Passes & Canyons Blog

Curves are fun–until you see that gravel directly ahead.

Have you ever seen someone on a motorcycle go down? I only have once, and it was a minor get-off, but it’s an amazing thing to witness.

What’s amazing about it is how quickly it happens. My buddy John and I were up in Laramie, it was late at night, and we were headed back to our motel. We cruised down the main street till we reached the corner to go left to the motel, John in the lead. He started to turn but hit some gravel and he went DOWN! I mean, right NOW! Instantly. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

You might think when something like that happens that you’ll have a moment to react, either to try to keep the bike up or to at least think about getting your leg out of the way so the bike doesn’t come down on it. Forget it. This was literally blink-of-an-eye fast.

Now fortunately, John wasn’t hurt badly. He just had a little road rash on his butt and he broke the windshield on his bike. He was just as amazed as I was.

I was talking about this sort of thing awhile back with Zigy Kaluzny, whose world travels I’ve written about a couple times here. His experience has been the same. As he put it, “There’s no transition. I’ve been down twice. There’s no transition. It’s just astonishing. In Italy once I was cranked over, going around a turn, a nice turn, probably going 55, 60, I don’t know. And next thing I know I’m sliding down the road on my back and I’m watching the motorcycle slide along with me, with the footpegs sparking everywhere.”

Zigy, of course is very much an ATGATT (All The Gear All The Time) kind of guy and he was fine.

“The bike was fine. I got up and rode. It freaked me out for a long time.”

Freaked him out, huh? Well yes, I guess. I don’t know how you have the courage to get back on that thing and just ride off after something like that happens. Fortunately I’ve never had that experience.

And it can happen at slow speeds just as easily as when you’re going fast. Zigy also told me about one time when his wife at that time went down.

“We were coming up to a stop sign. She wanted to move over to my other side, and as she crossed a line of some sand or gravel in the middle, she crossed the gravel and touched the brake and of course she was down in a heartbeat. Luckily I had bought her a pair of armored Dainese pants in Italy. I heard that crack as her helmet hit the ground, and she was fine.”

There’s a saying among motorcyclists, at least those who don’t think of themselves as immortal, that “You dress for the crash, not the ride.” Once you see a rider go down you know exactly what that means.

Biker Quote for Today

Top 10 signs that a computer is owned by a Harley rider: 08. There’s an oil stain on the floor just below the computer.

Friggs (right) and Bill inspect Friggs’s bike after his crash. Note his jeans and shirt.

We left Ruidoso early to take advantage of the cool and made good time down the mountain, to Alamogordo, and across the White Sands valley to Las Cruces. Then we turned north on I-25. I toyed with proposing to the guys that we go the 36 miles south and cross the border into Mexico, just to do it, but I didn’t. I realized later that none of us had our passports so we couldn’t have done it anyway. Years ago, on the eighth OFMC trip, Bill and John and I crossed into Canada for about an hour, just so we could say we did. Nevertheless, Las Cruces for me was about 1,500 miles south of where I had been in Canada, on a bike, just nine days earlier.

We got off I-25 at Caballo and headed west through Hillsboro on New Mexico 152 to ride “The Snake,” New Mexico’s answer to the “Tail of the Dragon.” But before we even started to climb we ran into a chip seal in progress. We actually waited on the pilot car on a surface that had only been spread with gravel earlier that morning.

The chip seal went all the way to the top of Emory Pass, probably two-thirds of the fun, twisty road we came to ride. The fun quotient was radically reduced. We made the ride slowly and carefully and I was so glad I was on the V-Strom. I can’t imagine how unpleasant it would have been on the Concours.

We stopped at the view area at the top of the pass and then started down the other side on the good, clean asphalt. I was in the lead and a short while later I was not seeing Bill behind me. I slowed and Bill caught up but he had his turn signal on so I pulled over in a good pull-out. He told me he had not seen the others behind him for too long, so we waited there a few minutes for them.

After about five minutes we headed back, fearing we were going to come around a bend and see something we were really hoping not to see. And the further we backtracked the more our apprehension grew.

Finally there was Friggs headed the other way and he gave us the OK signal. We kept going until Dennis and Brett also passed and we turned around. Obviously we were hoping to find them all stopped somewhere waiting for us and we did, in the same pull-out where we had first stopped.

Friggs had crashed. He was OK, a little skinned up with ruined shirt and pants and boots. Probably looking at a very sore shoulder tomorrow. He had been down-shifting as he headed into a curve and in the blink of an eye he was on the ground. He had no idea why. Dennis had been ahead of him and thought he heard a bang. When Friggs did not immediately come around the curve after him he turned right around. As Dennis rounded the curve he saw Frigg’s bike laying in the middle of the road and Friggs dragging himself out of the road.

The two of them tried without success to stand the bike up but a guy in a car stopped and the three of them got it up. This was just when Brett reached the scene after turning back.

So, only cosmetic damage to the bike and nothing significant with Friggs. But what a scare! This is the first time in the 30 years the OFMC has been taking these trips that someone has gone down. Sure, we’ve dropped bikes but we’ve never had a crash.

The rest of the ride in to Silver City was uneventful but oh, man, we sure had a lot to talk about over brews at the end of the road on this day.

Biker Quote for Today

Sometimes adventure isn’t fun while it’s happening — Mark Tuttle

Oops, how did we get here? Fortunately this was just a dropped bike, not a crash.

I’m serious. There are way too many guys doing exactly that. Killing themselves on their bikes, I mean.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve launched my own small effort to persuade reporters and editors that if a motorcycle crashes into a car that has turned left in front of it that is NOT a “motorcycle crash,” it is a “car-motorcycle crash.” While many multi-vehicle crashes are referred to simply as motorcycle crashes, clicking on the links to read the stories I have found that very, very many so-labeled stories are indeed about motorcycle crashes. Here are the ones just from today’s Google alert.

KY Man Killed in Motorcycle Crash
Kentucky State Police say 60-year-old Robert Topp lost control westbound on Kentucky 132 near the Crittenden-Webster County line. He then slid across both lanes and down an embankment.

Man dies after crashing motorcycle in Saginaw Township
Police say Timothy Ducharme-Patton was driving west on Weiss near Churchill on Tuesday night when his motorcycle ran off the road along a curve.

Man killed in south Travis Co. motorcycle crash
Investigators with the Texas Department of Public Safety say the motorcycle was travelling westbound on FM 1626 when, for some unknown reason, it crossed the center line and slid on the roadway. One vehicle hit the motorcycle, and another vehicle struck the driver.

Cobb intersection reopens after fatal motorcycle crash
According to the Marietta Police Department, the motorcycle hit the bus Wednesday near a transfer station at South Marietta Parkway and Aviation Road. Witnesses say it appears the motorcyclist tried to hit the gas to beat the bus, and lost.

That’s one day. Here are a few more.

Man killed in a motorcycle crash in Northampton
The Northampton Police accident reconstruction team was investigating a motorcycle accident that left one rider dead and closed a section of Elm Street Monday night. “Only the motorcycle was involved,” Northampton Police Lt. David Callahan told 22News. “There were no other vehicles involved.”

Man arrested after crashing motorcycle into back of pickup on Broadwater
A man was arrested early Sunday after he allegedly drove a motorcycle into the back of a pickup truck, injuring himself and his passenger.

Man identified in Sunday Pasco motorcycle crash
Diaz-Cruz lost control of his motorcycle and hit the curb. He was thrown off the bike, and the motorcycle continued to travel into the southbound lanes of U.S. 41. Diaz-Cruz died at the scene, officials said.

Young Marine, Father Dies in East County Motorcycle Crash
Justin Dorson, 26, died Sunday after he overcorrected his 2012 Triumph motorcycle and ran into a large boulder on State Route 94, outside of Dulzura.

Coroner IDs victims in motorcycle crash on Lincoln Road
The preliminary assessment, he said, suggests both vehicles were headed westbound on Lincoln Road. The full-sized pickup was in front of the motorcycle and the wreck happened when the truck driver attempted to make a right-hand turn onto Painted Sky Drive.

OK, that’s just one day as well, from yesterday’s Google alert. It may feel good to be smug and complain about idiot drivers hitting and killing bikers, but these are all cases where there was only one person at fault–the rider. I watched a video recently of motorcycle (and sometimes car) crashes that were caught on video. It was crazy how many of them involved only the guy on the bike, nobody else.

So yeah, I’m serious. Do us all a favor: don’t kill yourself on your bike, OK?

Biker Quote for Today

Transitioning to dirt from squiding?

Why do they get referred to only as "motorcycle" crashes?

Raise your hand if you–like me–are really tired of reading headlines about “motorcycle” crashes that are in fact car/motorcycle crashes that were caused by the driver of the car.

I have Google Alerts set up to bring me articles with the words “motorcycle” and “biker” and every day there are stories about crashes that involve motorcycles, many of them involving serious injury or death. Far, far too often the headline presents the story as if the only vehicle involved was the bike, and that is bound to lead the casual reader to assume that motorcycles are more dangerous than they are. “How come there are so many motorcycle crashes? Those things should be called murdercycles.”

Take today for instance. In just one Google Alert email for “motorcycle” there were these headlines:

• Driver enters plea in fatal motorcycle crash
• Two injured in motorcycle crash on Highway 26
• Two injured in motorcycle accident in Towamencin
• Man dies in Marshfield motorcycle crash
• Man killed and woman critically injured in Lyon Township motorcycle accident
• One person injured in a motorcycle crash

As it turns out, in three of those instances it does appear to have been a motorcycle crash, with the rider at fault. In one case the cause of the accident was as yet unclear when the story was published.

In the other two, however, the first and third in that list, the crashes involved cars and in both cases the drivers were at fault, having made left turns in front of the bikers. You really don’t get any sense of that at all from the headline, do you?

So I’ve decided to try to do something about raising consciousness. In both of these cases I sent the following email to the writers:

Hi. Just want to ask/raise the point: Why does your headline refer to a “motorcycle crash” when it was in fact a car/motorcycle crash and it was the car driver who was at fault? This is totally common and gives the misleading impression that motorcycles are dangerous, when in fact the danger is with the car driver. The number one cause of injuries to motorcyclists is cars turning left in front of the bikes.

I did this just a short while ago and have not received any replies but if I do get something I’ll come back and add in what they have to say. I intend to do this routinely from now on. Maybe you might consider doing the same when you see this. We need to do what we can to get it through people’s heads that far too often it is the driver, not the biker, who is reckless and causes harm. Sure this may be akin to sweeping sand off the beach but we need to at least try to make a tiny dent. Just my opinion.

Biker Quote for Today

Death rides. Ride faster.

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?