2 lane road.

I have no update on the condition of the young man. I looked briefly in the newspaper and did not find any article reporting the accident. But one thing I do know is that this will happen again if these cross-country races continue. It’s a shame that racing down this road is all that area motorcycle clubs have to do while they play their motocross games with a road never designed to provide such thrills and with the unknown reactions of random drivers found along the road such as me.