You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
How much we take for granted in life, like the ability to walk.
We grumble and bitch about the most trivial of things. At the time, that issue seems to fill up our thoughts. But then something devastating happens to you or a friend or a loved one, and that trivial matter is no more important than a dandelion blowing in the wind.
I was thinking this the other day as I entertained one of my best friends from High School. He has spent the last five years of his life confined to a wheel chair. Everyone says he should have died. He didn’t. Now he has dedicated his life to rising from the metallic chair and standing on his own.
It happened 5 years ago.
Adam Lee Rogers was driving his VMAX motorcycle South on Highway 1 in Carmel, California. It was night and the road is pitch black. There are no lights on this road, only reflective signs to guide the way. If there were moonlight that night, it probably couldn’t reach the road due to the hills that rise like sky scrapers on one side, and the Redwood trees that reach for the stars on the other.
To say Highway 1 is winding is like saying Christie Brinkley was cute. This road dips and bends and practically comes to a complete stop on hair pin turns that caress the Pacific Ocean the entire way.
If you haven’t driven on Highway 1, you most certainly have seen it on television. This is the highway where they shoot Porsche commercials and tire ads. It is the highway that connects Carmel by the Sea with Big Sur ; two of the most scenic spots on planet Earth.
Adam Rogers knows this road better than almost anyone. He grew up here. He lived in Big Sur. He drove this road every single day.
On this fateful night, accident investigators say Rogers was traveling approximately 35 miles an hour. He had negotiated the most dangerous part of the highway and was nearing the mouth of Carmel Valley when suddenly he hit an invisible wall of flesh. With no way to anticipate this sudden explosion of force, Rogers will later tell me, he is catapulted over the top of the bike.
In that second a life time of training takes over. While Rogers is hurtling through the air, separated from his VMAX and having not yet hit the cold concrete, his brain tells his body to prepare for devastation.
Instead of landing on his head and exposing his neck and throat to the road, Rogers rolls slightly in mid air. He is not a genie and he cannot stop time and space. He is going to hit the road and he is going to hit the road in an utterly devastating way. But unlike you and me, Rogers is a trained athlete whose body is conditioned for pain and sudden attack. He has bounced off the ground more times than a tennis ball at Wimbledon.
Rogers will tell me that in that split instant, while he is flying through the darkness of uncertainty and what’s to come, his body rolls ever so slightly. This allows him to land on his shoulder, and not his head. There was no conscious thought during this moment, just trained muscle movement from a million falls onto a dojo mat.
After impact, Rogers slid on his racing leathers and his new helmet scraped along the harsh asphalt.
The scene was a mess. Bent motorcycle and rising smoke. Puddles of blood from Rogers and the massive Boar that his VMAX sliced in two.
When the engine stopped roaring, and the sound of metal stopped rolling around on concrete, there was quiet. Rogers was unconscious, a whisker away from death.
As he laid there on the cold unforgiving road, he was bathed in an ethereal light. The light was warm and was welcoming Rogers home. Inside the light, Rogers could see God. There was no fear. There was no pain. Just a feeling of knowing and calm. In that devastating moment of isolation and pain, in the unconscious arena of death, Rogers and God shared a moment. It was then and there, that God and Adam Rogers signed a new contract on life.
Within minutes a cab driver arrived at the bloody scene. He called for help. CHP and paramedics quickly arrive. Rogers was rushed to the hospital where the prognosis was grim.
For day, Rogers was in ICU on life support. That’s when the doctors delivered the bad news to his wife. They told her there was no chance he would regain consciousness. Even if he did, they said, he had suffered a massive brain injury and his quality of life would be severely diminished.
Adam was a strong specimen. Heart of a racehorse. Lungs of a Lion. Eyes of an Eagle. If organ donation was a restaurant, Rogers was the entire buffet line.
His wife had to contemplate the unthinkable. Will he live? What kind of life will he have? How many others might he help?
After what I am sure was a very difficult time, she decided to do nothing. She decided to wait, and allow the Knight born a thousand years too late to fight the ultimate battle with the dragon.
Adam Rogers is a fighter, literally.
Rogers took martial arts as a boy when other kids went to little league. Rogers learned one style then another. In his early years he was undisciplined and wild and when one style bored him, he took up another. Like Bruce Li, he married different fighting techniques into his arsenal.
Rogers is also blessed with strength and mental acuity. This allowed his mind to absorb the pain so that his body wouldn’t have to.
In later years, he would train hours and hours for full contact fights. He would spar with men who hit him relentlessly. He would fire off a thousand round house kicks, banging his shin on a pole.
His leg was knotted and scarred. I asked him once if it hurt. He laughed.
Of course it hurt, but his mind told his leg not to worry about it, and his leg soon forgot it was in pain so that, like the snake, it could recoil and fire again.
As a young man I accompanied Rogers to some full contact bouts in Long Beach. Up close it was raw and exciting. I wouldn’t have lasted a minute in the ring with these guys. Round house kicks full of speed and power. Spinning back fists that only gathered more momentum till they found their mark.
I watched Rogers fight on ESPN. The announcers called him Adam “The Elder” Rogers. He was good enough to win a championship belt.
During this time, Rogers ran a kick boxing academy in Seaside California. His dojo was run with precision, passion and love.
Rogers students loved him for his dedication to their training and to their development.
I studied karate for a few years, and I saw that many instructors were in it for the money. The way you make money in this industry is keeping your dojo full. To keep parents and kids coming back, instructors often reward students with belts they have not fully achieved. That is why you can walk into almost any karate studio in America and see a green belt throw a front punch with all the snap of a wet noodle. It makes me angry when I see this. But graduating students to the next level satisfies kids and parents who keep writing checks to martial arts studios. It’s an ugly little secret.
Rogers didn’t care. If you threw a punch like a melted piece of cheese then you remained a white belt till you could prove otherwise. If this upset the kid or his parents, Rogers would tell them too bad, go to another studio. That’s like telling your boss to stop paying you, but that was Rogers code. In his mind, to put a green belt on a yellow belt was an insult to a training philosophy that dates back to the earliest of times.
After weeks of being in a coma, Rogers opened his eyes. That was a blessing and curse. The blessing; he was alive. The curse; he was not the same man he was.
When he opened his eyes, that contract he signed with God was initiated. The moment he opened his eyes, still unable to speak or move his limbs, Rogers signed on for the biggest fight of his life.
ESPN wouldn’t be announcing this one. No this one would be scored by angels sitting ring side.
August 4th 2009. 5 years have past since that fateful night. My buddy of 32 years is celebrating a birthday a gaggle of nures and doctors never imagined he would.
I pull him out of the truck and allow his weight to fall on mine, as his legs stabilize under him. I am amazed at how remarkably solid he still is considering how sedentary a life he now leads.
Rogers has a brace on one leg to stabilize an ankle. His left hand still curls in an uncontrolled manner. His hair is whiter now, but he still has that smile he always had.
I get him to the wheel chair and wheel him to the patio. Faces light up as we approach. Adam, then and now, always had an amazing effect on people.
He always fancied himself a warrior born a thousand years out of time. He always lived a life where chivalry was important and a code was paramount to life and being a man.
Adam smiles a broad smile on this birthday, the 5th he will spend in a chair.
Rogers has a celebratory sip of Gran Marnier and holds court.
He holds his plastic cup with an arm, newly decorated with a tattoo that shows a boars head, which winds up his forearm, dissolving into a VMAX motorcycle being ridden by a Knight. It is all very symbolic for this man of principles and values.
Rogers answers every question posed to him. His speech is a little slurred, but in some ways, I think he’s funnier than he ever was. It turns out the fall isn’t what damaged his brain, ironically it was the VMAX hitting him in the back of the helmet that did the damage. I guess they don’t teach you how to not get hit from a tumbling motorcycle in karate school.
Rogers tells everyone about the big law suit he won against the state of California. He tells us how proud he is that there are now boar crossing signs erected because of his fall. He tells us that he is pleased by the 8.5 million dollar settlement the jury bestowed upon him. He says it will allow him to go to a rehab hospital that specializes in helping people regain their balance. Rogers would give back every red cent if this incident never happened, don’t you know.
More than anything, Rogers is a warrior. He vows over and over, his legs twitching to stand, that he will rise from this wheel chair. He says it will be this year.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Two things I am certain of.
Rogers will again walk, and he will make the world a better place.
I believe that is the deal he signed that night in the warm glow of God.