April 24th, 2006 - Final Days In Bali

Well, it’s almost time to blow out of Bali. I mentioned in the last link I posted that I have had numerous things happen to me in the past week. Well, I got “Hit and Run” on my motorbike a few days ago to add to my series of events. Bali is a crazy place to ride a motorcycle and your days of having an accident are just numbered. So here’s what happened…

I was on my way for evening surf with my board on the side of my bike wearing sandals, surf trunks, no shirt, and a helmet. I’m cruising along the road when out of no where an Indonesian guy on another motorbike decides to turn with out looking! He ends up crashing into the side of my bike with the surf board on it and from there I just went down onto to the pavement. I was pretty fortunate that I only scrapped up my leg a little and a sore ankle. The other guy did not fall, but he did stop and look at me as I was on the ground. I yelled at him to stop but he just looked at me and sped off! So I got up quickly, jumped on my bike and starting cashing after him. He saw that I was coming so he was going really fast try to ditch me. As far as me, my handle bars were bent and I now only had a front brake that was working. As he was running from me, he tried to pass a car on the wrong side of the road. He did realize that there was another motorbike coming at him and he locked up his brakes and slid into him. I thought for sure that he was going to go down and that I would catch him then. Believe it or not, he hit the guy and then just kept going. Now he throws himself out into traffic on the main highway and almost gets hit by a few cars. On top of all this, one of the cars that almost hit him was my friend Tim whose motorbike is was borrowing. Tim had no idea what had just happened, he just thought it was another idiot on a bike. So now I get on the highway and I driving really fast trying to catch him. I also passed Tim in his car although I didn’t know it since I was so focused on not losing this guy in pack of other motorbikes. I finally caught up to him after 3 Km. I pulled up next to him and grabbed his shirt and I just kept shaking him and yelling at him to pull over. I was just so full of rage by now! He finally pulled over and then I grabbed the keys from his motorbike. My first reaction after that was grabbing him by the helmet with one hand and socking him in the chest with my other hand. After that I just kept shaking his head with my hand on his helmet and yelling at him like he and probably never been yelled at. I was going to explode. About 7 other Indonesians stopped on their motorbike and were trying to get me to calm down. After all that, the guy pretty much had NO Money to pay for the damages to my bike or surf board. If he would have stopped after he hit me, I probably would been pretty calm since it was an accident. It just really made me made that he ran on purpose. Well, that’s the short version of the story..

Below are just a few pics that I took as I was riding my motorbike to the beach. This gives you an idea of what I see from a driving point of view.

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