Sorry for the length, I haven't told this story over text yet, it's a lot easier to add detail. My bike has been down many times, and crashed twice. This, my second and worst crash, happened in July 2014. I was on a back road with little traffic, one car every 10 minutes maybe. After a long day of being a nerd beating other nerds with foam swords (way more fun than it sounds, i used a bow with foam-tipped arrows and am a damn good shot), I was waiting for my friends to put all their stuff in the back of a pickup. Decided I'd go dick around on my bike for a minute.
Being the show-off that I am, I decided I'd zoom by my friends really fast, about 60 mph on this twisty 35-40mph road. I came up on a blind left turn, with a small hill in the middle, and it was tight enough that it required me to cross into the oncoming lane to make the turn. I figured "Eh, no one's coming, I should be fine, it's a back road." Boy was I wrong.
Cue big white SUV coming over the crest of the hill as I'm in the very middle of the oncoming lane, leaned over to the left, committed to the turn.
I had about half a second to choose between going head-on with the SUV, or swerving clear and hitting the dirt. I chose dirt. I'm so glad I'm not the type of person to freeze up or panic. I flicked it hard to the right and back again, also glad for just how light and nimble 250s are. After I swerved clear of the SUV and scared the lady driving it half to death, I locked up one of my brakes, I'm assuming the rear because of the long skid mark I left, but I wasn't able to lean back far enough to the left as a result of panic braking. If I'd let off the brakes I might have been able to stay on the road, but alas, what's done is done. I left the road at the outside apex of the turn. My front wheel caught immediately when it hit the dirt and slammed my front end to left, which caused a high-side. My rear end lifted straight into the air and I was bucked off the bike like a horse. I flew about 10 feet and I remember thinking "This is going to suck," and then slid another 5 feet or more. By the time I hit the ground, I think I'd slowed myself down to about 40mph or so.
My arms hit the ground first, breaking one bone in my left forearm and one in my wrist, and dislocating another in my left wrist. No damage to right arm. I damn near scorpioned (when your feet touch the back of your head) when I hit the ground. I am sooooooo glad I was wearing a full face helmet (not that I'd ever wear anything else!) because I slid mostly on my face as a result of the aforementioned scorpion. This completely ripped my face shield from my helmet, and I had very minor scratches on my nose. I wouldn't have a face left if I'd been wearing anything but a full-face helmet. Makes me shudder just thinking about how much worse that could have been.
I was wearing a leather riding jacket, which got cut off along with my pants legs, RIP extremely comfortable frank thomas jacket, so I wasn't aware my arm was broken until I tried to pick my bike back up and then promptly realized that that wasn't happening. I sat down on the side of the road, and my vision went completely white, like a badly overexposed photo. When the cops/medics showed up, I could only tell he was a cop because I could make out the outline of his hat, one of those ones with the wide brim. In retrospect, it would have been a lot less expensive to hop in my friends truck and drive to the hospital, but the vision thing scared me, on top of my neck and back hurting from aforementioned scorpion, so I made them call an ambulance. Better safe than sorry, right?
Spent 4 days in hospital after surgery to fix my arm. Got two long scars out of it. Learned just how nice morphine and dilaudid are. I didn't get any rash at all because of the way I slid on my face, lucky me. I ended up losing a little mobility and strength in my left wrist, but not so much that I notice it, only if I directly compare the two. The left fork on my bike is bent to this day, it took me a couple of tries tweaking the triple and forks to get it to ride straight. My handlebars are turned a little to the right, but the bike rides straight and doesn't wobble, the important part. Ended up with LOTS of room to turn left, but my right bar hits the tank if I try and make a slow tight turn to the right. Luckily most U-turns are to the left, and for normal riding there's no difference at all. Frame is just fine.
All in all, it could have gone a LOT worse for me. That day, I truly absorbed the phrase "Use superior judgement to avoid having to use superior skill." I was forced to use superior skill that day and it scared the living **** out of me. I'd like to save my superior skills for the track when my bike is ready for it and when I can afford a track suit so I can finally drag knee.
I drug my left footpeg at 65mph once by accident, that was scary when 10 feet to my right was the edge of a cliff.