Sliding on my stomach, headfirst at about 140 miles per hour, across the rain-soaked pavement of the Circuit de Catalunya racecourse, I realized this was all a terrible accident. I mean, simply being here was an accident, not my having just crashed a motorcycle. Although, yeah, that was an accident too. But I was never meant to be in Spain on this day. I was never supposed to be a motorcycle journalist. I didn’t belong here. I’m no daredevil. I’m not a thrill seeker. Cripes, in college I was an art major. I cry at movies. This was all a mistake. I wasn’t born to chance a violent death in a foreign country, hurtling down a roadway like a rag doll shot from a cannon.

Or was I?

During an accident’s exploded pace of time the senses are hyper, details vibrant, the mind races; each drawn-out moment is crammed with observations, possibilities, questions, regrets, fear, despair, doubt. Thoughts spastically hop about in incomplete staccato fits. “What kind of fish was that we ate last night, anyway? It rains in Spain on more than just the plain. Oh man, I’m in trouble now. George Bernard Shaw sure must have been a horny dude. Norte is north, sur is south. I wonder what time it is in California? Why is my stomach on fire?”

My speed so great, the dampness of the track did little to cool the friction of my slide. The searing leathers, that covered me from neck to heels, quickly burned into my belly. I pulled in my abdomen. My nipples ignited. To relieve my face-down broiling, I rolled over onto my back. I rolled over while still traveling at a three-digit rate of speed, fighting to keep my slide from turning into a bone-splintering tumble.

Maybe, even at its best, life is nothing more than a series of accidents, arbitrarily progressing from the accident of birth. The repeated accident of my pre-school fingers crushed in the door jam of the family Ford wagon. The colleges I attended. Who I married. The careers I’ve passed through. Who I didn’t marry. Learning how to ride a motorcycle. Where I’ve lived. That wrong turn that night in Florida. Going to Spain. Being thrown from a motorcycle to the wet pavement of the Circuit de Catalunya, at a speed most people never experience, even on dry pavement while seated in an automobile supported by four firm tires, seated behind a wall of glass and steel, strapped into a soft leather seat, wearing a pair of warm, comfortable shoes.

Lying on my back, blazing down the wet front straight of this Spanish racecourse, I longed for a pair of warm, comfortable shoes. That, and a reassuring hug from my mother. Yearning for those things made me laugh; my boots were soaked through, my mother dead, and I was sliding blindly toward an unknown end. How in God’s name did this happen? Somebody call the cops. Call the American Embassy. What the fuck am I doing here?