First off, glad that everyone is okay… So you’re over in Taiwan for, I believe, the first time; what are you over there for and how’s the trip been leading up to the wreck?
Thanks Ryan, me too! Yeah, this is my first time here. We’re checking out some factories that make our products, and assemble our complete bikes. I’m also shooting the new complete bikes for catalogs and stuff. So far the trip has been awesome! We’ve been staying in Taichung, and there’s a rad BMX only shop here owned by our Skeleton Crew rider Ken Wang, and he and the locals are awesome, and super fun to ride with.
The calm before the storm...
Too many questions wrapped into one… Who was driving? Where were you going? How did it all happen?
Well this will be a long answer then. Ken was driving, and we were coming back from an awesome day of riding. Ken and the locals took us to an amazing “street plaza,” that could’ve only been built to ride or skate.
I seriously thought to myself, “This is it.”
We were heading back to Taichung on the freeway around 8pm. We were all just shooting the shit, joking around, and chillin’ after a good day of riding. We were out in the middle of nowhere, so it was pretty dark, and no one saw what was ahead of us until we were about to hit it.
There was some sort of mattress or bed in the road that had fallen out of a truck or something in the middle lane of the freeway. We hit that going full speed, and Ken swerved a little to the left and we started to roll over towards my side of the car. I was sitting shotgun. As soon as we hit the bed, we went airborne a little and that’s when we saw the car 10 feet in front of us. This car had hit the same thing we did, and it caused him to hit the guardrail, and drift into the middle lane where it was stalled out. The driver had already gotten out of his car, and was sitting on the side of the road.
As soon as I saw the car in front of us, I seriously thought to myself, “This is it.” The car was at a 90 degree angle to our van, so we completely T-Boned it. We smashed into the car so hard, that all the windows in the van instantly blew out. The van flipped over and spun around a few times and slid to a stop about 50 feet down the freeway. We went from 75mph to a dead stop on our side in about 3 seconds. As soon as it was over, all of us just started yelling, asking everyone else in the van if they were alive.
It's hard to believe no one was seriously hurt when looking at this scene.
What was the immediate feeling when the car came to a stop and you knew everyone was all right?
As soon as we all new we were ok, we all realized that we were still sitting in the middle of the dark freeway. I thought for sure someone else was going to crash into us, so we helped each other out of the van as fast as possible. A few cars dodged passed us, but luckily none hit us or the van.
We climbed out of the van, and again made sure everyone was ok. G.L. was limping, and I was bleeding pretty good from my head, but adrenalin had us feeling ok. Just sitting back and looking at the scene was surreal. I somehow got the idea to get my camera bag out of the van, and start shooting.
Jeff Z. is going to be so mad at people with trucks when he sees this mattress on the road. He hates people hauling stuff for this very reason...
Who all got hurt?
I seriously don’t know how all of us were alive, let alone the fact that we were relatively unharmed. G.L. ended up with 4 broken bones in his foot, I got stitches in the back of my head, and Chase got a mean looking black eye, and Ken and Fu just had scratches.
With the language barrier, what was the hospital like for you and Greg?
The hospital was actually great! It ended up being a Buddist Hospital of some sorts, and they were really friendly, and a few of the doctors spoke broken English. We had Chase with us as well to translate. The craziest part is the fact that mine and G.L.’s combined bill was around $200!
How frightening was the entire experience?
It’s pretty high up there in my scariest moments. It was mostly the instant that I saw the car in front of us that was scary, and also the “what if” possibilities.
I feel like this will sound retarded to a lot of people, but you’ve always said you wanted to flip a car…how’d the reality live up to the dream. How do you look back on the scenario now that it’s said and done? Scratch one off the “fuckit list,” eh?
Well I love cars, and I’ve done a lot of stuff in them, and flipping one was something I’ve never done. It wasn’t that I wanted to do in these circumstances, but it counts, hahaha. Now that it’s done and over, I’m a little freaked out by the pictures, because I still don’t know how all five of us are fine.
What was the scene like afterward; who stopped, how long did it take for the police/ambulance to show up, etc?
The weird thing was that no one stopped to help, or see if we needed help. Not a single person. Also the tow truck was the first help there. The ambulance followed shortly after, probably no more than five minutes. We were on our way to the hospital in the ambulance before the cops got there.
