IN AUGUST 2015, I was in a Belfast hospital, and all I could think was, It’s going to be a few weeks of lying about before I get back to normal. I wasn’t bothered about the pain, but I couldn’t stand the thought of being forced to lie about. I’d crashed my BMW S1000RR leading a race at the Ulster Grand Prix and broken my back and my hand. It was the second time I’d broken my spine crashing a motorbike in just over five years, and I’d got away without too much lasting damage. I had a big scar up my back, where they’d cut me open to bolt my spine together, and some more new metalwork in my hand. Bloody lucky really, but all I could blame it on was the motorcycles.
I’d been thinking and talking about the Tour Divide, a 2,745-mile mountain-bike race in Canada and America, for ages, and it became something to focus on instead of motorbikes, for a while at least. I would compete in that the following June. I also decided I wouldn’t commit to any road races until after the Tour Divide, mainly because even a small injury would knacker up my training. I thought that all those hours on my own, cycling from the top to the bottom of America, would be the perfect time to think about me and motorbikes. Racing had been a way of life for 15 years, more or less, and if I did pack them in it wasn’t going to be because of a snap decision.
The wall of death record attempt had to be cancelled because of the back injury too. The date hadn’t been decided 100 per cent, but it was going to be in October. It would have been a hell of a job to get the Rob North Triumph finished for then. I’d have done it, I reckon, but it wouldn’t have been as good as I’d hoped.
My diary was clear all of a sudden – there’s only so much you can do with a broken back – but I was determined that it wasn’t going to slow me up for long. And plenty of folk did a good job of filling it back up, but not straight away.
For a week after the crash I was laid up in the hospital, then I got home and had another week of not being able to do much. I was hardly sleeping. I’d already finished When You Dead, You Dead, and it was on its way to the printers, but the end needed a bit of a rewrite to include what had happened at the Ulster. It seemed a bit daft to have had this potentially life-changing crash and not mention it in the book if we could squeeze it in. And we did.
Then I went back to work. The first day in the truck yard I was useless. I was in so much pain I couldn’t do anything. I fitted a door handle on a truck and that was it, I had to come home. I couldn’t lift my arms up. The next day I went in, and that was a bit better. I put a header tank in a Scania 730 and that’s a bugger to do because you have to take loads of stuff off to get access to it. It’s a five-hour job when I’m fit, and I thought to myself, If I can do that by the end of the week, I’ll be alright. I gave myself four full days, but I managed it in a day with time left to do another small job, so I was pleased with that.
My boss, Mick Moody was glad to see me back and he was brilliant. He explained what we needed to do at work and asked, ‘What do you reckon?’ There were some things I couldn’t manage at first. I couldn’t handle the big windy gun, so Moody would come do that if I got stuck. He was spot on. One day I was putting an air filter in a wagon. I had to lie on my back at the side of the pit, the big hole in the ground that the lorries park over so you can work under the truck, and reach up to push this air filter into place. It’s not heavy, but it’s awkward. And that movement, laying on my back, pushing something away from my chest, hurt so much I squealed like a girl. Moody could hear me in his office, 100 yards away across the yard, and came to see what was up. ‘Are you alright?’ he asked. I told him I was a bit sore, but I would be. I think it was so painful because the muscles weren’t attached – they’d been cut off when the metalwork was bolted to my spine – and I was asking them to do something they weren’t ready for. But I fitted the filter in the end. It probably took me ten times longer than normal, but I did do it.
I started thinking about getting back on my pushbike as early as the first few days back at work, so not even three weeks after the break. I’d get up at five o’clock, because I always have worms to catch, get my bike out and cycle as far as the end of the village, half a mile away, before admitting to myself, ‘Bastard, I can’t do this,’ and turning back for home. Even though I was on my mountain bike, which is comfier than the Rourke bike I normally ride to work on, I still couldn’t hack it. The rucksack on my back was hurting and everything was still sore as hell. I’d come home, take the dog for a bit of a walk, have another cup of tea and then drive the van in.
The second week, I managed to bike in one way, then I got a lift home with Belty, Moody’s valeter, who lives near me. Then I’d do that again, one way, and by the end of the week I was sometimes biking both ways. Only writing this makes me remember the pain, otherwise all I’d remember about the aftermath of the accident is the inconvenience.
My girlfriend Sharon and my mum and dad thought I’d gone back to work too early, but a week later Sharon could see it was good for me and knew I was coming along loads faster than if I’d stayed laying on the sofa. For me it’s the right thing. I wasn’t trying to be a hero or anything, but I needed to prove I could still do it. I wasn’t down – I don’t think I ever get down. And I was off the painkillers after the first week. They put me on tramadol and I was supposed to be taking four a day, but I’d had trouble with them when I’d broken my back at the TT in 2010. I was addicted to them for a short while and I didn’t want to go down that road again, so I gritted my teeth instead.
I wrote in the introduction to the last book, ‘Why another one?’ I wondered the same before starting this one, but there’s a demand. People like reading them, and I like writing them. I can imagine reading them in ten years and it bringing back a load of memories. I like reading and the book people reckoned that a lot of folk who bought the last two books weren’t big book buyers, so if mine get people reading and that maybe even leads them to a bit of George Orwell or Aldous Huxley then I think that’s great.
I thought packing in road racing, at least until after the Tour Divide, would let me have more time to myself, but it’s been the opposite, so there’s plenty to write about. I’ve had a right exciting year. Every year I wonder, How is this year going to top the last? But it always does. Every year seems madder than the previous one. So, thanks very much for buying the book. I hope you enjoy it.