Crash & Burn (and Itch)
Crash & Burn (and itch)
Off-roading a CBR1000RR
There are some moments in life when you can’t help but think how wonderful things are. One such moment came to me as a gentle epiphany at the Honda Hoot while riding from Dale Walksler’s Wheels Through Time museum in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, back to Honda Hoot HQ in Knoxville. I was riding a great motorcycle on a fabulous road after spending the day watching Dale run from one historic bike to another, start them up, tell us great stories about them and generally drinking in all forms of gasoline-powered Americana. The B-17 bomber ride the day before was icing. It was pure gearhead fantasy stuff.
Arcing though the initial corners of the first truly twisty tarmac of the trip was wonderful. Until I left the road in utter disbelief. I can think of many reasons that led me to this crash, but at the core was a simple fractional splintering of my attention that made it impossible to negotiate the corner. No sand, no rocks, no surprises, just an error.
“What the... ?!” I thought as a narrow, grassy shoulder gave way to a steep downhill, to where the bike and I proceeded at speed. We snapped the barbed-wire fencepost and ended up in a thicket of vines and shrubs. I had no initial signs of injury and popped right up, so far down the bank I couldn’t be seen from the road.
Not long after the crash, the shock wore off, some soreness set in, but I was unhurt and the bike was basically undamaged save for a few scratches and a sheared-off mirror and turnsignal. Twenty feet of rope and some locals in a pickup truck had the bike back up on the road, with a little help from me extracting it from the bushes.
There were a million ways this could have turned out a million times worse. Just 20 feet up the road, the shoulder was lined with 3-inch-diameter saplings. Farther along and the drop-off was startlingly more severe.
As it was, I rode the bike away, thankful for my good fortune. I got off scot-free.
Until the poison ivy set in two days later. I’ve also had plenty of time to think about what an ill-timed decision it was to relieve myself at the side of the road after the crash.~.
Mark Hoyer
