By Tom Peterson
48 years of riding brings first lay down.
On Saturday, May 9, the weather was gorgeous. It was 84 degrees, sunny, not much wind, a perfect day for a motorcycle ride.
Adrian “Sonny” Buyze, 70, mounted his Honda 1300 VTX cruiser, and he rode from his home on Cherry Heights Road with a destination of meeting his wife Jessie at a camping spot in the Hood River National Forest outside of Dufur. She had gone ahead with the camper trailer, as she had done many times before.
“A deer changed my plans,” Buyze said on Monday.
Buyze was leaning into a right turn on highway 197 about four miles south of the Dalles, when he saw them on the side of the hill.
Three deer.
Two stood at attention at the hillside, reversed direction, and ran.
The third, however, ran straight into the highway, Buyze said.
“I swerved to avoid it,” he said. But the deer kept coming. He said he was in the northbound lane when he was on the deer. “It was coming so fast, there was nothing I could do.”
“Oh man, here we go,” he thought. The deer collided with his fuel tank, and Buyze said he laid the bike down on its left side.
The bike fell, bending the handlebars and the left foot plate. Buyze said he was not sure what happened next. But he ended up coming to a stop in the northbound lane near the bike. His hands were raw and bleeding from grinding on asphalt. His nose was scuffed up and his left cheek had a piece missing. His knees were bleeding.
“I sat up and I could see I was bleeding from my face,” he said, but I did not know how bad I was hurt.”
He was wearing his leather jacket, work boots, open-faced helmet and jeans when he went down.
“He was a young buck, but he could pack a wallop,” Buyze said of the deer.
The collision broke the deer's leg and injured it otherwise, he said, noting one of the first responders shot the deer and claimed the carcass.
Buyze was able to stand up from the accident and walk away. He attributed his lack of injury to his speed, about 50 miles per hour, at the time of the collision.
Buyze said it was amazing how quick medical and police help arrived, removing the bike from the northbound lane.
Buyze, a former aluminum plant worker and wind turbine maintenance man, refused medical transport and instead went home to heal, without a stitch.
On monday, he took his second motorcycle- a 250 enduro - for a ride.
“You get bucked off a horse; you get right back in the saddle,” he said.
Buyze has been riding since 1973. He started on a Suzuki three-cylinder, two-stroke street bike. He has riden hundreds of thousands of miles. He had put 90,000 miles on the Honda before the collision on Saturday.
Buyze’s safety record was a result of riding at slower speeds, he said, noting he could get 18,000 miles out of a set of tires.
If he had the collision to do over again?
He would have worn his full-face helmet and gloves, he said, noting the warmer temps kept him from doing so.
“It was 84 degrees. Gloves? I don’t need them,” he recounted of his decision to not wear gloves.
“Yeah, I did.”
Sonny Buyze took a ride on this 250 CC bike on Monday, needing to get back in the saddle. He walked away after hitting a deer on his Honda VTX 1300 cruiser on Highway 197 on Saturday, May 9.
Sonny Buyze, 70, was quick to get back in the saddle of this 250 CC motorcycle on Monday after hitting a deer on with his larger street bike on Saturday, May 9..
