This is a bit late in coming, but here are a few more details of the final days of our unlucky Colorado adventure. When Bettie broke (we did not know at the time) her foot, we were out of cell phone range, so we could not simply call 911. No problem: I had acquired a SPOT satellite emergency communicator designed for such situations. What a great opportunity to try it. So I popped open the lock and and pressed the 911 button. The device determines your location via GPS and sends a signal to a satellite network that causes the monitoring service to send local emergency responders to your aid. OK, press button. Lights begin blinking. Just to be sure, press again.
Now we wait for help. And wait. And wait. After about 1/2 hour, when we could have been bleeding to death, no help. Eventually I gave up and rode my bike a few miles further on until I got cell phone service to call conventional 911. Help came right away, and based on the paramedic exam, we decided against immediate carriage to the hospital. Instead we chose to be transported to a local restaurant (biker bar, actually) from which we intended to call friends for help. The ferrying back and forth from the accident site to the restaurant provided me with my first (and hopefully last) opportunity to ride locked in the back of a sheriff's car.
At the restaurant things didn't work as we expected, and Bettie's foot was hurting more and more. So we arranged for a taxi to take her on into Denver (about 45 miles) and I followed on my bike. I first stored her bike in a lockbox provided by the bar. Did you know that biker bars have storage lockers for motorcycles? When a patron has celebrated to the point of incapacity, the bar persuades him to take a taxi and leave his bike safely stored at the bar. I was able to avail myself of this arrangement.
The hospital did its thing and determined that indeed there were broken bones. So all doubt about continuing our vacation on motorcycles was resolved: we made plans for Houston. The next day was full of scrambling to identify and engage a shipping service for our bikes, retrieving Bettie's bike from where we stored it, preparing the bikes for shipment, getting air reservations, acquiring TSA approved lock boxes for transporting firearms, figuring out how we would get our bulky riding suits and other stuff back. (It turns out you can take a surprisingly large amount of equipage on a motorcycle.) Etc etc.
Our friends in Denver were great and helped us every way they could. Things worked out as well as we could hope, and we eventually arrived in Houston. I was still pissed that the SPOT system had so badly failed. Until I realized, that when I pressed the 911 button the second time (just "to be sure"), that was a signal to cancel the help request. It actually says that in the manual, and in fine print on the back of the device. Brilliant. Later I learned that SPOT faithfully contacted the Colorado emergency service, but then withdrew the alarm after I inadvertently said "never mind". Oh well.
