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When the Pre-1916 Cannonball Motorcycle Endurance Run concluded, out of 45 entrants Brad Wilmarth was named the overall champion. He was one of just 10 riders who made it start to finish on two wheels without missing a mile. Matt Olsen was one of the other 35. Along the route there were dramas aplenty both major and minor, but only one fatality. Sadly, Matt was the person closest to the victim…after all, he was sitting on it at the time of its premature demise.

While he was surely not the first man to be cast out of the saddle of a 1913 Sears motorcycle, at least for today Matt Olsen can claim that he was the last. Judging by the scarcity of near-century old bikes still in running condition, and the greater scarcity of pie-eyed optimists willing to put the lash to them, it seems that Matt will likely be retaining that title for the immediate future. But let’s rewind this story back to the beginning. According to Matt’s recollections, “I’ve been working on bikes since I was eleven, and I’ve built tons of knuckleheads with my Dad. I’ve done Hendersons, Indians, all different makes. If you ask me, old bike guys are the best guys in the world and the pre-sixteen crowd, they’re the craftiest ones, and the guys who are the most willing to help somebody else. They’re in it because they love bikes, and you’ll never hear them say, ‘My bike’s better than his, or I’m cooler than him.’”

Matt’s Cannonball experience was off to an auspicious start. “Riding the bike I built from scratch with the help of my Dad and lots of my friends was the most fun I’ve ever had,” he said. “The bike’s really tall, so however fast you’re going it feels like you’re going a lot faster. It’s got those little skinny tires and it’s just a cornering machine. The Sears was an effortless bike to ride, it’s just amazing. ”

That was the good part. Then five stages into the race, things turned bad. “I was going pretty fast and concentrating on the foot pedals, and looking at my road course map, and I think I had slept a total of fifteen hours in the last four days, and hit a rough patch of road and just lost it,” he said. “If you think about the amount of control you have on the handlebars when your hands are parallel and 25” apart from each other, it’s quite a bit different from a standard Knucklehead or Panhead handlebar. I just wasn’t used to the bike. I only had about 500 miles on it.”

Then they turned ugly. He said, “Next thing I knew I was on the ground wondering what happened. You know how sometimes a crash happens where everything slows down and those few seconds seems like five hours…this wasn’t one of those. I just got knocked off and next thing I knew I was covered in blood and just mangled. I hit something really hard because it bent both fork blades back and snapped the left one. I was really lucky one of my friends, Kevin, was with me, and I was just glad he was there. He kept talking to me so I didn’t lose consciousness, and that was really important. I was wearing a modular helmet and my face shield was up to look at the road chart, so my whole chin underneath my bottom lip was all rashed. I got four or five stitches there, and then my bottom teeth hit my lip, and I’m surprised they didn’t go all the way through. My hands were all bloody, but they’re good now. Later Jeff Decker’s van showed up, and by that time I had already checked to make sure my toes and fingers were working, and they were. So that was awesome. I told the guys, ‘Just take me to the hospital because if we wait for an ambulance it will be an extra hour.’ I had a 1950’s highway patrol jacket on, and I had Jeff Decker take it off me before I went into the hospital because I didn’t want them to cut it off me. That would have been a bummer. Both of the bones in my forearm were busted up pretty bad though. It was a weird thing because I’d move my arm to get it out of the sleeve, and my hand just kinda stood still. So they took me in to the emergency room and the nurses were amazing, like angels they were so nice. Normally I guess it’s like a two hour surgery but it took about four and a half hours.”

Unfortunately, the injuries sustained by the Sears were terminal. “The frame’s bent, the forks are busted, the handlebars are toast, the fenders are both scrap, my seat needs to be re-done, the tank is fine but it was kind of custom made to the frame, so it’s a total loss,” Matt said. “I’ll end up scrapping it out to the insurance company and then I’ll just buy the motor back and hang the rest of the stuff on the wall.”

Unlike the Sears, Matt’s wounds are already well on their way to being restored to near mint condition. “I’m just glad it’s over with. It was two weeks ago and they got the staples out of my arm. All my abrasions are healed up already. I cut the inside of my lip. That was the worst. I still can’t eat anything hard, but it’s getting better every day. It could have been a lot worse. My spirits are high, and my girlfriend flew in from Brooklyn to take care of me, so I’m doing fine.”

Ever the positive and resilient young buck, Matt came away with a pirate’s chest full of treasured memories as compensation for a cartwheel that will go down in history. “The riding was so much fun but the night time was just the best part. Everybody was doing whatever they could in the parking lot to do overnight re-builds, and getting to work on rare obscure bikes, it was just phenomenal. Those were the best four or five days of my life,” he said. “It was just a blast.”

Despite paying a high price for five stages of glory, Matt is utterly undeterred from his goal of someday completing the route. “It’s just a bummer really what happened, but I guess I’m only twenty-five and I was the youngest guy in it, and I’d be more upset if I was seventy or eighty, or couldn’t walk, but I’ll try it again. Maybe I’ll crash the next time too but I’ll keep trying until I make it. I was really excited to go coast to coast on my Sears. I’ll re-build the bike and probably make another try in 2012 and hopefully not have it be such a spectacle next time.”