Archive for May, 2013

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Danger on the Road–Watch Out!

Monday, May 6th, 2013
Buffalo By The Road

I didn't come close to hitting this guy, but he was standing only about 15 feet away as I carefully slipped by him. And this was in Nebraska!

What’s the strangest thing you ever hit–or nearly hit–on your bike? That’s the question that launched a long-running thread on the Adventure Riders forum, and periodically I go there to pass along some of the more interesting things people tell about. Let’s go!

  • Hit the groundhog at 80 mph on the ’86 Connie, like jumping a log on a dirt bike!
  • Deer, deer, deer. The souther we went the deer-ier it got! Thankfully none came into the road at us. We did get spooked several times though.
  • How about a RubberMaid trash can. It was dark and a little windy. I was riding my trusty 916 Duc on to an off ramp and I saw it out of the corner of my eye rolling towards me, I thought to myself what the hell is that?, then BOOM. A big rubber trash can wraps itself around my front wheel and gets wedged between the body work and front wheel with my front tire riding on top of the trash can. Now at 70 mph trying to stop with no front brakes, steering, or front contact patch for that matter gave a huge pucker factor. To this day I don’t know how I able to follow the curve of the road, or crash. But with the help of a concerned motorist I was able to ride home.
  • The entire hood that flew over my head from a ’69 Ford pickup in front of me at 70mph. All I saw was a shadow!
  • Ran over a 8 foot fiberglass Ladder doing about 80 on the 5 south.No crash,just a tank slapper. Also had a large deer charge at me and jump clear over . That would have been the end of me if it hit me square.
  • This past summer, coming south from Ontario, entering Minnesota at the US/Canada border. Come to a stop at the US side, and the immigration guy comes out and asks a few questions. One he asked, “Did you hit a skunk?” It did smell pretty bad, but I didn’t noticed any smell until I stopped. He let me through pretty fast.
  • Bird went straight through the front wheel (perpendicular to the wheel) of my ’80 GS850 at about 90mph. Those Suzuki cast aluminum wheels have some really sharp machined edges – never did see it come out the other side, but cleaned up a whole bunch of “ground sparrow” off the headers/forks/fender.
  • Was driving down the freeway in the fast lane when I saw a red cyclindrical object bounce out of the bed a pickup that was one lane over and a hundred or so feet ahead of me. Watched it bounce up in the air two or three or three times. As I started catching up to it, the darn thing was still bouncing and was getting about 3 feet up in the air each time. It hadn’t slowed down much yet, and I had this ridiculous urge to try and pluck it out of the air. Thankfully my underutilized common sense asserted itself. I finally recognized it as a fire extinguisher just as I was getting past it. Never considered that something that could bounce as well as it did was a steel container.
  • I almost ran over a pair of boots and a hardhat before swerving to avoid a kitchen table and a truck coming the wrong way up the middle of the highway in Vietnam. Literally…
  • Coming down hill in a corner I came across a sheet of ply on the road,there was no way to avoid it,so just had to go over it.It was big enough to fit the whole bike on,and the ply slide down the road as I went over it….came off about a metre off my original line.Strange feeling going around a corner on a separate moving piece of road.

    • OK, enough fun and games for today. (Yeah, fun. Right.) As we all know, it’s dangerous out there. Be careful.

    Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
    Butler Maps Northern California map is an eye-opener

    Biker Quote for Today

    Your attitude makes an adventure out of a difficult situation. So, its all in your head.

    Tags: ,
    Posted in Motorcycle Safety | No Comments »

    The Joys of a Used Motorcycle

    Thursday, May 2nd, 2013
    Givi bag on a V-Strom

    The Givi bags on my new V-Strom come pre-scarred so I don't have to worry about doing it myself.

    My new V-Strom is new only to me; it has 17,000 miles on it from two previous owners.

    That’s OK with me. As you can see in the photo above, this bike has gone down at least once so that means I can drop it myself and not feel that horrible pang of regret from having put the first scratch on your new baby. Not that I had a tendency to go down on bikes but I’m planning on getting off the pavement on this bike, and when you do that your likelihood of going down increases.

    Heck, I’ve already dropped one of Kevin’s V-Stroms. We were going over Cinnamon Pass and came to a particularly tight switchback on what was at that point just a narrow gravel trail. I didn’t make the turn successfully. No problem. Pick the bike up, get it facing in the right direction, get back on, and go.

    About two switchbacks later I came to another really tight one and this time I stopped to study it. I could see that the steeply sloping rock face that was the corner of the turn had tracks across it. I figured other people in this spot had just powered through and around, so that’s what I did. I gave it some revs, let out the clutch, and hit that rock face with power and just carved that turn around and was on my way up the trail again, all in an instant.

    I want to do more of that kind of riding. That day was one of the best riding days of my life, and it was that ride that totally sold me on getting off the pavement.

    So I took the new bike out for a ride Saturday. Not a very long ride at all, because I don’t have plates on it. But I took a little jaunt through the neighborhood just to get on it and get a feel for it. Fired up great and ran beautifully. Hey, oh boy–fun times to come!!

    Biker Quote for Today

    Adventure riding has been good for my attention deficit diso….Hey, what’s down that road?

    Tags:
    Posted in Suzuki motorcycles, V-Strom | 3 Comments »

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