Wrecked the '15 already

[08FJR4ME]

Sorry to hear of your mishap RFH and I hope all is well soon.

I believe it was Thursday last week here we had some snow falling and as I looked out the window the driveway was wet, no snow. The lawn had a dusting and the flakes were still falling. I made the decision to ride the bike to work. It was a slow but beutifull ride into work. I wasn't to concerned about ice since I new the ground had not started to freeze and the previous days were warm. I rode slower than normal and not once did I pass anyone. That was a first !!! I have ridden in snow before a few times since I try to ride as much as possible. So far I have been lucky. I guess where I am going with this is we all make choices. When we make those choices we need to evaluate the risk before heading out. I think that is the take home message of my comment. Some days I have knowingly skirt the edges of danger and so far have been lucky. At the end of the day it has always been my decision. Don't know if any of this helps but get well soon.

Dave

 

[majicmaker]

Sorry to hear of your mishap RFH and I hope all is well soon.
I believe it was Thursday last week here we had some snow falling and as I looked out the window the driveway was wet, no snow. The lawn had a dusting and the flakes were still falling. I made the decision to ride the bike to work. It was a slow but beutifull ride into work. I wasn't to concerned about ice since I new the ground had not started to freeze and the previous days were warm. I rode slower than normal and not once did I pass anyone. That was a first !!! I have ridden in snow before a few times since I try to ride as much as possible. So far I have been lucky. I guess where I am going with this is we all make choices. When we make those choices we need to evaluate the risk before heading out. I think that is the take home message of my comment. Some days I have knowingly skirt the edges of danger and so far have been lucky. At the end of the day it has always been my decision. Don't know if any of this helps but get well soon.

Dave

Amen, Brother. We ALL make calculated choices. I've made a few that didn't work out too well for me. I paid for the broken parts and moved on with my life. I have absolutely NO regrets about any of them. Neither should you, Redfish. With time, this will be a Most Excellent story to tell with an ice cold beer around a camp fire.

 

[DezzertRider]

As everyone else has already said, sorry to hear about this RFH. Be thankful your injuries weren't any worse. I hope you and you bike get healed up quickly!

 

[HotRodZilla]

Around 2001, I had a really nice Kawasaki Vulcan. I rode it everywhere, including to the gym. We lived in Las Cruces and when the wind blew, the sand blew too.

One morning, I fired up the bike and headed down our street. Had to make a right from our stop sign onto a larger street, that fed into our subdivision. Same as every day, I started the turn on the dry warm pavement, and before I could blink, the bike was on its side and I was on my ass. It slid right out from under me.

My neighbor was checking his mail and saw the whole thing. As I rode back into my driveway, he asked if I was ok. I told him I was, but couldn't figure out what the Hell happened. He said the wind from the night before had settled a bunch of Sandy dust dust onto the road and it was now much slicker than normal. Since I now had a bent lever I had to deal with, I parked the bike and jumped into my wife's mustang. I made the same right at the stop sign and gassed it. Sure enough, the car's big 17" rear wheels broke loose very easily. The entire road was slick, and I would have never noticed, except that I dumped my bike.

Almost no damage except for a bent brake lever and I fixed that as soon as I got home from the gym. Point is, you don't have to see anything different on the road for it to have something very different going on, and a bike's traction is very easily affected. Chalk it up to "**** happens." Woulda happened on your ST too, if you had been excited enough about it to ride it to work in the cold.

 

[Mihalis fjr]

''So I guess I just don't know what I did wrong.''

Redfish,

You did nothing wrong!There was ice,or oil,or petroleum or anything other!In everyone could happen this.With any brand of tires just the same thing would happen in the same conditions!Try to forget everything and..Let's start the repair in your new beautiful bike

''If something is to happen,it will happen!'' Bad or good..

 

[chucksklrst]

RedFish, So now that this has had a chance to percolate a bit. When are you going to post it over on ST-Owners. Good luck with the insurance company. Yes go use them, that is what you pay the premiums for.

As I sit here looking at my month old FJR, I can really feel your pain.

 

[hppants]

We are well aware of the effect dew point temperature has on our weather, road conditions, etc. Perhaps you have forgotten that we live in a sauna? Southern Louisiana is a world apart from Little Rock Arkansas, or anything north of Houston.

Yielding to my friend, but I can hold my keyboard no longer.

I know you guys mean well, but I'm telling you as sure as I live and breathe - this is absolutely NO chance that frozen precipitation - be it snow, ice, black ice, green ice, pink ice, solid breath, condensed farts, or any other imaginable possibility of anything even remotely close to any material in the neighborhood of zero degrees C. with 2 hydrogens and an oxygen was present within 50 zipcodes of the location where R/H crashed. The ground and road temperatures were no less than 30 degrees above freezing (likely 40 or more) and I don't care which science book you read, that just ain't gonna happen.

I'm trying to make a point. There is an extremely rare (perhaps overall once in a decade, although it happened 3 times last winter) instance whereby the moon and the stars align, everyone holds their mouth right, and for a short time, some resemblance of something frozen and wet actually sticks to a road south of I-10. The last time that happened in mid November was when Wholly Mammoths were common here.

Now OTOH - a myriad of other debris that could cause a low side on a dark road is EXTREMELY possible. For example, the is the end of Sugar Cane cutting season. There is dirt all over the roads everywhere around here from trucks and tractors and trailers entering and exiting from the fields and running to the mill. Moreover, many cane farmers still burn the leaves off their cane before trucking to the mill. The entire world smells of soot, and you can actually see the black debris floating in the air and being thrown up in the wake of vehicles in front of you. Hmmmm - BLACK debris - that's the same color as the road. I believe HRZ would call that a clue.

Also - cold hard tires? Absolutely possible. Are the OEM tires dual compound composition?

And we could speculate many other possibilities. But NONE of the viable ones will include frozen precip.

Everyone here is entitled to their opinion. And I get that we are all trying to help our friend. But let's be realistic.

(obviously this has struck a nerve - my apologies for being harsh. I'm pissed off that my friend has a wrecked rib cage and a wrecked BEAUTIFUL bike and I'm feeling a little helpless over here).

 

[Top_Speed1]

I've stayed out of the causes and theory's, just wanna wish RFH a speedy recovery and a defensive back's short term memory. Oh yeah, get that beautiful bike back to showroom new as well

-KJ

 

[Fred W]

I know you guys mean well, but I'm telling you as sure as I live and breathe - this is absolutely NO chance that frozen precipitation - be it snow, ice, black ice, green ice, pink ice, solid breath, condensed farts, or any other imaginable possibility of anything even remotely close to any material in the neighborhood of zero degrees C. with 2 hydrogens and an oxygen was present within 50 zipcodes of the location where R/H crashed. The ground and road temperatures were no less than 30 degrees above freezing (likely 40 or more) and I don't care which science book you read, that just ain't gonna happen.

Well, that's not what Andrew said in the original post:

I left work this morning riding very cautiously. It was 33 degrees,

That would be more like 1 degree above freezing in my book. It can be several degrees above freezing and still get frost on the roads.

Those OEM tires are not as bad as some want to make them out to be. Even when cold you can lean the bike over enough to scrub the full width of the tread with no slipping when there is good road traction.

Either way, I think we can stick a fork in this dead horse. We've beaten it 'till it's done.

 

[rushes]

 

[hppants]

Fred - respectfully, that is not what Andrew wrote in the OP:

"....As I made the left turn, it just slid out from under me. It was like I had hit ice. I was down before I could react and spinning slowly on my back sliding down the road...."

I have no doubt is was LIKE ice, but it wasn't ice.

All the more reason to return to the scene of the crime. Look at it from all angles and work it though your mentality. It works. I know this from experience. I hope I never have to do it again.

 

[Bill Lumberg]

Given the conditions, it definitely could have been. But none of us, including the Redness, will ever know.

 

[palerider]

Given the conditions, it definitely could have been. But none of us, including the Redness, will ever know.

Actually, in all things FJR, I consider Fred to be omniscient.

 

[hppants]

Well - this is like selling ice to eskimos Obviously, you're not buying any.

I'll be in the corner sucking my thumb...

 

[RadioHowie]

Fred - respectfully, that is not what Andrew wrote in the OP:
"....As I made the left turn, it just slid out from under me. It was like I had hit ice. I was down before I could react and spinning slowly on my back sliding down the road...."

I have no doubt is was LIKE ice, but it wasn't ice.

All the more reason to return to the scene of the crime. Look at it from all angles and work it though your mentality. It works. I know this from experience. I hope I never have to do it again.

hp...read Post #1 again...

Copy & Paste - "I left work this morning riding very cautiously. It was 33 degrees, the bike was brand new, the tires were brand new, and I was tired. 4 miles from the plant I made a left turn onto another road, it was a "T" shaped intersection. I make this turn every morning on my ST and more often than not I will give it a bit of extra throttle to kick the back tire out a bit. I decided not to try that this morning with a brand new bike."

33 degrees at the plant could easily be 28 to 32 degrees 4 miles away. I'm leaving my money on "ice".

 

[mikep1300]

Sorry for your get off buddy. Sounds like this falls into the category of '**** happens'.

I don't really feel like getting into the physics of residual heat and such, but it was 81 freakin' degrees here just a couple of days prior (and pretty near the melting point of lead for months before that) to RFH's incident. And since the permafrost melted with the retreat of the last ice age, the road temp would not have allowed ice to form even if it would have been wet.

The more likely cause would be oil, sand, leaves, or possum crap.

I think Pant's suggestion to revisit the site is a good one.

 

[Redfish Hunter]

My dear, dear friends, Please Do NOT Argue on my account. Please.

The 2015 FJR just happens to have an ambient temp readout. It was reading 33. Is it accurate? Can ice form above 33F? It is a moot point anyway.

I just returned from the company doctor and I had him fooled until!!! He made me lie on my back on the exam table. I could not fake him out like that, lying down hurts bad. I could barely breathe. I passed every other aspect of his physical, including climbing but I could not lie on the damned table. He okayed me to go back to work anyway with minor restrictions. He was astonished when I told him I had ridden the motorcycle up there, he was thrilled to examine my Tourmaster jacket. He praised me for wearing good gear. Now, I am waiting on a phone call from my bosses, I am hoping to return to work tonight.

On my way home from the plant I did just as my friend hppants suggested. I stopped and looked over the intersection in bright sunlight. It appears as though something was leaking a trail of some type of petroleum product for almost a mile leading up to that intersection. It looks like hydraulic oil but I cannot say for sure. It covers a wide area at the exact spot where I know I lost traction, I have no doubt that was the culprit. As HRZ has stated, I would have gone down on the ST also. I would probably have been hurt worse because I would have been going faster.

I will not lie, I am having confidence issues while leaning. I also spun the rear tire while passing a slow truck on my way home. It broke loose as I went over the yellow lines for a very brief moment. I did not experience anything that felt like traction control either. That ticked me off.

Again, please don't argue over this guys. I feel badly enough without that. Now I just have to heal up and get my bike fixed.

 

[08FJR4ME]

Fooooken Zilla has been right 3 times in one week. Dahm thats a record.

Well we now know the culprit and not a dam thing any of us would of or could of done different.

RFH, I don't know if you have a dirt bike but go take some practice spins on one and build your confidence level back up. If your use to slippin and slyden it won't feel so bad on the Feejer.

Helps me anyway.

Dave

 

[MCRIDER007]

On my way home from the plant I did just as my friend hppants suggested. I stopped and looked over the intersection in bright sunlight. It appears as though something was leaking a trail of some type of petroleum product for almost a mile leading up to that intersection. It looks like hydraulic oil but I cannot say for sure. It covers a wide area at the exact spot where I know I lost traction, I have no doubt that was the culprit. As HRZ has stated, I would have gone down on the ST also. I would probably have been hurt worse because I would have been going faster.

I will not lie, I am having confidence issues while leaning. I also spun the rear tire while passing a slow truck on my way home. It broke loose as I went over the yellow lines for a very brief moment. I did not experience anything that felt like traction control either. That ticked me off.

As I said in my earlier post....been there, done that.....except in my case it was anti-freeze. You can't enjoy riding a motorcycle unless you have very high confidence in the tires' ability to maintain contact with the road's surface and after going down because of a no-traction event, even if it happens only once in a lifetime, takes time to regain that confidence. In my case I had all winter to forget about it and then go back to doing something I love to do. Don't push it, the roads are still going to be there when you realize you are looking forward to leaning your bike around a corner.

 

[BikerGeek99]

I rode it everywhere, including to the gym.

Almost no damage except for a bent brake lever and I fixed that as soon as I got home from the gym.

I call ********. 'Zilla? In the gym? Yah, right - that's how he got "in shape." Round IS a shape, but c'mon man... Nice try, and nicely played, 'Zilla.