What are your two favorite things to wear?
Body Armor
The gear wasn’t optional. Never was.
Leather chaps—thick enough to take the burn when asphalt becomes a grinding wheel. Vest—reinforced at the spine and ribs where impact hits hardest. Jacket—heavy pads inside that’s really absorbed impact. Boots—steel-toed, ankle-high, laced tight enough that my feet stay attached when physics tries to rip them off.
I’m a knight on a Harley, not a tourist on a rental.
The difference matters when a car loses control in the lane beside me. Suddenly I’m making calculations at fifty miles an hour with about half a second to execute.
Brake? Swerve? Lay it down?
The bike decided for me.
Separation happened fast—one moment I’m riding, the next I’m sliding. A hundred feet of asphalt at speed. The kind of slide that turns skin into hamburger and bone into compound fractures if you’re not wrapped right.
The bike tumbled. Chrome and steel doing what metal does when it meets pavement—sparking, scraping, coming apart in pieces.
I didn’t tumble. I slid.
Because the leather did exactly what it was supposed to do: bought me friction, bought me time, bought me the difference between roadrash and road burial.
When I stopped moving, I did a field check: fingers, toes, spine, ribs. Everything answered. Nothing leaking. Nothing broken.
I stood up.
The bike didn’t. $10,000 damages. My beautiful 2009 Heritage.
People rushed over expecting carnage. Cops arrived. It was a hit and run. I tried to give chase. 1985 friendly fire hit me. So, I was honest when I told the cops I been hit harder.
That’s what body armor does. It might be uncomfortable and heavy. It’s better that the pain of broken body.
My two favorite things wear, Helmet and heavy armored jacket…
I don’t need them most the time. It’s good to be wearing body armor when we need it. That’s my personal story.
by Randolph A Lewis
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