I almost got myself killed saving 22 children from a school bus dangling off a cliff, but the next day’s headlines called me a “reckless biker who caused a catastrophic crash”. Nobody witnesses heroism through leather and tattoos—they just see what they expect to see.
The morning had started like any other Tuesday. I’d crawled out of bed at dawn, my old bones protesting each movement. At sixty-eight, with two replaced hips and a back that told me when rain was coming three days in advance, I wasn’t the rider I’d once been. But that ’89 Heritage Softail was the only thing that still made me feel alive since Martha passed.
I’d planned a solo ride through the Cascade Mountains—a route I’d been riding for forty years. Clear skies, empty roads, and six hours of nothing but me, my thoughts, and the rhythmic thunder of American iron beneath me.
Three hours in, I rounded a blind curve on the mountain pass and saw it—a yellow school bus tilted precariously on the guardrail, its front wheels hanging over a three-hundred-foot drop. Even from a hundred yards back, I could see terrified faces pressed against the windows. Kids’ faces and a bus full of children balanced on the edge of disaster.
The driver’s side door opened, and a young woman leaned out, her face pale with shock. “Please help!” she shouted. “I swerved to avoid a deer. We’re slipping!
As if confirming her words, the bus shifted slightly, metal groaning as more weight transferred to the compromised guardrail. The children inside screamed.
“How many aboard?” I called, already moving toward her.
“Twenty-two fourth-graders and me,” she answered, her voice trembling. “Field trip to the science center.”
I assessed the situation with the cold clarity that comes from decades of riding dangerous roads. The bus was balanced on a fulcrum point. The rear end was still on solid ground, but gravity was slowly winning the battle, pulling the heavier front end downward. The guardrail—old and rusted—was the only thing preventing a catastrophic plunge.
“Can you get the kids out the back emergency exit?” I asked.
She shook her head. “It’s jammed. I tried. Front door’s the only way out, but when we move toward it, the bus tilts more.”
Another groan of metal. Another inch of slippage. The children’s screams intensified.
“Keep them in their seats, as far back as possible,” I instructed, mind racing through options.
