So this is like a public confessional? ;-) Okay, I'll play. But if your looking for any "second hand learning" value, my limited experience probably disappoints. I've only ridden maybe 130k bike miles over the course of my adult life.
During that time, I've had three moving accidents on motorcycles (one two-up), half-a-dozen "zero speed" drops, and various narrow escapes that could have turned out quite a bit differently, but by the grace of God did not. I think the moving accidents simply amounted to operating in relatively new areas of experience for me, as they all occurred in my first few years of riding as a young adult.
Accidents
My only on-road accident was while riding two-up on a new 1977 Suzuki T-550 as a new rider. I low sided in a left hand turn at a busy intersection over what was likely spilled oil or diesel. I selected a poor line and crossed over what should have been an obvious road hazard. Fortunately speeds were low and only my pride was injured. My brother was kind enough to break my fall by somehow sliding underneath me before I hit the ground, trashing his jacket in the process. Everyone should have a passenger that is that accommodating!
The second was on the same bike, but on a dirt road riding out to the ranch where my then girlfriend boarded her horse. Low sided on a patch of sugar sand. Again, first hand experience in gaging traction to surface conditions.
The third was a couple of years later, when I had maybe 15,000 road miles under my belt. My younger cousin asked if I rode, to which I replied, "Duh, sure!". But he meant in the dirt (where I had zero riding experience), and he wanted to show me his favorite hill! He effortlessly glided up a fairly steep hill, managing his momentum coming to rest just as he crest the top, and then turned around to coast back down. "Now you try!", he suggested. Instead of politely declining after witnessing his nimble feat, I let my pride stand in for me.
My approach speed was way too low, not enough momentum to reach the top, and it ended with me fishtailing, and falling with the bike, end over end, and coming down the hill like a slinky! Me: sore ribs. Bike: broken clutch linkage and a long walk home pushing the bike. I put this experience in the category of "any experience we learn from is good experience"... ;-)
Almost Accidents
These have been too many to remember, but they all shaped my riding character, and so perhaps have been the most valuable, as they too, often delved into areas new to me. Here are a couple that come to mind.
**Fatigue**
Long distance touring over short time periods, and during high stress periods of my life, introduced the fatigue factor as an important element. I went to join up with a group outside of Death Valley, leaving the Bay Area, trekking down I-5 and then over to Beatty, NV. A group of us did a high speed pursuit over to Las Vegas the next day, hit the town that evening, and I left them the next morning for the long ride back home.
That afternoon, riding north on I-5, I was playing what I thought was a conservative game of highway "road slalom" in the light traffic on that two lane roadway. The cars were driving 70 mph or better, the trucks 55 mph, and I was adjusting my speed to smoothly and easily pass through traffic gaps among them, passing both on the right and the left. (Yeah, I know; not at all "best practice"). But while in the right lane, quickly approaching the truck up ahead, I misjudged the rate of closure between the car adjacent to my left and the much slower truck. My thought process went from "well I better speed up a bit to make the closing gap between the car and the truck," to "gee, the car is going much faster than I thought," to "crap, I won't be able to stop in time before colliding into the back of the truck!"
At the last moment, I flicked the bike into a narrow gap that I wouldn't have been happy to negotiate at 10 mph, let along at the speed that I was then traveling. It was one very graphic error of judgement, seeing just how close I came to becoming a splat on someone's tailgate. And it was going to get even closer still, for a couple of miles down the road I noticed my right mirror was out of alignment, and I knew I'd adjusted it at the gas stop a half hour back. It had folded in a ways, and there were two new, small scratches near the tip of its plastic housing...
My take away? The tie between fatigue and judgement can be insidious, and so must constantly be weighed and considered.
**Traction and Altered States**
Another dramatic one was again the old traction versus surface conditions. I was touring in Canada a few years ago with two forum buddies, Mike and Rich. We'd left Vancouver and were riding over toward the Fraser Valley, cresting the coastal mountain passes in a misty rain. I was in the rear with Mike, then Rich, ahead of me. We'd just come down a grade on the wet roadway, met a sharp right turn at about 25 mph, and immediately came on an uncovered wooden bridge crossing a creek.
Rich had crossed the bridge several seconds ahead of us, but Mike and I weren't far onto the bridge before, to my utter amazement, his rear tire drifted maybe 40 or 50 degrees to the right of his track, and he was literally traveling across the bridge sideways, yet still remaining upright! Only to be even further amazed at the realization that my bike was doing the exact same thing!
This situation lasted for almost two second before Mike low sided. His bike went skidding across the remainder of the bridge into a ditch beyond, with Mike sliding on his back, and coming to a rest in the middle of the roadway. I was certain that I was only moments behind him, and I knew that should my bike go down, it would slide right over his prone body. I was hyper aware throughout all of this, and everything seemed to progress in slow motion. And to this day I still can't describe exactly how I missed going down. I made no conscious inputs to my bike that I could discern, but it felt like I "willed" my bike into the vacant opposite lane so as to pass to Mike's left. And over the course of what seemed like minutes, but was actually less than a couple of seconds, my bike gradually straightened itself out, meeting the asphalt on the far side of the bridge back in proper track.
When I realized I was going to miss Mike, time seemed to immediately snap back to full speed, and I pulled back into my lane, dismounting at the edge of the roadway with my emergency flashers lit. Opposing traffic of several cars had stopped, with one woman getting out of her SUV to lend a hand.
Mike, a veteran of earlier get offs and an avid ATGATT practitioner, was uninjured, and his bike survived in a rideable condition, with a bit of damage to plastic and accessories. And I gained, in such spectacular fashion, a new respect for wet wooden bridges.
All of us, if we have ridden for any little while, have our own stories to share, of experiences that might have value to another.
Meanwhile, perhaps I'll leave an offering in the collection box on the way out… ;-)
