My Crash

"Are you OK?" "Is anyone hurt?" I had heard these questions asked at accident scenes before, but it was a new experience that they were being asked about me. Nice to know that people are concerned, not nice to be the subject of this kind of concern.
Saturday afternoon, I was riding with a group of five other EaSTOC STs on some marvelous, twisty roads north of Cashiers, N.C. The group was strung out a bit, and I couldn't see the rider immediately ahead of me, Bob MacDonald.
Descending to a tight, blind left-hander, I misjudged the braking, and entered the turn too fast, As I started the turn, I was completely off the brakes, ready to add throttle. The left peg started to drag. I told myself not to worry, there was more turning capability available, and I would need it now. I leaned further, until the left wing cover started to drag. I don't believe I leaned far enough to lever the tire off the pavement. I also don't believe that I actually added throttle. But I used up the rest of the road, and continued onto the grassy shoulder (no guard rail).
The shoulder wasn't really wide, maybe 8-10 feet of grass outside the sand or gravel immediately adjacent to the pavement. Outside of this was forest, with the first trees being very small. My path continued in a direction parallel to the road, though I believe the back end was running wide. I remember thinking, "I can't believe I've done this." Fortunately, I was scrubbing off speed. We didn't pace off the accident scene, but I probably went about 80 feet until the shoulder disappeared into a steep ravine. Since I was going pretty much sideways, the wheels caught, and launched me into a high-side. I thought at the time that I hadn't looked ahead, but I hoped I wasn't going to land on a sign-post or the like.
Good fortune was, indeed, with me. I landed on some extremely soft, loose soil consisting of a good bit of sand and old leaves from the hardwood trees. It was like a mattress!
I immediately stood up, as the next rider exited the turn and stopped. Jim Garner told me later how surprised he was to see me enter the turn ahead of him, disappear around the bend, and then see me standing beside the road. How could I have stopped and dismounted so quickly? And where was the motorcycle?
The motorcycle didn't travel as far as I had. It was resting, no, lodged, against a mature tree, right side down, wheels slightly elevated. The headlight was shining, so I climbed down and switched off the key. The bank angle sensor had done its job, shutting off the engine and the fuel pump. The slope was extremely steep, with football-sized rocks mostly covered by the soft soil. My ST was about 8 feet below the roadway elevation.
I won't go into detail about the extraction of the motorcycle, other than to say that a lot of people spent half an hour getting the bike up to the road. A local man with his wife stopped his pickup and offered to help. With a piece of rope and some log chains, he used the truck to right the motorcycle and pull it back up to the road, while the rest of us steadied the bike, stopped traffic, and so forth.
Amazingly, we were able to extract the motorcycle without further damaging it, but two of my riding party, Jim Garner and Daniel Baker, suffered injury, for which I feel responsible. Ralph Paxton tried to get the good Samaritan with the truck to take some money, but the man refused.
Warren Becker took some snapshots of the site, but was afraid he might offend me by actually photographing the bike as it lay in ruin. He posted his pics tonight. In the first one you can see the trail of dirt going up onto the pavement where we dragged the bike out. At the base of the tree on the right, you can see reflections from pieces of Clearview. The picture is taken in the direction of travel. The turn you can see is the one following the turn where I got in trouble.			This is a picture of the site after the bike was extracted. The bike was down the embankment, lodged against the base of a tree, aimed parallel to the road but shiny side down.
I suffered only a minor a minor abrasion with a big bruise to the inside of my right calf. The helmet has two paint chips about the size of a match head, and my Joe Rocket jacket just got dirty. I was lucky, really lucky, not to get pitched into that tree trunk.
	The main impact was taken by the right hand mirror, apparently perpendicular to the side of the bike. The mirror and its cover were pretty much powdered, and the metal structure that supports the fairing, headlight, etc., had been shoved about an inch and a half to the left. The right fork upper tube now interferes with the instrument surround. Needless to say, the ClearView windshield is clear gone.
This shows the damage to the right side, which hit the tree.
The saddlebags survived this with only very minor scratches and one tiny crack, and the newly installed Mayer saddle needs a new side panel. The finish of the front fender has surface abrasion. Other than the top shelter, the left mirror cover, the panel below the headlight and the tail piece, all plastic has varying levels of damage. The right upper fairing is the worst. The left wing cover was ground/melted through and cracked, with grass scooped inside it. The mufflers are misaligned a little. The CB antenna and its bracket were bent. The joystick for the Sony has a cracked housing, and the radar detector lost its on-off button. I repaired the antenna today, and the J&M system seems to be working as before.
			The left hand tip-over wing was melted and worn through on its underside.
The adjuster from Progressive came by today. He believes that the bike will likely be totaled. If so, I will probably do like Whit did, buy it and repair it myself. He said he would get the figures to me in a couple of days, one figure if they take the bike, and another if I keep it. I thought it imprudent to claim any loss on the radar detector. We could not be sure that the forks aren't bent, but the fork action is unaffected. The bike wants to fade to the right with the hands off the bars. Maybe having the fairing touching the forks has something to do with that.
The next couple of days I'll try to hammer the fairing support back into alignment, and rig up a right hand mirror and turn signal. NeSTOC is just around the corner, you know!
I want to publicly acknowledge the assistance of Ralph Paxton, Susan McClary, Warren Becker, Bob MacDonald, Jim Garner and Daniel Baker. I'm sorry that I was the one to spoil your ride. Thanks to Kajur for offering to lend me his windshield for the trip back to Louisville. I refused his offer and am now wondering how I ever rode without one. Bugs on the faceshield, and a tired neck.
Some have commented how I am taking this rather well. Since I am not typing this from a hospital bed, I realize that, on the Grand Scale, this incident is not that big a deal, and it could have been far, far worse.
Thanks to everyone who expressed concern. I realize that I was pushing harder that day than ever before, and had scraped the left peg at least three times, all on roads I had never seen before. I should have heeded the warning and eased up a bit, but I was feeling very sure of myself. My chicken stripes are gone, but this will be the last set of tires that show this wear pattern! On the plus side, my confidence kept me from straightening up and riding headlong into the trees, the way I would have done when I first bought the ST in 1996.
August 28, 2006
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