05/21/2026
Concussions can be a very weird experience. There is still a nice 6 hour gap in my memory and I was apparently completely conscious during this time with no loss of motor skills.
I had a little oopsie at the track during the second to last advanced session of the day on Saturday at Putnam when it was raining. I was on my 400 with rain tires. I wish I could say exactly what I did wrong but I canāt remember the incident. From what I have gathered from other peoples accounts, I touched the rumbles on the exit of turn 7 after the bike was already pretty much straight up, the rear started to come around and my best guess is that it ended in a high side after me trying to save it. The bike ended up in the middle of the track half way between turns 7 and 8, as shown in the attached photo, which is rather weird as you would expect it to end up sliding off the track. No one saw the incident so I canāt be sure of what happened.
For 15-30 minutes after the crash I apparently acted completely normal and said that the reason I crashed is because I touched the rumbles and the rear came around. It was after this time that my brain basically turned into a goldfish. I looked normal and could move around normally but I would repeat the same thing 5-10 times over and forget what someone had told me or what I had done within 10 seconds. It was then when my friend Matthew, that I had driven to the track with, took me to the hospital. They took some scans and I was released within an hour or two saying I had a concussion and most of the symptoms would go away in 48 hours with 10-14 days for full recovery.
I still donāt remember any of this. The first memory I have is of eating dinner that night with Matthew, Joey and their girlfriends at the air B&B we had rented for the weekend. It was after this that my brain started to slightly pull itself back together. Throughout the night is when I started to build my memories back up. I didnāt know who I was, where I was, or what I was doing at this time. The best way I can describe it is like slowly waking up from a lucid dream and piecing your life back together only to find out that lucid dream was your life. I started slowly figuring out who I am working for, moving on to what my purpose or goal in life is, figuring out where I live, who my friends are, what I am supposed to be doing at the moment, forgetting things I had remembered, starting over a couple times and repeating the process throughout the night while I partially slept until I had a fuzzy idea of what was going on.
I remembered almost everything as it happened on Sunday but any memory older than 5 minutes felt like a distant memory that happened several days or weeks ago. Details were fuzzy. I am doing way better now though and am expected to make a full recovery within a week. Already itching to be back on a motorcycle.
The biggest take away I have from this is to look out for your pit mates. If I had been there alone and no one had noticed, Iām not sure what would have happened. If the person pitted next to you crashes, check in on them a couple times over the next hour or two. They may seem completely fine following the crash and then start to go down hill if they have swelling in their brain that hasnāt shown itself yet. We are all in this together, gotta look out for each other. Huge thank you to everyone that was looking out for me.
See yāall at Road America in a week!
