Crash report, sorta.

[azr]

Man, you lucky son of a #@!!. Super glad you're ok and going to live to ride another day. Mistakes happen, that's life.

[earlfor]

Whoa! there Dale. Yikes I'm glad you're ok. Might want to ease up a bit on flogging that Hot Rod Lincoln. hehe

[Dogma]

Whoa! there Dale. Yikes I'm glad you're ok. Might want to ease up a bit on flogging that Hot Rod Lincoln. hehe

But I wasn't flogging it! Maybe I should have been... I might have been paying more attention.

[Dogma]

The gravel is a little easier to see in this pic. You can see the path my tire swept clean, and where I dragged my toe through it later. The rest of my pics are inferior duplicates of what Jim already showed.



In retrospect, there are some things I find funny about it. It happened so fast. One moment I was riding, the next moment I was sliding on the ground realizing I must have crashed. I don't remember going down. I remember seeing the sign post coming from about 10 feet away. The next memory is hitting it, but with very little detail. I remember little more than feeling an impact. The next thing I remember is picking myself up to shut off the bike, which was still running. I couldn't reach the kill switch, and it took a few seconds to remember to use the key.

The folks who live near that intersection were very nice and helpful. I probably should know their names, but I didn't even ask. One of them brought his little SUV over to pull the bike back up onto it's wheels and onto the road. It had come to rest on the far side of that little bridge, on its right side, but almost upside down, with it's tail over the bank. It left a nice stain of gas and oil. My tank bag stank for days.

Josh came by after work to help me get it loaded up onto my trailer. Usually I can load a bike myself, but I was glad to have the help. You know that soreness in the core muscles after a day of flu puking? I had that going on, but I didn't notice until I started pushing the bike up the ramp. My arms were a little wobbly too.

It was Josh that figured out why the bike came to rest where it did. Instead of going straight across the curve, it had continued around the curve and gone off the road on the inside of the curve (where the case guard finally dug into soft dirt and stopped it. Basically, it started as a simple low-side crash, but the case guards and pannier crash bars rocked it back onto the tires. Still in second gear and running, it kept going forward, rocking back and forth between the bars and tires. That's why the gouges in the pavement are intermittent. It seems to have taken me with it, since I found myself on the bank a few feet farther down the road than the bike. Probably the trunk kept pushing me along.

If you follow the marks on the visor, they point straight to the giant bruise on my upper arm, just below the armor. The deltoid seems to be pretty well bruised too. It's still tender. I think it was my arm that did most of the damage to the sign post, folding it over nearly 45°. I'm glad my neck didn't have to do all the work.

Wendy took the news pretty well when she got back from her little trip Monday evening. Maybe because I didn't talk to her about how the sign could have broken my neck or crushed my throat. I talked to her about how the gear did its job, and damage done to it. I think my commitment to ATTGATT is the only thing that keeps her calm at all about me riding.

The jacket had no significant damage. Whatever scratched my arm also tore the back edge of my glove's palm. The visor broke off of the helmet, and took the retention mechanism off of both sides. I couldn't find any new marks on the helmet shell, but it went in the trash today anyway. Another CL-16 is too cheap not to replace. The pants have damage I don't understand at all. The boots and the motocross-style knee armor show no damage, but the pants are pretty torn up on the lower leg on both sides. In fact, the damage is worse on the left side, even though I went down on the right. Something nearly busted open the zipper that run the length of the leg. I had trouble getting the zipper pull past my left thigh. Maybe I tumbled or something, but my legs aren't sore at all.

One new pain that turned up a couple days after was in my hand. The heel of my right hand, and the muscles attached to the pinky finger were sore. I think there's a good chance I nearly broke or dislocated it during the slide. My gloves weren't destroyed, but I think I'll be upgrading to race-style gloves with a gauntlet and wrist protection, and the tie strap between the pinky and ring fingers.

The only part I don't have on hand to fix the bike is a new brake lever. (Supposedly shipping today, I need them on the 11th). The luggage has never been about cosmetics, so I'm going to try to weld the plastic back together. I've already been around the corner to get the tool from Harbor Freight. I have black ABS filament on hand for the 3D printer, so I didn't need to get any rods. I'll use some Kapton tape from the printer's platform to hold the parts in place and keep the shape smooth if I overheat things. That stuff has amazing tolerance for heat. I tried to burn some with a torch once, and it just glowed.

There were a lot of ways for this to go a lot worse. The man upstairs likes me.

[winfield]

Sorry to hear of your mishap, neighbor. Hope you can get back in the saddle soon.

I was riding in Ohio near Cleves on Tuesday and noticed how much gravel was on the road at every driveway due to the gully washer we had last Saturday. It can happen quick.