Motorcycles are an odd embrace of such things. They fill one with this sense of being alive, full, animated, but constantly remind you that sure…
…you are alive
…but not by much.
My riding buddy took a spill on his R6 yesterday. This came on the heel of a series of accidents just this last week – one buddy down at the track, me witnessing a fatal motorcycle crash involving a blind S.U.V driver, and four car accidents at work. Yikes.
In my short time jumping around in the sport bike culture, I have realized two very important things. First, sport bike riders like to go FAST. Very Fast. It becomes a point of machismo pride to hold down that throttle. I went out riding with a bunch of guys on R1’s and GSX’s. They were pretty experienced riders, insisting that their road activities took a back seat to the agro-maneuvers of the track. Surprising, indeed, as I sweated bullets trying to keep up with them through the CO back canyon roads, speeds exceeding 90 – 100 mph.
The second thing that I have learned is that no matter your experience level, this shit will kill you. Half of those guys ended up destroying their machines within a few weeks. My riding buddy did just the same, careening into a field of rocks off HWY 59. I trailed behind him and documented the whole thing.
Our ride started off pretty tame, with a tad bit of traffic weaving to get the blood flowing. We headed off into one of the many canyon routes, jumping around hairpin curves, riding at modest speed levels (40-50 mph). These little human physics experiments always seem to happen fast. My buddy somehow got off alignment on one of the curves. He compensated incorrectly by down shifting, maybe a little too much back brake, I’m not sure. All I saw was rider separating from machine, an explosion of plastic and dust, both disappearing off a sharp embankment on the roadside. I was expecting carnage. Messiness. The unpleasant irreversible vicissitudes of a really bad day.
No such thing.
Before I had even turned off my bike at the side of the road, up jumps my friend giving me the thumbs up. Somehow, flying backwards, he had managed to flip over the rock bed off the road and land in a very small fortuitously placed patch of grass. I surveyed the damage, both his and the bike. And came to one of those wow moments. A “dude, you really should be dead” sort of thing.
Witness the resulting chaos. The swarm of police, ambulances, and curious passerby’s. We moved his bike up into a drive way beside the ditch. The mood was light, considering no one got hurt. A kind of ‘yeah that really sucks but doesn’t the air smell sweet’ sensation.
I tried to save him a ride in the ambulance, pretty certain he was in good health, but the authorities insisted on making him poor. As we waited, the ambulance driver filled me with horror stories of local gun shot victims, canyon crashes, and the motorcyclist as organ donor equation.
Looks like the riding days for my buddy are over. Too much damage and points on the license. And he knows he was one of the lucky few…to find his grassy knoll. Me, well, I continue to ride. Knowing full well the dangers. Toning down the machismo, and picking carefully the groups I’ll go riding with. I want to be old and graying before the flights of angels wing me to my rest.
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