First, for you fellow riders, this was one of those ones that was serious enough that my first thought wasn't "How's my bike?". I just kinda assumed it was at least as totalled as its rider.
However, as mentioned, I was tooling home to drop off my shiny new (for me) .44 Mag Vaquero. My Tomcat was in its usual home in the front flap pocket of my bomber jacket. My G29 was in the plastic bookbag bungee-netted behind me (along with reading materials for work that night) in its Uncle Mike's pancake rig, wrapped as usual in two brown paper pags against just such an occasion. The Vaquero, being pre-owned, had no box and was just loose in the same plastic bag.
Post accident, I deduced from my lack of broken ribs or Beretta-shaped bruises on my right side that the Tomcat was unscathed. The Atlanta Police Department officer who took the report asked me, in the trauma ward, if the guns were stolen, and I replied that they weren't, I was just on my way home from my job at a gun shop. He manfully avoided a crestfallen look and finished filling out the property form, informing me that I could send someone to pick them up from APD property. I understand his disappointment. Police work on daywatch in a nice mostly residential neighborhood no doubt can get crushingly boring at times, and I'm sure there was a small part of him who, stumbling across a sportbike wreck with a chick wearing a bomber jacket with the Flying Tigers insignia airbrushed on the back, guns and gun magazines and books strewn across the street, hoped he'd stumbled across some secret biker gun-smuggling ring. Now that would've been exciting! Maybe they'd let him help with the investigation! But, nope, it turns out to be a routine accident with a sadly injured good guy. Quelle Bummer.
I signed and had notarized a letter authorizing Sheffield to go pick up the pistoles yesterday, and he went down to property pick-up @ City Hall East fully expecting to do battle with the notoriously anti-gun City of Atlanta bureaucracy. Instead they were semi-efficient, unfailingly polite, and forked over the hardware upon his production of the notarized document and my copy of the property receipt.
The Tomcat was unscathed. The G29 suffered a teensy, tiny scuff on the right rear corner of the slide (I mean you really have to look for it). The polished stainless Vaquero, OTOH, suffered: scuffs on the right side of the barrel at the muzzle end and the ejector-rod housing immediately below that, as well as a pretty ugly scrape on the high part of the cylinder towards the front between two of the flutes. They're all too deep to buff out, so I'll leave them as honorable battle scars, and maybe mention it in the property settlement with the other guy's insurance and see what they say...
I haven't shot any of them yet, but everything seems to function fine. As my right wrist was badly busted (in the x-ray room, I noticed my radius and ulna making an odd looking bulge way up on the back of my hand where my knuckles should've been; good thing I was morphined out of my mind...), it'll be a while before I'm up to running .44 Mags through a 4 5/8" tube.
Given the out-of-commission status of my right hand, primary protection pieces right now are the G23C and Tomcat for ease of shooting one-handed weak hand only.
And that's the story.
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"..but never ever Fear. Fear is for the enemy. Fear and Bullets."
10mm: It's not the size of the Dawg in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog!
[This message has been edited by Tamara (edited June 23, 2000).]
However, as mentioned, I was tooling home to drop off my shiny new (for me) .44 Mag Vaquero. My Tomcat was in its usual home in the front flap pocket of my bomber jacket. My G29 was in the plastic bookbag bungee-netted behind me (along with reading materials for work that night) in its Uncle Mike's pancake rig, wrapped as usual in two brown paper pags against just such an occasion. The Vaquero, being pre-owned, had no box and was just loose in the same plastic bag.
Post accident, I deduced from my lack of broken ribs or Beretta-shaped bruises on my right side that the Tomcat was unscathed. The Atlanta Police Department officer who took the report asked me, in the trauma ward, if the guns were stolen, and I replied that they weren't, I was just on my way home from my job at a gun shop. He manfully avoided a crestfallen look and finished filling out the property form, informing me that I could send someone to pick them up from APD property. I understand his disappointment. Police work on daywatch in a nice mostly residential neighborhood no doubt can get crushingly boring at times, and I'm sure there was a small part of him who, stumbling across a sportbike wreck with a chick wearing a bomber jacket with the Flying Tigers insignia airbrushed on the back, guns and gun magazines and books strewn across the street, hoped he'd stumbled across some secret biker gun-smuggling ring. Now that would've been exciting! Maybe they'd let him help with the investigation! But, nope, it turns out to be a routine accident with a sadly injured good guy. Quelle Bummer.
I signed and had notarized a letter authorizing Sheffield to go pick up the pistoles yesterday, and he went down to property pick-up @ City Hall East fully expecting to do battle with the notoriously anti-gun City of Atlanta bureaucracy. Instead they were semi-efficient, unfailingly polite, and forked over the hardware upon his production of the notarized document and my copy of the property receipt.
The Tomcat was unscathed. The G29 suffered a teensy, tiny scuff on the right rear corner of the slide (I mean you really have to look for it). The polished stainless Vaquero, OTOH, suffered: scuffs on the right side of the barrel at the muzzle end and the ejector-rod housing immediately below that, as well as a pretty ugly scrape on the high part of the cylinder towards the front between two of the flutes. They're all too deep to buff out, so I'll leave them as honorable battle scars, and maybe mention it in the property settlement with the other guy's insurance and see what they say...
I haven't shot any of them yet, but everything seems to function fine. As my right wrist was badly busted (in the x-ray room, I noticed my radius and ulna making an odd looking bulge way up on the back of my hand where my knuckles should've been; good thing I was morphined out of my mind...), it'll be a while before I'm up to running .44 Mags through a 4 5/8" tube.
Given the out-of-commission status of my right hand, primary protection pieces right now are the G23C and Tomcat for ease of shooting one-handed weak hand only.
And that's the story.
------------------
"..but never ever Fear. Fear is for the enemy. Fear and Bullets."
10mm: It's not the size of the Dawg in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog!
[This message has been edited by Tamara (edited June 23, 2000).]
"was she doing with all those guns and reading material on the bike?" Of course reading on, I was able to figure it out. Anyway, we had a fine young gentleman kill himself on a new Sportster 
and lo and behold, he had about 3 keys stuffed under his jacket! The investigation and autopsy showed he was high as a kite and doing quite the excessive speed on a curve. Darwin at its best. I can imagine your man in blue was quite interested! 
