For the first 15 years of my marriage, I worked at the University Of Maryland Hospital Shock Trauma Unit. I saw a biker nearly every day of the week, most of them didn't make it, and those that did often were so seriously injured that they could never go back to the life they had been enjoying. I walked away from the field of medicine in 1975, a time when I was still relatively young and figured I would do something else to take care of my family.

My daughter, Laura, came home one day and told me she was moving in with her boyfriend. I wanted to shoot the SOB, but my wife and children would not allow me to do so. After about a year, they got married, he worked for UPS at the time, but one day he showed up in our driveway with a monster Harley Hog that set him back nearly $50,000. My beautiful daughter was riding on the back, claimed he was an excellent rider and nothing could possibly go wrong.

Then one day, a few months later, I got a phone call on a sunny, Saturday afternoon. It was my son in law saying my daughter had just been flown to the Shock Trauma Center, the very one I worked at many years ago. He said she had been involved in a motorcycle accident and she hit a car head on while traveling south on US Route 1 at the southern end of Conowingo Dam.

I slammed the phone down, and my wife and I drove to the hospital as fast as I could legally do so. (I'm sure I broke some speed limits in the process.) When I arrived, I asked when did Laura get a motorcycle? He replied, "She bought it last week." Now, he stands about 6'-4" and outweighed my by about 100 pounds, but at that point I was confident I could kill him with my bare hands. And, I would have had it not been for the doctor coming up to me and asking if I were Laura's father. He took me aside and told me she was in critical condition, and it was touch and go.

She would undergo surgery for a broken neck that afternoon, and spend the next 8 days in Shock Trauma, then the next 4 months in Kernan's Hospital recovering and undergoing rehab therapy. In her first day there she taught herself how to tie her shoes with one hand. Her left arm was broken in four places and was paralyzed from the shoulder down. Her left leg was also broken in three places, and all her toes on her left foot were broken and had wires sticking out the end of them to hold them in place so they could heal.

She had 19 subsequent surgeries, including nerve transplants from her legs and chest that were inserted in her left arm and spine, in hopes that the nerve would attach and regenerate - it didn't happen. Her left arm is still paralyzed.

From my perspective, as a medical professional and trauma team member, motorcycles should have been outlawed. Over the years, it has been pretty rare for me to talk with someone that is an avid rider that didn't have at least one serious accident. In Baltimore, hundreds of young boys are seen daily riding the streets on dirt bikes, doing wheelies, screaming up the streets at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, and at least once a week, one of them dies in a horrendous crash. Most of those bikes they are riding are stolen and the impound yards have thousands of them right now, all of which should soon be going to the crusher and turned into scrap metal.

Obviously, I not a big motorcycle fan.

Gary