Rules of the road please help

[tommyardin]

Was talking to a 72yr old fella last night, who's just had 4 stents put in his chest, and he was saying that he recently went abroad for 20 days and they charged him £320 insurance. He travels quite a bit by the way.
BUT, if anything happened to him associated with the stents, drinking, or smoking, etc, he's not covered at all, and if was to die abroad the cost of transporting him back here isn't covered either!
Insurance is nothing short of fraud.
He kept asking what he gets for his money and they couldn't really give him a decent answer!  :rolleyes


Talking about insurance, does anyone else think that if cyclists are gonna play with the big boys on the road, shouldn't they have insurance as well?
Bearing in mind they continue to dangerously jump red lights, undertake lorries and buses, and generally throw caution to the wind on a daily basis!

[size=1em]The answer to your question Darrsi is yes they should have insurance, but how you police that with children on bikes? I don't know.[/size]

[size=1em]A little story follows about a very very BIG man. this is related in some way to, and, about Travel insurance as mentioned above.
[/size]

[size=1em]My best mate over many many years is Terry, AKA Wild Plum. I met Terry about 48 or 49 years ago we were both bikers and lived about 15 miles apart and met up in a dance one night (Sounds a bit gay but it's not) and we ended up having a fight, anyway when I came round he shook me by the hand and bought me a pint, well if someone is going to lay you out sparko what a lovely way for the night to end having a pint or two and making the best buddy someone could ever wish for.[/size]

[size=1em]Reading Darrsi post reminds me of Terry's plight. [/size]

[size=1em]Terry ended up going through the windscreen of a Corsair after hitting a skip lorry on winters evening about 32 years ago, he was taken to Guildford hospital where the gave him pain relief basically to ease his passing, they did nothing to him at that time because there was little to no chance he would even make it through the night.[/size]
[size=1em]The following morning he was still in the land of the living (Hope he doesn't mind me telling this his story) they had Terry in the operating theatre for many hours.[/size]
[size=1em]He had 170 odd stitches in the outside of his face and head, 60 odd stitches inside his mouth and gums, he had a broken wrist and elbow, both collar bones, one ankle a shin and numerous ribs, plus some internal organ damage that I don't understand nor can I elaborate on.[/size]
[size=1em]When the fire brigade got him out of the mangled mess of a car the ignition key (Column mounted ignition switch) head had gone up under his knee cap and had snapped off so one of the other jobs was to remove his knee cap and retrieve the key head.[/size]
[size=1em]What followed was months of rebuild surgery to his gums and teeth. Terry made a 100% recovery from that ordeal and continued to work as a brickie on site earning his living. [/size]
[size=1em]Terry is one of those guys that refuses to let anything get him down. When he finally was able to get about again he started working on getting his pilots licence, which he did and was teaching others to fly (It must of frightened the shit out of his students when they turned up and saw Terry with his really badly scarred beat up face).[/size]

[size=1em]On one such lesson flying out over the south coast in a two seater Terry's student had control of the plane (Duel control) flying at around a 1000 feet just below cloud base, the plane veered off course with a violent smash as an other plane came out of the clouds and took a part of his tail plane off, he grabbed control of the plane and flew it back to the departure airfield some 20 miles away, and landed it smashing the rolling stock and underside of the plane on impact.[/size]
[size=1em]The ground crew said he had done the impossible flying the plane with that amount of tail missing and landing it without loss of life. One must assume the other plane was hardly damaged at all because nothing was ever heard about it nor was it reported by anyone else.[/size]

[size=1em]The manoeuvre that the other plane was doing was called cloud bombing, fly really high above the clouds then go into a really steep dive and dive right through the cloud base and back out into sunlight. [/size]

[size=1em]Terry had said that he had done it before, and its great fun like a crescendo of bright light on emerging from the clouds at an incredibly fast rate. Strictly illegal.[/size]

[size=1em]Terry has a Gold medal at home that very very few people see that was warded to him for courage in the face of adversity, this was awarded by the flying club.[/size]
[size=1em]He did what was deemed as the impossible.    [/size]

[size=1em]Terry has since had bladder cancer twice, had 5 heart attacks and 8 stents fitted as three of them have blocked and had to be replaced.[/size]
[size=1em]A more positive and full of life geezer you will never meet.[/size]

[size=1em]There are down sides though, he just sold his 900 T140 Triumph Thruxton and the prat has bought a Harley, hence proving that there was brain damage done all those years ago in that Corsair accident.[/size]

[size=1em]I was sat in Terry's kitchen drinking tea a couple of years ago now and he was recounting how lucky he had been through life (If that's good luck fuck having it bad) with all the things that had happened to him, illnesses and accidents and stuff like that. He said that through his car accident ordeal Jan (His wife) had stuck by him through all the months of recovery, after his flying accident Jan was there for him and when he came around after numerous heart and balder operations there she was, he looked at her and smiled   and said hang about she a fucking Jonas, with that a bit of battenburg cake came flying across the kitchen and we both legged it. [/size]
[size=1em]That man is a LEGEND and I love him to bits, he is in almost every sense of the word My Brother. I think everyone should have a Terry in their life, it makes it so much more enjoyable.  [/size]