I know the world doesn't seem to be a nice place to be right now, and that we're all being inundated with political campaign messages demonizing our friends, neighbors, colleagues, and a host of people we don't even know, but it's important to remember that shit ain't real life. It's marketing, fake marketing to be exact, to paly to our basest emotions to elect someone that will never actually care about us.
That goes for both parties.
So it's important to remember that, when push comes to shove, most people (not all, but most) are actually pretty good to one another and bear no hate, nor animosity toward each other. And, when your back is against the wall or you're in real danger, people will help you. Which is what happened to one motorcyclist who became trapped and was rescued by a pair of backcountry elk hunters in Wyoming recently.
Phil Bollinger had been riding down the road when he lost control of his motorcycle due to a deer jumping out onto the road. He crashed headfirst into the ditch and became pinned underneath the bike in a culvert. According to Bollinger, who spoke with Wyoming's Cowboy State Daily, “I was trying to keep my motorcycle on the road and make sure nobody was beside me. I didn't notice that there was a culvert that went underneath the road for drainage. Then I hit a rock that stopped the bike immediately and threw me off to the left, toward the road. I landed in the culvert with my head going towards the entrance of the underground drainage.”
Bollinger added that though he could reach his phone, he had no service. A reminder, if you're planning on riding anything in the backcountry or along areas where service is non-existent or patchy at best, bring a Garmin.
A little while after Bollinger crashed, Jason and Ben Koperski came down the road after an unsuccessful morning elk hunt. The two immediately saw the crashed motorcycle and, initially, didn't think anything of it as they told the outlet they're used to seeing downed bikes around where Bollinger crashed. But then they caught Bollinger waving his boot back and forth and immediately stopped. They found Bollinger wedged in the culvert, but couldn't move the motorcycle off of him. According to the outlet, Jason Koperski worked for the US Coast Guard doing Search and Rescue, so the man knew what to do and what not to do in the situation and kept Bollinger conscious and warm while further help arrived.
But there was a snag. The local sheriffs couldn't pinpoint their location. That is until Jason opened up his phone, opened onX Hunt, and got their group's exact GPS location. “I literally went on my phone and opened up onX Hunt,” Koperski told the paper, adding, “I said, ‘Here's our exact latitude and longitude, and we were able to give the dispatch the location immediately. The signal up there sucked, but onX was the key.” This is also why I use onX in the backcountry, as backups are always good.
The sheriff finally arrived an hour after the initial phone call down, but they still had to wait another half hour for the ambulance, and then a little while longer for a helicopter. The Koperski's didn't want to move Bollinger or the bike all that much as they didn't know if Bollinger had any sort of spinal injury that could worsen with moving him or the bike. With the rescuers in place, the team got Bollinger out of the culvert and onto the helicopter which transported him to Fort Collins, where they found an arterial bleed that required a lengthy transfusion process and 33 units of blood.
He could've easily died had it not been for two strangers' help, them being in the woods hunting elk at the right time and place, and them having access to a service like onX. So a reminder, the world may look like it's on fire if you look at social media or the news, but when push comes to shove, folks will stop and help and maybe even save your life.
