tiburonsita
October 27th, 2009, 08:51 AM
The day was colder than I wanted it to be but it was only going to get warmer since we started at 8:30am. Anyways, we got to the entrance of Blood Mountain where my accident happened. I'm still not super familiar with the road until I'm on it then I remember parts of the road but I don't have the twisties memorized like some of them do. Riding along and the first part of the pack takes off fast, the end is going fast but not crazy fast... that's where I'm at. There were 4 of us. Then about half way there is a long stretched road and I advance a little and passed two of the guys but what I wanted to do was pass the two cars that were next to us. I saw a curve coming up (one of the 2 most difficult in that route) and I did not want to take it with a car next to me. It was a two-lane area and although I've done well on them I'm not an expert and I prefer to remove all possibilities from the negative equation :)) If I took the curve too wide I didn't want to hit the car... and in this instance... if I hadn't made that move I could have landed under the pickup truck.
I'm still not sure what went wrong besides feeling the bike slip away from me. When I started taking the curve it was all good then I felt my knee touch the ground - I knew I was really low cause I've never touched knee - but just seconds later the bike started grinding and immediately took off without me :)) I also got new tires the week before that I hadn't entirely broken into any curves but I had ridden them already for about 200 miles so not sure if they could still have been the issue though it was my first inclination. I may have just been going to fast for the curve and leaning too much but I don't know for sure. It felt natural and was a total surprise when the bike just slipped away.
The pickup truck and another car stopped to help, as well as the bike in front of me and the 2 guys behind me that were part of my group. I slide several yards on my ass and ended up in the dirt. It was on a curve and I got the good part that was very wide with plenty of room to slide without hitting any tree or ending up in the boulders. At first I thought I was fine then I felt pain settling into my left leg and I thought it might be fractured. Not broken cause I could move my foot though it hurt. I felt my lip bleeding though it turned out to be a minor little bump on my lip cause of the mic I have attached from the Chatterbox(I only use the device for music).
The older couple stayed with me as did the other 3 in the group. I was hurting too much to even try to move my bike. I don't think I could have done it on my own anyways. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me to take any photos while my bike was laying down looking like trash. It was in the side ditch. Once it came out, I just wanted to be able to check to see if it would turn on and if I could shift gears to get it home somehow even if I had to ride super slow in 1st and 2nd gear. The couple had offered to take me and the bike home in their truck and I wanted to do it as quickly as possible so I didn't miss that chance if I needed it and they could go on with their plans for the day. They were very sweet and very concerned and kept saying how happy they were I had my gear on. The lady was a little shook up cause she kept talking about someone, I think her daughter, that just picked up riding. The man told me that they saw us and when he saw me he pointed me out to his wife and said "that's a girl" and as soon as he said that I went down, lol. Bummer :D
One of my fairings was torn in two. The shift was turned backwards by the force of the impact. That's what likely cause my injury to the leg. We were able to flip it around and get the bike running. The foot stand loosened up or broke so that I wouldn't stay up so I used my hair tie to hold it up. It was close to noon and the guys were going to have lunch. Two of the guys that helped me (that were behind me in the crash) decided they'd head home with me. I knew they wanted to have lunch and not end the day as it did so I decided to ride to the lunch place then head home. I warned them I'd be riding slow on 2 or 3rd gear the most cause I was hurting and didn't want to have to shift too much. As this story is getting too long already... my ride back felt like an eternity cause of the pain but at least I wasn't hungry :))
AGATT I think it's called? Now. I have always believed in wearing my gear but now I'm even more of a believer AND leathers are definite skin savers. The little skin showing between my jacket and gloves is where I actually got cut. Oh and the helmet. I didn't feel a thing even though I did get a slight headache later on. I just felt a slight bump once as I slid across the pavement into the dirt. All in all I am fine. No broken body parts. Just very sore and bruised. My bike looks like it's mostly cosmetic. I think I have to replace the gear shift and foot stand, in addition to the left fairing and signal.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3509/4047478379_d8c1498d90.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3517/4048211456_dbaea0e871.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2707/4048211452_f243cd38b3.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2700/4048211506_c9dd6ac93a.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2442/4048211460_775721d91f.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2724/4048211450_2961583096.jpg
You can see the bigger images on my Flickr. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/itcaughtmyeye/)
I'm still not sure what went wrong besides feeling the bike slip away from me. When I started taking the curve it was all good then I felt my knee touch the ground - I knew I was really low cause I've never touched knee - but just seconds later the bike started grinding and immediately took off without me :)) I also got new tires the week before that I hadn't entirely broken into any curves but I had ridden them already for about 200 miles so not sure if they could still have been the issue though it was my first inclination. I may have just been going to fast for the curve and leaning too much but I don't know for sure. It felt natural and was a total surprise when the bike just slipped away.
The pickup truck and another car stopped to help, as well as the bike in front of me and the 2 guys behind me that were part of my group. I slide several yards on my ass and ended up in the dirt. It was on a curve and I got the good part that was very wide with plenty of room to slide without hitting any tree or ending up in the boulders. At first I thought I was fine then I felt pain settling into my left leg and I thought it might be fractured. Not broken cause I could move my foot though it hurt. I felt my lip bleeding though it turned out to be a minor little bump on my lip cause of the mic I have attached from the Chatterbox(I only use the device for music).
The older couple stayed with me as did the other 3 in the group. I was hurting too much to even try to move my bike. I don't think I could have done it on my own anyways. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me to take any photos while my bike was laying down looking like trash. It was in the side ditch. Once it came out, I just wanted to be able to check to see if it would turn on and if I could shift gears to get it home somehow even if I had to ride super slow in 1st and 2nd gear. The couple had offered to take me and the bike home in their truck and I wanted to do it as quickly as possible so I didn't miss that chance if I needed it and they could go on with their plans for the day. They were very sweet and very concerned and kept saying how happy they were I had my gear on. The lady was a little shook up cause she kept talking about someone, I think her daughter, that just picked up riding. The man told me that they saw us and when he saw me he pointed me out to his wife and said "that's a girl" and as soon as he said that I went down, lol. Bummer :D
One of my fairings was torn in two. The shift was turned backwards by the force of the impact. That's what likely cause my injury to the leg. We were able to flip it around and get the bike running. The foot stand loosened up or broke so that I wouldn't stay up so I used my hair tie to hold it up. It was close to noon and the guys were going to have lunch. Two of the guys that helped me (that were behind me in the crash) decided they'd head home with me. I knew they wanted to have lunch and not end the day as it did so I decided to ride to the lunch place then head home. I warned them I'd be riding slow on 2 or 3rd gear the most cause I was hurting and didn't want to have to shift too much. As this story is getting too long already... my ride back felt like an eternity cause of the pain but at least I wasn't hungry :))
AGATT I think it's called? Now. I have always believed in wearing my gear but now I'm even more of a believer AND leathers are definite skin savers. The little skin showing between my jacket and gloves is where I actually got cut. Oh and the helmet. I didn't feel a thing even though I did get a slight headache later on. I just felt a slight bump once as I slid across the pavement into the dirt. All in all I am fine. No broken body parts. Just very sore and bruised. My bike looks like it's mostly cosmetic. I think I have to replace the gear shift and foot stand, in addition to the left fairing and signal.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3509/4047478379_d8c1498d90.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3517/4048211456_dbaea0e871.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2707/4048211452_f243cd38b3.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2700/4048211506_c9dd6ac93a.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2442/4048211460_775721d91f.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2724/4048211450_2961583096.jpg
You can see the bigger images on my Flickr. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/itcaughtmyeye/)