Crash!

Well I became another statistic. They say there are two types of riders, those who have crashed and those who will. Count me in the other category now, and Cece too. They also say most accidents happen within 5 miles of home and we did happen to be about 3 blocks from her house but about 70 miles from mine, I wonder how that counts. We’d been to the Gathering of the Nations Pow Wow earlier and it was just across the river from where Cece had been pet sitting in the 5 points area. When we were getting ready to go she started getting all geared up to go two miles. It was hot, there was going to be thousands of people inside in the arena and we were going to be walking around for hours possibly so I made her talk off her riding pants so she wouldnt fry later on, this was the first time shes ridden without her armored pants. Oops, lesson learned, from now on always wear all the gear!

Sorry I havent been keeping up with posts of things as they happened guys. Been just a tad preoccupied. No more of the “so nothing postworthy has happened in the last few weeks like say getting hit by a suv?” jokes, I’m working on it heh. I’ll try backdating these to when stuff actually happened.

We were just coming back from getting some fishing gear at Sportsmans Warehouse for the next weekend and renting movies. I had been following one of those huge Ford SUV things that had been driving like an old lady and I hadnt been able to get around it with the heavy traffic. After second Montano opens up into 3 lanes and I got in the left to get ready for my turn up ahead, the SUV stayed in the middle lane. As we were approaching the railroad tracks it suddenly out of nowhere veered into my lane close to hitting me while we were still at full speed. I swerved towards the tiny bit of shoulder and hit the brakes as hard as I could, glad that there was nobody behind me too close. Then I realized that he was not merging into my lane but turning across my lane into an abandoned dirt lot and taking away my only escape route WTF!

He clipped my front fender with the corner of his bumper as he turned right causing us to go down sort of high side to the left and then slide sideways. Looking at the gouges in the pavement the bike only slid for maybe 6 feet with the floorboard and passenger peg acting like big anchors. The bike suffered only minimal damage, luckily it was protected by the fall by landing on me and sliding down the road on my foot.

I’m grateful to have had the MSF emergency avoidance and stopping training to give myself a few more split seconds of braking down the shoulder to burn off almost all my speed. I came very close to saving it but close doesnt count in these things. Could have been worse, someone was watching out for us.

When I got up it looked like the SUV was going to make a run for it, oh perfect a typical Albuquerque hit and run. It took off down that empty lot but I dont think theres another way out of there and it circled back around. Police and a firetruck were on the scene before I finished pushing the bike out of the road. One of the times I’ve been glad to see those guys so quickly.

There was 5 guys checking that Cece was ok, while I was limping and struggling to push the bike uphill with the fender smashed into the tire. They checked her out thoroughly, took her vitals, checked her scrape on the knee and checked for any breaks and gave her one of those chemical icepack thing that didnt work very well and some water. Meanwhile here I am with a crushed ankle, already bruised and swelling up like a balloon and one of the EMTs eventually looks down at me and says you should put your boot back on before your foot swells up too much, and walks away. Uh… is that it? Helloo.. guy bleeding down here on the curb wants to be checked out too.

I managed to pull the fender up by hand and the bike still started fine and shifted, good enough to get us back home.

Heres some crash photos, I apologize in advance for the shocking pics of my blindingly white legs that havent seen the sun all winter.

I’m impressed with how well my Tourmaster Jacket held up, the way we went down I think I took the full impact of the fall in my shoulder and I didnt get any bruising or scrapes there, although it hurt like hell for a few days like I’d been sacked hard playing touch football. I’m so glad I didnt break my collar bone the way my ADVer friend Terri did falling the same way and we had to rescue her and drive her home like a relay baton from Colorado.

Here you can see the dent from the impact with the underside of the SUV bumper and the scrapes from the fall. When I pulled up the fender it cracked through the metal at the mounting points.

Busted left turn lens and bent bracket. Luckily I still have the ones I pulled of the rear from the new tail light mod and they should be a direct replacement. Thank god none of that got scratched up! the lens from the Kury turns was laying out in the street and I thought it was broken but it looks like that just snaps back on there and there was no damage. I had been wondering how you change the bulbs in those things, theres no screws anywhere to open them up, there could have been a less painful way to find that out though.

The mounting hardware is a little bent on my windshield and doesnt open the quick release anymore without use of a screwdriver to pry up the tab. I never took it off anyway I may just leave it like that so it cant be easily stolen anymore and just replace the plastic.

Of course this stuff on the mirror rusted badly within a few days after getting scraped.

Will need to bend the mounting tabs back on this somehow

Look at the above pics to see how this is bent down and back. Unfortunately that bracket is not sold separately and I need to buy the whole assembly to replace it, everything else can be purchased alone but not that, figures.

I warned you not to keep reading if you have a weak stomach. I promise to get a tan this summer.

This is why I need a summer jacket! My jacket fits great in the winter with all of the extra liners and warm weather clothing underneath but with all of that out its quite baggy on me and the adjustments dont cinch things up enough. The armor on the elbow did not stay in place through the slide, this is from the open mesh. Yep I have a funny grid pattern of equally spaced raised scars now.

Her scraped knee, if shed had on her pants she wouldnt have gotten hurt at all. Sorry honey.

Additionally I also had a scraped knee and a golf ball sized swelling in my right hand between my thumb and finger that I had no idea where it came from. Later when I got on the bike to go home that night and ice things I noticed right away as soon as I touched the brakes, ouch. I had squeezed the brakes so hard I bruised my hand right there.

I didnt have any ice packs or frozen peas at home and it was pretty late by then, but the guys at Allsups down the road gave me a bag of ice for free to use. Thank you guys!

Be careful out there all. Dont just keep an eye on those aggressive drivers, the ones driving like an old lady can be just as unpredictable and really bite you when you arent expecting it.