[twistingasphalt.com] - The Inevitable Happened – My First ‘Get Off’

[Ninjette Newsbot]

For the first time in ages I woke to sunny skies and a free day. With the flick of a switch, the coffee pot stirs. My eyes open up. I see so much more then just light. Quickly the pot percolates with fresh, dark, liquid freedom and a sip later it isn’t simply a cup of awakening but rather a cauldron of possibility that’s brewing. Twelve cups of warm virtue that smells and tastes of escapism.

Moments later I feel a twinge of freedom, a sense that after months of hard work, deadlines and stress, today I can finally unwind. Finally I can let go. Nothing looms over head. Nothing has to happen immediately. There is no sense of urgency nor dread. No obligation to attend to. No cloudy mental facility born from lots of late nights and far to early mornings. Instead there is simply nothing at all. The calendar is finally clean…

And ultimately perhaps that was the problem.

Forty-five minutes later I’m taking a mellow stroll down a quaint if not quiet canyon road while basking in that uniquely Ducati inspired sense of time and place and purpose. From the road, to the ride, to the sense of life that surrounds it, I feel certain that I’m destined to be here. To live life in this particular moment. When the world finally feels like it’s turning true once again.

Every vista seems fresh. Every corner is controllable. After months apart, the bike and I are back, and we’re at peace. Together. It is baptism by motor-oil.

A couple of corners later I’m overcome with the idea that this year, this riding season, life will finally return to normal. I can crawl out of the edit suite and slide into the riding gear with regularity.

Everything seems possible.

But then.. Then it all goes wrong – Because today is my day of reckoning — Today is the day that I finally had my first ‘get off’…




It was neither a brilliant nor courageous fall but rather simply another part of the motorcycle experience to be behold. Coming out of a shadow covered right-left-right chicane I lost the front end of the bike on a pile of sand that I didn’t see coming.

A second later I hit the deck.

While sliding across the concrete, the thought occurs to me that this is odd. This doesn’t seem right, but I don’t know why. And before I know, it’s over. It literally happened just that fast. I’m not even sure my heart had a chance to race. There was no sense of wobble, no tippy sensation, no moment of concern.

It just happened.

On some level I suppose that today was a rather inevitable conclusion. To ride is to risk after all. Especially if you ride enough bikes on enough roads to temp the statistical Gøds. Numbers never lie. Something like this is bound to happen. To all of us. Because let’s face it, every time as riders we fire up a bike we roll the dice. We tempt fate. We test our luck. And regardless of whether we’re out for twenty-five minutes or five and half hours, the moment we come home safely some part of us always smiles because we know that on this given day we made it through the gauntlet.

Tonight, for me, that’s not exactly true.

The 999 is busted up pretty well – though it certainly could have been much, much worse and I’m quite aware of that little tidbit – but I’m ok and in the end that’s the important part. While I love the bike, it is just a machine after all.

Since the accident I find myself combating a multitude of emotions, which range from the obvious to the bizarre. There’s a definite, if not strange, sense of ‘being alright’ with things, which frankly I’ll admit seems almost contradictory or at least slightly insane. In the past whenever the idea of crashing snuck into my head it seemed like the worst thing imaginable. Yet that’s not exactly how it feels tonight. Rather instead I find myself bouncing back and forth between thinking I’m extremely blessed (slow speed crash, no on coming traffic, minimal force of impact, etc.) versus feeling an odd sense of pleasure in finally feeling that last one remaining unknown when it comes to riding. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that I want to go out tomorrow and crash another bike, but on some level I’ve always been curious what exactly crashing a road bike felt like. Up until today I never experienced it firsthand and as a general rule I tend to like to know what things feel like or at least minimally whether I should be afraid of them or not. While it’s certainly not a fun experience to lay your bike down, I’ve got to say that it happened so fast that there wasn’t any time to be afraid of it. It’s just life. It moves on. Almost uncontrollably.




Certainly I’m pissed about laying the bike down and truly not looking forward to the repair bill, yet I feel an odd sense of ‘being ok’ with things. In any ****-up someone somewhere always will assign blame, however tonight I find myself thinking that I’m not sure that entirely applies here. After all I was riding well within or below the speed limit, I was focused on the road and the ride, I was not thinking about other things or looking at a picturesque vista or pondering some trivial bit of this or that, but rather I was just out there riding and enjoying the moment. Living life.

Thankfully the Alpinestars gear did exactly what it was suppose to do, I touched down in all the hard places but nowhere else and other than a small case of road rash on my forearm everything feels alright. I suspect that in the morning I’ll feel a bit sorer. Looking at my jacket it’s pretty clear that I touched down directly on my right shoulder, so I expect some pain there. But the shoulder certainly works. It ain’t broke that’s for sure.

Out of all the words in the dictionary the one that keeps popping to mind is ‘lucky’ – but it doesn’t feel like I was lucky, rather I find myself thinking that if your number has to come up and you’re destined to have a ‘get off’, then a twenty to thirty mile an hour tumble on a deserted road is about as good as it can go. Certainly luck doesn’t play a part in wearing the right gear – I was a big believer in that before, but certainly my attitude on that front is even more crystallized now. This would have undoubtedly been a much, much worse hospital level visit had I been riding around like a dumbass in a t-shirt and shorts. But I wasn’t and instead I walked away.




Already a few folks have asked whether or not I’ll keep riding – this baffles me completely, though I suspect that had this happened when I was a young pup of a rider then perhaps I’d feel differently but instead I find myself thinking this was just one of those days. It happens. To all of us. You live through it, you learn from it, and you move on. Because what’s the alternative? To spend your days and nights living in fear of what could happen? To insulate yourself from life instead of being part of it? To utterly fear the things that give you the most joy in life? That doesn’t sound particularly appealing.
I suppose the egotistical side (if that’s even the right word) keeps wishing that if I had to have a ‘get off’ it happened somewhere sexier than a deserted country road. Not much of a bar story there. Definitely not on par with telling your mates that you ‘binned the bike in turn nine at Willow at a buck-twenty’. But then tomorrow morning I get to go the gym as opposed to shitting in a bed pan. So perhaps it all evens out.




Perhaps the greatest disappointment I find myself feeling tonight is a certainly level of guilt at messing up my favorite bike – a machine that meant quite a bit to me over the years. My favorite Pierre Terblanche creation. But again it’s just a machine, it’s not a child or sibling or a family pet. It’s fixable. And in that respect, life goes on.

Ultimately at this point I’m not entirely sure what the moral of the story is, but I do know that tomorrow morning the sun will rise and not only will I’ll be there to see it, but it’ll be a perfect day to go for a ride.. And right now that sounds pretty good.

1. Random Thoughts:</p>
2. While my jacket and pants are all mucked up, bizarrely my helmet doesn’t have a scratch on it. Go figure.
3. Four bikes (2 sportbikes, 2 sport-tourers) and two pick-ups passed me on the side of the road without stopping before two extremely generous Harley riders pulled over and helped me get back into town. Go figure.
4. The obvious damage on the 999 seems rather minimal; busted brake lever & reservoir, totaled right side fairing, cracked windshield frame support for the front cone fairing, rearsets, clutch cover, rear brake lever — probably fairly usual stuff for a slow speed lowside… The good news is that the frame, swingarm, rims or forks don’t have any scratches of any kind so my supposition is that they never touched down and therefore are ok..So the question now – return the bike to stock form for the road or perhaps take it in another direction?
5. All these years I’ve been taking a cell phone with me on rides — why? — Today it took 12 miles from the crash site to get back to cell coverage…
6. Sidi boots – one word – awesome. (Have to replace the toe-slider, but that’s it).
7. Tow Truck drivers are chatty dudes when they know you ride.

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