Good friend and fellow rider Greg Locke laid his sports bike down Wednesday afternoon on Shooting Creek Road in Franklin County.

He landed on his right knee and scraped his left leg when he hit the pavement.  After treatment as the hospital in Rocky Mount, his wife took him to the Veterans Medical Center in Salem, where x-rays showed his right leg muscle torn away from the knee.  Because he has a heart condition and pacemaker, they admitted him for more tests and he is now scheduled for surgery on the knee.

Dropped in to see Greg Saturday afternoon and found him in good spirits and eager to get the surgery so he can start healing and rehab on the knee.  He joked about turning the tables on each other.  He visited to me when my motorcycle-encounter on Nov. 9, 2012 put me under an induced coma in intensive care at Carilion-Roanoke Memorial.

“No matter how you look at it, I look a lot better than you did then,” he said.  I have no doubt.

Greg is 75 and has ridden motorcycles since his teenage years.  We often talk about how much longer we may ride around on two-wheelers.  I still ride my 2009 Harley Super Glide, which hit 100,000 miles on the odometer the day before it hit the cow on a nighttime ride back from shooting photos of a Floyd County Buffaloes football playoff game outside of Staunton.

Besides riding, Greg restores older motorcycles and currently has refurbished a Kawasaki 1000 “Chips” police bike and a 1990s Honda Goldwing in his shop and for sale.  He is a painter and sign-painter and his original lettering appears at The Floyd Country Store, County Records, The Pharm House pharmacy and other locations in Floyd County, Meadows of Dan and elsewhere.

He’s a talented painter and illustrator, good friend and regular at The Breakfast Club at Blue Ridge Cafe on most mornings in Floyd.

Let’s keep in our prayers and be thankful that his injuries weren’t more serious.