From Ed Sorbo:

On Friday, Bruce was being weaned off the respirator and is responding faster than most people do. Bruce’s wife, Edie, was hopeful that he will wake up soon, as he has been kept unconscious with drugs since he went on the respirator Monday night. His spleen was removed on Tuesday morning. During surgery the Doctors took the opportunity to check his other organs and found no problems.

Bruce has a lot of pain and is on morphine. He also received a large hand-size dent on his back where his bike landed on him and it is almost gone.

Edie reports that the doctors had hoped that the air pressure from the respirator would help push the broken ribs back into place and it seems to have worked.

Edie wants to thank everyone who has sent e-mails, FAXes, cards and calls. She is decorating the room with all of the e-mail notes, cards and such.

What happened?

When Bruce started out from the hot pit for his warm-up lap in heat two, Joe Cubbage saw water spill out from Bruce’s lowers. Joe pointed the puddle out to Geoff Malone who was standing nearby and said “that just came out of Bruce’s bike.” Geoff pointed out the puddle to the nearest AMA official. Gary Mathers was in charge of Bruce’s row and was shown the puddle. Gary waited for Bruce to complete his warm-up lap and looked his bike over on the grid. Gary saw no water on either side of the bike and noted that the rear tire was dry. At this time Gary felt that the puddle on the hot pit road was just a little over flow and was not a problem. As soon as Bruce launched to start the race Gary saw water flow out of Bruce’s lowers and knew there was going to be trouble. Adrian Webb saw water come off Bruce’s bike in turn two and Bruce had a slide. Bruce crashed in turn three on the first lap of heat two and the race was red-flagged.

Back in the pits my helpers removed the fairing from Bruce’s bike so we could clean out the dirt and found the radiator cap in the upper fairing. The cap has no damage and we assumed that it had not been installed all the way.

Steve Dalstrom told Bruce about the cap on Sunday night in the hospital before Bruce took the wrong turn and went unconscious. Bruce thought back and said that he remembered putting the cap on all the way. He thinks that the neck of the radiator was damaged in his turn-two crash on Friday and went unnoticed until it was too late when the cap came lose after being installed on Saturday.

I came to this reconstruction by talking to
Geoff, Gary and Adrian and by looking over the bike. Shit happens, that’s why we wear our leathers!

You think you’re tough? Bruce broke 11 ribs, yet he did not let his leathers be cut off, they are still in one piece.

Fans who wish to send a Get Well message to Lind can do so at this address:
Bruce Lind, ICU patient
c/o Monterey Community Hospital
P.O. Box HH
Monterey, CA 93942

Messages can also be sent via e-mail, c/o Sorbo, to [email protected]

The hospital telephone number is (831) 424-7705. The number for the FAX machine in Patient Relations is (831) 625-4568.