The Bonk Page

On November 20th, 2008, Sharka was hit from behind at 70 mph. Sharka went away on this date. Fortunately, I did not.

This may be slightly confusing to some of you who have just read a recent blog post and saw Sharka in all his glory in a recently dated photo. I rebuilt him. Better, faster, and stronger. That's what 90% of my blog is about. But that's skipping ahead.

In fall of 2008, I happened to be driving along the freeway on the way to work. Traffic stopped. I was at the end of the line. I put on my hazards and looked in my rearview, waiting for the next wave of traffic to come. About 30 seconds later, I saw a big Toyota truck crest the hill. She didn't slow down. She never slowed down. I remember thinking "no." She hit at full speed, 70 mph. And then I lost about 15 minutes of my life. When I came to, I was standing next to Sharka on the side of the road with my camera in my hands. I don't remember shooting any of the roadside photos. And I shot all of them 5 times in order - front, back, license plates of offending vehicles. Scary.

Sharka-the-97 had stock NA low-back seats, a Hard Dog rollbar, and SFI 45.1 rollbar padding. It's my belief that my life was saved by this combo. As you can see, the trunk went away. The damage stopped precisely where the rear legs of the rollbar connect to the frame, so I had a crush zone and a safe zone. But that rollbar would have surely killed or vegetated me without the padding installed.

With that awful low-back stock seat, my head had nowhere to go but into the rollbar. The SFI padding is hard stuff. HARD stuff. Anyone who's ever felt it in their hands knows what I'm saying. Well, when my head hit it, the padding felt like a soft pillow. It's the last thing I remember before waking up on the side of the road. The padding gave me enough protection to just give me a minor concussion via the rollbar moving toward my head at 70 mph.

I vowed to not put myself in that situation again, so I replaced those short-back seats on Sharka-the-95 with some Lotus Elise seats. They offer full head protection. Still, there's a chance of hitting the bar with the crazy forces a collision can give, so I put the same SFI padding on my new rollbar that saved my life the first time. Better safe than a vegetable.

PAD YOUR ROLLBARS! Hard Dog sells some great padding to go with their bars. Racer Parts Wholesale sells the stuff that saved my life. Get the good SFI stuff. You're worth it.



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