SacramentoMike
Not Safe For Work
How it pains me to write this. In fact, I was in pretty good pain when I sat down here in the first place. I dumped the FJR just outside Helena, MT, on the way down from Glacier NP and an excellent two weeks of camping, enjoying beautiful scenery and finding SUPER m/c roads. This one couldn't have been worse. I'd ridden a couple hundred miles from Kalispell over very pretty and very isolated roads. Coming into Helena I passed a place to get a cold drink and decided to go back and grab one before riding into the town. Took a right up a hill in a new housing development and swung onto the cross street, parallel to the highway, intending to just loop back to the diner. Since the road was on a hillside overlooking the highway and the development was mostly empty, just foundations, I could look back downhill when I turned onto the parallel road to kind of plan my re-entry onto the highway, making sure it led out and all that.
So that was what I was doing instead of looking at the road in front of me. I'd actually already passed the first side street but I skipped it because a car was backing into the street from a driveway. Normal, straight road. The second street, where I turned, well, let's say I shouldn't have assumed that because one street was straight they'd all be straight. When I realized the road had a big curve halfway down the block I was on top of the curb, couldn't stop, couldn't turn quick enough, just plain couldn't miss it. So I high-sided on the curb, bike and I went sideways and over into some nice decorative rocks! Sharp decorative rocks. Big ones.
So here I am in a Day's Inn in Helena, waiting for the insurance adjustor to come on Thursday. Cancelled my room at NAFO, for anybody who's still looking, and better luck to you. Damage: windshield smashed, control panel and gauges all creamed, pegs and highway pegs torn off (at least one of each), mirror gone, top box mount split in two, leak coming from somewhere in the radiator area, lots and lots of cosmetic damage, and who knows what else? Me, stiff and sore as a hundred year old after a winner-take-all "tough man" contest, and feeling extremely stupid over such a completely avoidable accident. And pretty pissed off about missing NAFO, too.
No
So that was what I was doing instead of looking at the road in front of me. I'd actually already passed the first side street but I skipped it because a car was backing into the street from a driveway. Normal, straight road. The second street, where I turned, well, let's say I shouldn't have assumed that because one street was straight they'd all be straight. When I realized the road had a big curve halfway down the block I was on top of the curb, couldn't stop, couldn't turn quick enough, just plain couldn't miss it. So I high-sided on the curb, bike and I went sideways and over into some nice decorative rocks! Sharp decorative rocks. Big ones.
So here I am in a Day's Inn in Helena, waiting for the insurance adjustor to come on Thursday. Cancelled my room at NAFO, for anybody who's still looking, and better luck to you. Damage: windshield smashed, control panel and gauges all creamed, pegs and highway pegs torn off (at least one of each), mirror gone, top box mount split in two, leak coming from somewhere in the radiator area, lots and lots of cosmetic damage, and who knows what else? Me, stiff and sore as a hundred year old after a winner-take-all "tough man" contest, and feeling extremely stupid over such a completely avoidable accident. And pretty pissed off about missing NAFO, too.
No
