"Driving with wheels off the roadway"

[k0ua]

Eric, while I am sorry to hear about your accident, I am glad to see you are dealing with it in the best way. But we can talk to old guys about riding on the street until we turn blue in the face, it won't do much good. Most will ignore what we say, and what we have seen, and in your case what you experienced first hand. Most old guys don't want to believe they are getting "too old" they don't want to believe their reaction time isn't what it was. They don't want to believe it takes so much longer to heal up after the injury. They don't want to believe it will ever happen to them. It may or may not happen. Luck of the draw/fate. But it can happen. It can happen to you when you have done nothing wrong. It can happen because you aren't as fast as you once were. Hard to take in, but it is a fact. You aren't as good as you once were, and you are not even as good once as you ever were.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Yesterday i put my 2 right tires off the road, when i met a combine coming the other direction taking half my lane.

Just this morning a motorcycle was coming the other direction towards me, when a groundhog ran across his lane. I thought, that would be bad to hit..

 

[MossRoad]

If I ever do get another bike, it will be a road bike for weekend cruises, and not a sport bike, which, for me, is just to tempting to do stupid stuff on like the old RD.

If I ever put the RD back together again (it's in pieces, like Christine!), it'll only be for the dragstrip.

 

[k0ua]

If I ever put the RD back together again (it's in pieces, like Christine!), it'll only be for the dragstrip.

You know what happened to Arnie when he put Christine back together. Just don't go there man...

 

[MossRoad]

You know what happened to Arnie when he put Christine back together. Just don't go there man...

Yeah, that machine is my Christine, for sure. It's just soooo light, nimble and stupid fast. I put some expansion chambers on it, which moved the exhaust from the sides to under it for better cornering, and some really sticky Dunlops. I had to be careful not to drag my kneecaps when cornering.

I got some wheelie bars for it for the strip. I could pretty consistently run sub-12 second quarters. And that's a 25 cubic inch motor, 400CC. I've seen them run sub-10's, but I didn't have that much money to throw at it, and I like weighing 200#, not 135.

 

[Rock Crawler]

I started riding in 1976 on a Kawasaki KD90 dirt bike. I started racing MX in 1983 on a YZ and raced into the VET class (AMA District 5, western PA) until 1994 where I stopped racing while I was running a 1991 KX500. What a beast! I stopped riding completely for a number of years, but I missed it. Life and family were why I stopped, we had 3 children and money needed to go to them. So in 2009 I decided to get into the dual sport bikes, I went and bought a 2009 KLX250 and a 2009 KLR650, in 2010 I picked up a very nice used Suzuki DL1000 V-Strom. I was putting 20,000 miles a year on the combined bikes and loving it. I had a couple close calls with vehicles but I was always able to use my above average skill on a bike to pull off amazing feats of survival.... until 2013. Summer of 2013 a truck came out of a side street on my right. I was lucky, I was not seriously injured and I was an all the gear, all the time (ATGATT) kind of guy. It happened in slow motion, my brain saw what was happening and I reacted fast, but nothing could save me completely. So I am coming down a hill, a nice down slope with a lazy left curve, just into that left curve is this side street with hedges. I can see the truck and see the edges of the brightly lit brake lights. It is almost dusk, we are in a valley, lighting is low. I am on the V-Strom with HID headlights installed, I'm admittedly coming in a bit hot for this left sweeping turn, my guess is I am doing 50 in a 35 MPH area. As I get to close to the truck, the tail/brake lights go off... I was able to see this through the shrubs. This is when the slow motion kicked in. My brain knew, this is about to get bad and went in to that magical mode where time slows and you start to over sense every detail. I see the front coming out on my right, I already know that I can't go into the oncoming lane with the potential of a head on and I don't think I can force the bike that far left as he is coming into my path in the short distance I have. I realize that I am going to hit him, so my thought was to latch on to the binders and scrub away all energy I could prior to eating his bed side with my face. I latch down and the dual disk front caliper grabs harder than I expected, the rear is already in a skid and coming a bit sideways, but that's no big deal yet.... until the front brake hits sand or something and INSTANTLY locks that tire and the bike rotates onto its left side with my still on it. My ankle gets crushed between the engine and ground, and I slip behind the bike as I watch it go faster than me. I am sliding on my First Gear Kilimanjaro jacket and First Gear Adventure pants, I am on my back, left forearm down and propping my shoulder and head up, I am looking down the road past my boots at the bike as it slides under the rear of the truck. The front tire just misses the rear tires of the truck, I watched my aluminum Jesse Bags get torn off and then the bike went on past the truck and hit the guard rail. I braced for the impact and I came feet first at the bike and stopped myself with my boots against the bike.

The truck kept going.

The car following me stopped and offered aid, helped me get standing, helped me get the bike up, helped me get on the bike and get it going. I rode home about 5 miles without stopping because I knew I could not stand or hold the bike up. I pulled into the driveway and stopped and dropped the bike and fell onto my blacktop. I pulled my phone out and called the wife to come down dressed and take me to the ER.

I did soft tissue damage only, no bones. But I still have constant pain. I never really rode again, I sold off the 3 dual sports 1 at a time. Every once in a while I get that twitch where I want to get another bike... maybe a big Gold Wing or some comfort cruiser class land barge.... but you know what? I'm a really good rider, but I can not outride everything that other people do around me. I would rather be in my Jeep with a roll bar and wrapped in 3/16" steel plate on all sides.

I quite. No more. The injuries take months to heal, and the pain never fully goes away. At this point I am pushing 50 yrs old and I have more pains than I want. I really do not need to take that risk any longer. I had my fun, it is over.

 

[Wagtail]

If I ever do get another bike, it will be a road bike for weekend cruises, and not a sport bike, which, for me, is just to tempting to do stupid stuff on like the old RD.

If I ever put the RD back together again (it's in pieces, like Christine!), it'll only be for the dragstrip.

If you're thinking of a weekend cruiser... may I suggest a Maxi-scooter. I had a 400cc Suzuki Burgman and it was a lounge-chair on wheels! Great on the highway. CVT meant simply 'twist'n'go'.

If it wasn't for the Tassie gov charging the same rego for a bike as a car or ute, I wouldn't have sold mine.

 

[Deere Dude]

I've posted this elsewhere, and it caused a lot of debate (even among former riders) - I run my Hi-Beam most of the time during the daytime. A leading cause of MC injuries/deaths is Oncoming Driver makes Left Turn in Front of MC, as detailed within these pages.

When I was 17, I had that exact type of accident. Car driver admitted to the cop "I just didn't see him", and admitted total fault. That experience is part of why I run daytime HiBeams on my MC.
Rgds, D.

One thing that grinds me is motorcycles driving with brights on during the daytime. They don't seem to realize those (some) bike lights are very bright and distracting to oncoming drivers, me.

 

[cqaigy2]

I knew a guy about 30 years ago that hit a groundhog and crashed his bike. Broke a leg and got otherwise banged up pretty good. About a year went by before he felt like he could ride again.... The very first day he got back on his bike after the recovery, another groundhog ran out in front of him.... he took it as a sign and sold the bike shortly and was quite comfortable with the decision.

I stopped riding my hopped up '77 Yamaha RD400 shortly after we had our first child. Figured I'd kill myself or someone else would kill me sooner than later. Now that the kids are adults and can fend for themselves, I'm contemplating tempting fate again. :laughing:

The thing that stops me is that there are almost, exactly, 100% more cars on the road today than there were when I was born. The population has almost doubled as well. Too many people in the same city space.

I used to be able to drive on our Riverside Dr. a couple miles on really, really nice blacktop and not see another car. Today, the road surface is crumbled, like marbles, with multiple 1" high ridges on cracks that have been tar patched dozens of times and it's an almost endless stream of traffic. Rarely a 1/4 mile gap. On a road that I used to take a large curve at 90+mph, my car's rear end bounces over a couple inches at 25mph on those multiple cracks. The state of our local roads is just awful. I suppose it's for the best, though. It's like nature's speed bumps to slow traffic.

Don't get another "murdercycle" Moss. Just say no. After seeing what this accident has done to my friend, I would advise against it. He has aged 10 years. in a few weeks.

Take up sky diving instead. :laughing:

 

[MossRoad]

Take up sky diving instead. :laughing:

NO! :laughing: