Stuff to think about, some non-motorcycle related.

First some bad news: an email to me recently broke the news that Paul Ritter, winner of the July 15, 1978 Superbike race at Sears Point, crashed at the Steamboat AHRMA races last weekend and broke his spine. As of last monday Ritter had no feeling below mid-chest. The Email from AHRMA racer Dale Palmer informing me of this, and an attached Email, runs in its entirety below.

"Some bad news. I raced the AHRMA TT at Steamboat Springs this past
weekend, and crashed out. While in the hospital, I heard of a rider that
was Transported by Helicopter to Denver Hospital. From the nurses and
doctors on staff, it was very grave sounding.
I have since learned that the gent on the stretcher was Paul Ritter who
once won an AMA National Superbike race at Sears Point in the '70s on a
Ducati.
Amazingly enough, he has survived a torn aorta, and is undergoing
surgery to stabilize his spinal injury. Most likely, he will be
paralyzed from the chest down.
Attached at the end of this message is some email that has circulated
about the incident. I don't know if you want to post it, or just forward
it to interested parties.
It just leaves me feeling crappy whenever I am out there racing and see
this happen. I guess we all know the risk, but it doesn't make it any
easier. My wishes go out to him.

Dale Palmer
AFM AHRMA #416
 

What happened:
Beth talked to the corner workers and garnered this information.  Beth
says that the track conditions at the site of the accident were fine.
Two riders crashed in front of Paul. Paul was trying to avoid them.  The
rider who highsided came down directly onto Paul and cleaned him off of
his bike.  The next rider who came down the track knows that he hit
someone, but is completely unsure who it was.
The assumption is that it was Paul who was hit, and he was hit directly
in the back. The damage to his spinal cord is severe and cannot be
repaired.  Paul is not expected to walk again.  He also has broken bones
in his left hand (he is left-handed).

At the present time, although he almost certainly knows the outcome on
some level Paul simply has too many things that he has to do in order to
simply survive (his breathing remains difficult since he is supine),
and he can't deal with other issues yet.  He will know after his surgery
(he knows that he needs more surgery).

Something amusing:
Paul was out of surgery but he still had a breathing tube in and
couldn't talk.  The nurse finally gave him a thick marker and held a
tablet above his head so he could write messages.  That wasn't much fun
since he couldn't use his left hand to write.  Beth came in and he began
to motion to his left foot.  Beth questioned him about whether he was in
pain or needed something desperately.  He shook his head "no" to every
question.  Beth finally gave him the pen and held the tablet.  He
wrote "TV OFF".  He hates television. The nurses had kindly turned it
off for him and then left the room.

Background:
Paul is drifting in and out a bit on his way to sleep.  Beth is having a
fairly good conversation with him anyway.  Paul knows that he crashed in
the first race.

Paul: Tonight's the party (a spaghetti feed that had been planned).
Beth: No, it's Tuesday now.
Paul: Oh. How'd everyone else's racing go?
Beth: Not very successfully.  They were worried about you.
Paul: Well *that's* a convenient excuse.

Another comment from him: "I guess I didn't have a very successful
low-budget racing career."  This one looks like a .sig file to me.

Yeah, he's the same person we have always enjoyed :) and today he's
breathing far more easily and getting shifted around some on his
backboard which makes him more comfortable.  Tomorrow morning is the
surgery and it's expected to go well and be pretty easy on him.  If all
goes well after that he may move to the rehab center as soon as a couple
of weeks!
At the present time they are leaning toward the spinal cord center in
Denver.  It's population is mostly athletes who have had sports injures.
They take the patients out water skiing (although they may not do this
during October ...), horseback riding, snow skiing and other strenuous
stuff.  This should make it the perfect place for Paul, unless Beth and
his family suddenly discover someplace even better.

Beth says that the contributions that are being made "will be helpful
also for his family to help with traveling and phone expenses. Thanks!"
END TEXT

Dean cont'd: Ritter is a member of the freshman class of roadracing, who along with Harry Klinzmann, Wes Cooley, Keith Code, Steve Mclaughlin and Jason's dad, Reggie, formed many of the early Superbike grids.

If I receive any contact info or further updates on Ritter I will post them ASAP.

Other stuff: During the past six months I have purchased used computer software from on-line auction service EBAY, last week's Wall Street darling. Instead of paying $250 for Office 97 at a retailer, used copies of that suite and just about anything else you might want software-wise is available for el-cheapo bucks at Ebay. I recently bought Illustrator, Photoshop, Win98 and Mac OS8.1 for an average selling price of $50 each. Great! as Tony the Tiger says.

Then I had lunch last week with a friend who just returned from Japan/China/Thailand. He mentioned that illegally copied software is available in the Pacific Rim for a fraction of what it costs here, even on Ebay. He said that you can walk into a software shop in the PR and buy copies of just about any software package you want, including mega-dollar CAD programs and DTP programs like QuarkXpress and Pagemaker, on CD, for the whopping price of exactly $5 US. That's right, five bucks.

Then I remembered that the gent I bought the Photoshop and Illustrator programs from had a name with more consonants than vowels, and when I confirmed the sale with him on the phone, he "did not speak too English good" and conveniently forgot to send the registration cards for the software although he swore up and down that they were brand new (and so they appeared). A close examination of my software bootie leaves me suspect of some titles; I think they were burned somewhere and sold on Ebay. Either that or Adobe has been misspelling Illustrator on their CDs for a while. Five bucks in Thailand, sell for fifty here, a hundred CDs nets you a free plane ticket home.
Anyway, word to the wise and all.

More Superbike news in the am.

Dean