VERY Narrowly Escaped Death!

27
6.2K followers
Updated

I have not written on here in some time. It is something I need to write about. No, it's not about Internet marketing, but it is very important. Read it and take my words for it.

Just an hour before it happened, I was with my old landlord, having done some work over there yesterday (June 30th.) and we got into a discussion about motorcycles, how people are getting killed on them (three this week in Tampa) telling me what he thought of them, how dangerous they are and those that ride them are considered less by other human beings on the road.

"I know." I told him, discounting the danger by telling him how careful I am on Florida roads that are ripe with idiots that feel they own the roads, and can't wait to get home from work so they can light up, whatever...

A week ago, he lost his car to someone barreling through an intersection he was crossing, going at high speed because no one was in that lane and she didn't feel she needed to slow down and approach the intersection with caution. Her visibility was very limited by other cars in the lanes to the left of her, and there apparently was evidence in her car that she was texting on her mobile phone at the time.

Fortunately nobody got seriously hurt but both vehicles were damaged beyond repair. The speed limit is 35 mph going through town there.

I was about the length of a football field from my home when I was in the left lane and came up to a vehicle going very slowly in the passing lane. I did not maneuver right away, but when I did, I looked in the mirror and saw that it was clear and immediately swerved into the right lane.

Just over the line and a white car shot by at a very high rate of speed, passing on the right and veered over to the left once it passed me and the vehicle I was attempting to pass. At the angle in the road I was going (towards the lane) the car was out of my range of vision in the mirror.

A split second later, I was in the middle of that lane, not even had a chance to react to the speeding car, and before I even realized what had just happened, it was already going through the intersection ahead, just entering it before the light went red.

A split second earlier starting my maneuver, I would have been yet another motorcyclist killed on Tampa streets and graced with a brief blurb in the local news about the incident...

But a passing memory in the minds of most who would have read it, if it had even been noticed.

A short period of grief for my family that lives far away, and since I have lived apart from them so long, it too, would be a quickly-healed wound to them. A close friend is far better than a distant brother. I said this just yesterday in that other blog when I listed my priorities. My old landlord would have cried and went into depression. It would have taken him a long time to get over it.

The elders and other members of the congregation where I worship would have gotten the sad news, but would have known that it was my time to go.

The thought about other priorities taking over my IM and WA activities in a reply on a blog on here would have been my last. Most people on here wouldn't even have missed me or even wondered what had become of me - just another member that had left and somehow succumbed to life's circumstances, whatever they may have been. Popularity has never been high on my list of priorities though I have met some wonderful people on this site.

My work, my Journal, everything I have been working on, is unfinished. What would become of it? Would a lifetime of work wind up, a few days thence, in the rubbish bin, put there by folks who had no idea what they had in their hands when removing my stuff from this apartment? I would have gone with my life unfulfilled, my dreams never realized, no more opportunity to become more like the Master. I would have not known what hit me. At the speed that car was going, had I gotten in front of it, would have been instant death. I felt the wind very intimately from the mirror of that car come extremely close to my hand on the handlebar of my motorcycle, not to mention the unexpected action immediately in front of me.

I am still here to tell this story. It is the closest brush with death, that I know of, I have ever been. I am not being conducted to a pauper's grave and the little about me known to have been told.

It has got to be one of the most harrowing experiences I have ever had. It is time to wake up! Don't underestimate anything and never think it wouldn't happen. Things in the most normal of conditions can change in the blink of an eye.

The instant complacency, disregard, foolishness, impatience occurs, you put yourself in mortal danger!

It's 3:07 am. I have not been able to sleep tonight. It's been on my mind, the sight replaying over and over in my mind's eye. I had to write this so it might help me go to bed and get some rest and be very thankful of God's providence, my life was spared.

Daniel

Login
Create Your Free Wealthy Affiliate Account Today!
icon
4-Steps to Success Class
icon
One Profit Ready Website
icon
Market Research & Analysis Tools
icon
Millionaire Mentorship
icon
Core “Business Start Up” Training

Recent Comments

78

Daniel, What a blessing you have received- real wake up call, and the knowledge that it happened! You evidently have something important to do! Those times make chills on my spine, even years down the line. Hope you find the joy of doing this special thing!
Sami

There is a time when we must be ready to go. Meanwhile, it behooves us to prepare. Set out and do the things we would like to accomplish and be done with them. Set ourselves up so that, when we are in our last days, there are no regrets.

The graveyards are filled with unfinished symphonies, to borrow this concept from one of the great writers of our age.

I have been riding for 50 years this August and have more than my share of brushes, Daniel. I know how scarey that is plus I lost my first wife on a motorcycle. Love them but dangerous due to idiots behind the wheels of cars.

Motorcycles definitely are inherently dangerous, but even more so are the idiots in cars, as you have rightfully said. Florida is known for higher percentages of bad drivers, and thousands of people come in every year to add to the already taxed road systems here. They design roads here, and by the time they get them off the drawing board and in place, they are tearing them up again because they're obsolete. The construction itself, poses hazards because they are constantly re-configuring lanes that go through these areas, and they can be quite confusing.

It just goes to show we can never afford to take anything for granted.
Glad you came through it safe.
-Theuns

Can definitely see how quickly things can go wrong. A simple quick turn of the head does a LOT more than mirrors can ever do!

As you say, your work here is not completed yet. A call from above for you to make the most of your life and treasure every moment....

And, you never know, your writing this may just make a few WA people more careful...

I have people warning me to get off the motorcycle, and even one on here so far. I would like to do that, but at this time, I can't. It is my only mode of transportation. I plan my trips very carefully and only go out when it is absolutely necessary. I try not to go out during the times when things are very busy, like week-day mornings and afternoons - the employee traffic. My motorcycle is a 250 cc, which is not suitable for Interstate riding, so I never go on those roads. Only once I made an error and had no choice but to ride a short distance on one of the interstates here, for about a mile.

Yeah. I think there are going to be a few things I'm going to be dropping out of my priority list altogether and focus on a very few highest items. I'm going on 56 years of age and it's time to start getting my house in order. I had hoped to become wealthy and use my wealth to build upon things that would be helpful for future generations, but I can still do that without the money.

Daniel I'm so glad God spared your life. My husband and I had an incident happen a few months ago where we had the green light and began to enter the intersection. For some reason, I believe it was God's intervention my husband hesitated and just as he did someone who was totally oblivious to the fact he had a red light flew through the intersection. It shocked us both. My husband started to proceed but I yelled stop because the next car which actually slowed down, suddenly took off and went through the red light as well. Needless to say we are still very cautious at that intersection.

Daniel you know as well as anybody that God spared your life for a reason. He's not through with you yet. I would love to read about your conversion to Christianity. Do you have it online where I can read it?

God Bless,
Leann

No. This conversion is not online. My Journal is thousands of pages long. I have been writing since 1973. The earliest part of this (first 7 years) was destroyed by fire, but much of it restored by other media I had, which is now lost, but I have the writing replaced.

Because the story is unusual, it would make for interesting reading due to the conditions I lived in in my early life and what came down during my early venturing.

Up that road I came into contact with members of the church of Christ. I rode my bicycle 14 miles to a small wooden school house where they were building an add-on. The adult morning Bible study was being held outside in front, which was mostly a mud hole because there was no room inside the building except for the children's class. I was baptized that day in the small Hick's Pond in the town of Palmyra, Maine.

It has been quite a journey since!

I am extremely cautious around intersections because you never know if someone is going to run a light. It happens all the time here and they have cameras on the busier intersections because people very commonly run the lights and don't stop first before making right turns, etc. There are accidents every day and the mortality is quite high because many of the streets here are divided and they think they're speedways.

We have a lot of folks that text, use cellular phones, read, are putting cosmetics on and doing their hair, even watching television! and driving at the same time, not to mention drunk people and those that have music blaring so loudly, you can hear it a mile away coming from their cars!

A very common saying anywhere is, "You've got to do everybody else's driving besides your own." Though we can't technically do that, it means we anticipate moves others around us are going to make.

I use residential streets as much as possible and to this day, avoid the busier, multi-lane through-fares here. Sometimes it can't be avoided. The problem is here, as in other places, you must share the road with an awful lot of blockheads around here. You have to watch out for them at all times because they don't watch out for you!

My brother was killed off a motorcycle when he was 18,he was not doing any speed,a car just turned into a road and he went over the bonnet,the irony of it is,is that he did speed but it was not speed that killed him just a stupid idiot turning into a side road,Andrew was on the inside and as he went forward the man turned into the road.I believe he was killed instantly.

One of the accidents this week was a situation just like this. Someone turned directly in front of the motorcyclist. The motorcycle hit the car and a motorcycle behind him collided with his from the rear.

I do avoid the busy streets and intersections here, but situations like this can happen anywhere. The only alibi a motorcyclist has is to be very aware of the surroundings and plan escape routes in advance.

In motorcycle training classes, you are taught to regard yourself "invisible" at all times, because, in the haste of everybody going to and fro, you are.

Yep. As important and life illuminating all of that was to you... No one here would have missed you... nor would they me or anyone else... just another life and just another death. READ THIS

http://www.mick-armitage.staff.shef.ac.uk/poems/poem-im.html

That is very kind of you :) Yes, I said what I have said as something that is simply part of humanity and is the same here.

I will say that I don't settle for second best. It's why I've been here for six years now. It's not just the education that is here, but the community that it is. I have said it before and I will say it again. I am convinced that much of the maturity I have experienced over this time period came from here. I strongly believe that it has actually helped me move forward in life in the ways that really matter, not in and of myself, but what I can do to help make lives better.

I hope I can reproduce the poem here because it is a work of art and carries a lot of meaning. To be indispensable is to be arrogant. I have chosen the life of servitude, though I too, have a lot to learn and will never profess to have it down pat.

~~~

The Indispensable Man

(by Saxon White Kessinger)

Sometime when you're feeling important;
Sometime when your ego 's in bloom;
Sometime when you take it for granted,
You're the best qualified in the room:
Sometime when you feel that your going,
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow these simple instructions,
And see how they humble your soul.

Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to the wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that's remaining,
Is a measure of how much you'll be missed.
You can splash all you wish when you enter,
You may stir up the water galore,
But stop, and you'll find that in no time,
It looks quite the same as before.

The moral of this quaint example,
Is to do just the best that you can,
Be proud of yourself but remember,
There's no indispensable man.

I'm stoked that you liked that poem enough to reproduce here... it really hits a chord, don't it??

I have long known that none of us are infallible, and that poem tells it truthfully and forthrightly. It is a great contribution and thus included it.

I am going to now get some sleep, so if that I become silent for a few hours, anyone else who replies to this thread will know why. It is 5:30 am and I have not slept tonight.

Where do the dead go? (rhetorical question)... NO ONE KNOWS! (regardless of faith)

That is a great poem!!! Thank you for copying it in here - wouldn't have clicked the link and would therefore have missed it.

It's well said, to the point and done poetically. I liked the analogy that was used. What is said there has no bearing on the community here. It is simply human nature which transcends everywhere.

Whew.....that IS a close call! So glad you made it to write this blog Daniel. Perhaps giving up riding your bike might be safer...or not.

I was reminded of my close call just about 48 years back. I was going out of town in a convoy with me leading, and my family in my Peugeot 204.

We drive on the left and I was heading towards an old cyclist coming towards me. That was fine as he was on his lane (50 years ago only single lanes on both sides on highways and no safety belts)

The Taxi following him indicated to overtake, so I slowed down to allow him to overtake safely. We didn't expect the cyclist to shoot out his right hand to cross over in front of me just as the taxi was parallel with him.

I could see the cyclist flung 10 feet into the air and the taxi heading for me. All I could do then was to stand on the brakes and at the same split second flung my left hand like a safety belt over my boy to hold him down and held my right arm over my face. I saw the taxi cross over and scraped the left of my car from front to tail, and my windscreen shattered.

Amazingly, the aftermath was nobody died or seriously injured! the 70 year old cyclist was sitting up dazed. I was fine except for some tiny fragments of glass from the windscreen on my arm and left cheek. My arm was like a shield over my eyes. My left arm covered my boys face too. We had no safety glass during that time so it was a miracle we had no serious cuts.

I believe it was God's intervention that I was safe. If I had not slowed down for the taxi to overtake the cyclist and hit the brakes when I saw what was happening just then, the outcome would be the the taxi burrowing into my driver's side and they would have to scrape me off his front.

My destiny was to join the WA and Hallelujah I'm here.

God bless you Daniel, I AM glad you are safe....
Shirley

Sometimes we are not always blessed with a warning like you were given. Harm can come from out of nowhere seemingly. I was totally at the mercy of circumstances and some impatience at the slow vehicle rather than turning my head, which would have made me aware of the danger. That was putting too much faith in the mirrors.

My destiny is far beyond Wealthy Affiliate. It is however, a most excellent opportunity for anyone willing to do the work and has been a vital life-changing experience for me. Wealthy Affiliate has been responsible for many changes and improvements in my life, and I consider it better than mere chance that I was made known of it.

The impact that I have on others' lives go way beyond the offerings of mere products and services. I wish I could talk freely about my convictions on here, but it is not allowed due to a multi-cultural platform such as this.

I remember as a teen-ager, I wondered, "What was church all about?" I began to toy with it, but my stronger desire was to leave my family and live in one of the hippie commune in Maine. I had already been into Transcendental Meditation and other Americanized Hare Krishnas.

In Maine, I had a ten-speed and that was my mode of transportation. I had made the trip between Western Massachusetts and central Maine six times, in one-way trips. In those days, I was able to ascend mountains along Route 202 with all of my belongings that weighed as much as myself on that bicycle!

One day, I came to a road just outside the town of Unity, Maine, where I went to Unity College and I wondered what was up that road. Curiosity again...and the explorer in me...

That road took me to where I am now, but there was a war inside of me, between a psychedelic lifestyle and Christianity. My Journal tells the story of conversion, one that has lasted decades and is still unfolding. The New Age is now long gone in my life. Most of those possessions are now gone, but the story still remains.

This has been a year of changing priorities and new opportunity to leave behind the legacy of being a worker in God's vineyards, not in and of myself, but in the lives that it touches and glorifying God by using what I have to serve.

so God made you slow down.... or did YOU??

We know who has your back Daniel. I do too. Please pm me dear. blessings.........
Shirley

Oh Hi Steve, I didn't realise this comment was addressed to me. Thank you for the reference to God, though at that point in time I was Godless and didn't have any idea about God.

I'll have you know in my 52 years of driving, I've never caused an accident or been in one. That particular incident was no one's fault except the old man.

It's just as well that I've never been a speedster, as my mom and two sons were with me, so it was easy to slow down. If I had been faster I would have been unable to stop quite immediately and would have spun round, and definitely the taxi would've hit me directly on my side.

As it were I was able to thank God 20 years later as my saviour that day. HE's still keeping me safe and in good health these last 20 years since I found HIM or is it the other way?

Anyway Steve, I thank you for your interest and God bless you.....
Shirley

and Thank you for YOUR interest, Shirley!

I thought that you were referencing Shirly's reply. I'm sorry if the question was directed to me. In my case, I believe in God's providence, but we are also creatures of choice and are responsible for our actions in everything we do in life.

I had initially slowed down because there was a slow vehicle in front of me, but having very briefly delayed maneuvering to the other lane was what kept me out of harm's way.

You are still with us and that's the most important thing. I am happy for you.

Yes, being a motorcyclist is a dangerous affair for many reasons.

It is not an excuse for careless drivers but - it is a full moon.

One final remarks about life and work and achievements ... Your body stays here but your soul goes on and forward. Your 'life' as a spiritual being continues.

We also have purpose, each one of us in our own stead. The important thing in the window of life on earth is that we find and acknowledge what that is as soon as possible, else life becomes a wasted entity.

This is a place of learning and preparing for what is to come.

By divine purpose you are still here Daniel, and your namesake in the bible was a man of great faith so I am sure some of that quality s resident in your spirit. I am glad you are alive, and so are many other members here, because we care about each other, thats just the way we behave as a community.

All of us wish we could appreciated more, many of us wish we could mend some relationships that remain broken, and without a doubt, we all have regrets and disappointments, all of which flashes before our eyes in a near death experience sometimes.

I have learned a sobering simple truth Daniel, we cannot change the past, and if we dont learn to deal with the past, it will deal with us. The only thing we are certain of is this moment because in the next moment someone in this world will die, if its not us, we have been given another moment. If we view life from this perspective we will hasten to do what we need to accomplish because when we leave this mortal existence, we won't be remembered for things, but for how we impacted the lives of others.

I am glad you are alive Daniel

My life is all about impacting the lives of others. It has been a long story of transition from paganism to pure Christianity. My life is there now, though still climbing the narrow way in servitude to our Lord. You are right in everything you have said. The incident frightened me. It holds a lot of serious lessons. Make every second and every instant of your life count because it is fleeting and tomorrow is never guaranteed.

We are most remembered for what we have done to make this world a better place to live. In this way, we must act - not for self-fulfilling or selfish gain, but to leave behind everlasting value that will change lives for the better.

See more comments

Login
Create Your Free Wealthy Affiliate Account Today!
icon
4-Steps to Success Class
icon
One Profit Ready Website
icon
Market Research & Analysis Tools
icon
Millionaire Mentorship
icon
Core “Business Start Up” Training