Ryan Suchanek 's memories go blank shortly after 2:45 p.m. on Oct. 5, 2007.

The next thing the 27-year-old motorcycle stunt rider from Milton remembers is waking up in a hospital more than a month later -- missing half of his left leg.

Yet Suchanek is calm, even casual, as he talks about the head-on collision that ripped off his foot and threw him from his bike headfirst through a car windshield. He doesn 't shy from wearing shorts that show his new prosthetic limb. He maintains this Zen approach by making sure his new life isn 't so very different from his old life.

In the year before the crash Suchanek competed and toured internationally, visiting China, Singapore, Canada, Indonesia and Malaysia, performing his stunts both solo and with his five-man stunt team, Vertical Mischief. They put on an impressive motorcycle show, often at half time of various racing events like NASCAR or Formula One, monster truck rallies or private parties. They show off dangerous tricks with names like "flamingo wheelies " or "12 o 'clock scrapes. " Such moves have them standing on their seats doing wheelies with one foot in the air or riding near vertical, bike and rider forming a T with the road.

Some of these tricks Suchanek can now say he 's learned twice.

Both his wheels were firmly on the road on Oct. 5. The crash happened during a routine motorcycle ride home from his day job as a seasonal employee doing controlled burns for the Department of Natural Resources. Suchanek rounded a blind corner a mile from his house in Milton and saw a car in his lane coming at him.

"I came right around a corner and a girl was delivering newspapers, driving on my side of the road, " Suchanek said. "I went to move to the left to avoid her and she moved back into her lane. It 's like when you walk down a hallway and you move to avoid someone and they move at the same time. "

His motorcycle crashed head-on into the driver 's side corner of her Chevy Lumina.

"I think my foot got sucked into her wheel as I was going over the hood, " Suchanek said. "There was a hole in the windshield, I think it was from my helmet. "

Suchanek 's list of injuries from that collision included a broken collar bone, vertebrae and femur, spinal damage and a skull fracture that caused bleeding on his brain and temporary memory loss. After being taken by Med Flight he was hospitalized for six weeks and wore a full neck and back brace for more than two months.

An intense regimen of physical therapy continues, although less often now.

And Suchanek is back on his bike -- and doing stunts.

On the ice

The first time Suchanek rode his bike after the crash was Jan. 19. And he did it on the ice with video cameras from the SPEED Channel show "Superbikes " rolling. The show was in Wisconsin filming a feature on how to stud tires for winter riding.

"If someone would have told me I would have lost my leg and be back to stunt riding six months later, I probably wouldn 't have believed them, " Suchanek said. "People break legs and are out for over a year. "

Being back on a bike felt normal.

"I don 't associate my accident with being on a motorcycle, " he said. "It sounds kind of stupid, but I ride my motorcycle most every day of my life. It 's like if you were in a car accident, you 'd get back in a car. "

But it isn 't easy, as he shared with other riders in this post on stuntlife.com two weeks ago:

"If there is one thing that I learned from my accident and the whole losing a leg experience is this ... as long as you have goals, and put your heart and soul into something, you can make anything happen. Please keep in mind that I still limp, mostly because of habit, but my leg still has a lot of pain and I know when I 'm ripping into the gas in a circle that if I have to bail high side style, it 's going to hurt BAD ... the last three days have gone like this ... go to the welder, drop parts off ... put bike back together ... throw bike across parking lot ... back to the welder... "

Suchanek has now remastered most of his stunts, added sponsors and endorsements and practices regularly.

He has been driven by a goal -- to return to performing.

He met that goal last weekend in front of 50,000 people for the MotoGP Formula One circuit in Shanghai, and put on another show near Shanghai for an audience 10,000 strong. With his new leg, Suchanek got even more attention than on past trips.

"The shows went great, " Suchanek wrote in an e-mail from China. "People were definitely freaking out about my leg -- they hadn 't seen anything like it before so I was a superstar in their eyes. "

His longtime friend Garrett Schultz, who along with his wife Laurie Schultz are Vertical Mischief 's photographers, stressed this trip was a huge milestone for Suchanek.

"He 's the only American rider they 've shut a street down for in China, " Garrett Schultz said. "To him none of this is such a big deal. But to other people it 's amazing. "

Doctors astonished

Suchanek 's quick recovery and return to stunt riding astonished his doctors and physical therapists. But it doesn 't surprise his girlfriend, Whitney Garski, who met him seven years ago at UW-Whitewater when they were students.

"Nothing is going to stop him, especially when it comes to riding, " said Garski, a child-care teacher from Middleton. "His doctors would say, We haven 't seen anybody recover this fast! ' And we 'd say, Well, it 's Ryan. ' We expect it. " He 'd come home after physical therapy, each time telling her how he 'd topped his previous record for how many degrees he could bend his knee, where the prosthetic limb is attached.

His mother, Inge Suchanek, agreed that Ryan 's "Type A " personality aided his quick recovery: "He 's goal oriented, so he has shows coming up and things to look forward to. Basically he 's embraced his life. He even went turkey hunting a few weeks ago. "

Doctors initially put Suchanek on antidepressants after the crash, but they gave him bad headaches so he rejected them.

"Depression was never an issue, so I demanded that they take me off of them, " he said. "I did this whole thing without them. "

The other factor he credits in his recovery is the huge outpouring of support, not only from friends and family, but from stunt bike riders he 's never met.

"We hadn 't heard about any of these people and there were all these hits to the Web sites and people coming in to visit him, " Inge Suchanek said. "The biking community is not a bunch of hoodlums. They 're a caring group and he has a whole lot of support. "

A few weeks after the crash, friends organized a benefit ride and performance to raise money to help pay Suchanek 's bills. His insurance from his seasonal job expired in January, so he pays for continued coverage. The event drew more than 200 bikers who then rode to Mercy Hospital in Janesville to wish him well.

"They brought him out in a wheelchair to see us, " Garrett Schultz said. "There were so many of us we practically shut down the hospital, so we had to leave. "

They sold bracelets and T-shirts in orange, his favorite color, with a word his parents picked out to sum him up: determination.

Messages of encouragement also came from around the world on Vertical Mischief 's MySpace page and on a Web site, HelpRyanS.com, set up by friends. Fellow stunt riders, mostly strangers, have donated around $7,000.

Through Stuntlife.com, the online community venue where he landed his first China gig, Suchanek began corresponding with a rider from the East Coast who had his foot amputated after it a bike landed on it. Suchanek said. "He 's the only other rider I 've heard of with a prosthetic, but he doesn 't compete. I may be the first person competing with a prosthetic. "

Calm and quiet

Inge Suchanek jokes that Ryan, her only child, was calm and quiet -- until he turned 18 and bought his first motorcycle. To make it more affordable, he became his own mechanic, fixing, rebuilding and selling bikes to pad his modest stunt rider income. In 2003, he joined with three friends to form Vertical Mischief, "when we figured out we could get paid to do stunt shows. " They practice regularly in the parking lot of the General Motors plant in Janesville.

Vertical Mischief, which currently includes Bob Duclose, Nate Fantetti, Andy Lancaster and Dave Hoffmann, performs during down time at various racing events, be it snowmobile racing, drag racing or NASCAR.

They 've made three DVDs of their tricks, sell Vertical Mischief merchandise and judge stunt competitions as well.

Suchanek is still looking for a major sponsorship so he can afford to travel nationwide doing more shows and competitions. But he 's also exploring starting his own company selling parts for sport bikes, working toward his goal of turning his hobby into a way of making a living.

Suchanek also competes in the XDL Stunt Riding Series, which, he explained, is judged "a lot like figure skating " on creativity, variety, technical difficulty and audience response.

One of Suchanek 's goals is to get stunt riding included as a sport in ESPN 's X Games. If he is successful, Suchanek definitely plans to compete.

"The biggest thing I want people to take away from my accident is the importance of a helmet, " said Suchanek. "Seeing that Wisconsin doesn 't have a helmet law, it doesn 't mean that you shouldn 't wear a helmet. It drives me nuts to see people riding down the road without a helmet. "

GO ONLINE 

Web site for Vertical Mischief, Ryan Suchanek's extreme stunt team. It includes video of their motorcycle tricks, merchandise and bios. www.verticalmischief.com   

Site to donate to Suchanek's medical bills: www.helpryans.com   

Ryan's MySpace page for Vertical Mischief where he lists updates on his recovery and upcoming shows: www.myspace.com/verticalmischief

Forum for stunt bike riders: www.stuntlife.com