Looped the ZX today
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I was taking the long way home from work, Island Pond road in Derry, and got stuck behind a minivan going slower than I wanted to go. I followed back for a while, but my pride got the better of me and I began to follow close, looking for an opportunity to pass. Looking back, part of it was also I wanted to harass the driver for going the speed limit, talk about a horrible idea...
Regardless, we're coming up to a straight area and I raise my left hand and motion to the minivan that I will be passing (aka shake my left fist in anger, yes I realize how squidly I'm looking here). Suddenly, the minivan brakes hard. Looking back I'm still not sure why; I really hope it wasn't in anger, but let's be honest here, it was certainly provoked if it was.
So here I am, left hand up in the air, tailgating a rapidly decelerating automobile...and I finally make a (somewhat) positive decision: I brake, smooth and hard. The world flashes before my eyes, I feel the ground rushing up to meet me, and I let go of the handlebars to meet the pavement hands first. My hands break my fall, my head doesn't hit the ground, and I roll over on my jacket shoulder pads...Just in time to see a 500 pound ZX6 *straight up in the air on the front wheel* starting to fall down towards me. I guess this is where self-preservation really kicked in, and I rolled forward in some desperate attempt to save my body.
Amazingly, it worked. Mostly. The bike came down, the grab bar slammed down onto my right ankle, and the bike rolled onto it's right side, away from my ankle and the rest of my body. I got up just in time to see the first few cars stopping around me. People were very helpful. I was kind of dazed, which made it difficult to pick the bike up; a man and a woman got out of their cars and helped me pull it up and off to the side of the road. Meanwhile, another passerby called the local police. Who, when they arrived, were amazingly courteous and helpful. The chief of police mentioned that they didn't have to file a report with the state if the damage was under $1000, and showed me that opening up the throttle a bit was a good way to start a flooded bike. Apparently he had rode a Honda once upon a time. He was pretty amazed that I was able to loop the bike like that. Hell, so was I.
Ok, post crash debriefing. What did I do wrong? A whole hell of a lot, but let's go through the major points...
1) I was tired, and had a pretty long day at work, so I shouldn't have been riding hard. Maybe not at all, I'm still pretty new at this whole motorcycling thing, I don't have a lot of skill to spare...
2) I sure as hell shouldn't have been tailgating. Looking back, there was no need for that. If I was going to pass, I should have waited at a safe distance for a clear zone and then accelerated up.
3) For that matter, why was I gearing up to pass? Island Pond is nothing but double yellows. I was coming up on a straight, but it wasn't a legal passing zone. This one's iffy, we do this all the time, but I certainly shouldn't have been passing in a no fly zone given that I was tired and less alert.
4) Ok, the hand thing. There's really no need to take your hand off the controls, ever. Sure as hell not when you're tailgating. And to shake it in ANGER? I'm just about ready to kick my own ass...
5) I should have seen the brakelights waaaay sooner. I was 15-20 feet away and the minivan was almost stopped before I did. I'm not sure exactly what I was looking at. But it sure as hell wasn't in front of me.
I'm sure there are more, that others will point out, or that I'll realize as I have time to mull the experience over, but those are 4 pretty major points. Just for completeness, I'll cover what I did right.
1) When I did notice brakelights, I reacted quickly, rolling off the throttle and grabbing the brake.
2) I grabbed the brake like they taught us in MSF, smoothly with no jerky motions, like squeezing a sponge. I'm hoping this is why I stoppied instead of locking the front and sliding into the minivan's bumper. It's hard to say whether I grabbed it too hard, I don't think I'll ever know how close I got to the minivan...I think I probably did though, so that's another negative...
3) When I hit the ground, I got the fuck out of the way. I'm actually a little proud of this one, that bike was coming for me and I scrambled like my life depended on it...which it damn sure did...Survival instincts are cool...
Ok yeah, not a lot of positives, and a whole shitload of negatives. I get a big F on this one. The fact that I ended up with nothing more than a slightly sore right wrist and a scraped up sore ankle is a miracle, by all rights I deserve to be in a hospital at the moment with cracked ribs from where a 500 pound bike landed on me.
As for the bike, I don't want to jinx it, but I think it'll be ok, amazingly enough. The passenger grab handle snapped off about 1/2 inch above the bolts, the upper fairing is busted in around the right mirror, and the headlight is loose in the front end. Scratches are limited to the mirrors and the upper and right mid fairing, with a minor scratch on the tail fairing near the taillight. I tried to take the upper fairing off to check for other damage, but I don't have my service book with me; I'll do that tomorrow. The bike had a scratched upper and right mid when I bought it, I was just thinking how I was going to repair them...guess their getting replaced.
Anyway, that's my crash story, if nothing else it's a cautionary tale. I know I'll certainly learn from it. In the last week I was getting a bit big for my britches, following too close, passing on the double yellow, things I never used to do. This is a wakeup call for me. I thought about calling it quits, maybe I just don't have the focus required for motorcycling. But I can see where I went wrong, and I can avoid this. I'll fix my bike, and get back out there. A little bit wiser and a lot more cautious, this is not an experience I'd care to repeat.
Feel free to post your comments, suggestions, flames. I can take it, I've got thick skin and I deserve some finger-wagging for all the stupid stunts I pulled today...
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I have seen too many people get messed up riding. I like watching the racing and stuff, but I am too much of a 