The Fine Art of Planning To Crash
LEANINGS
The fine art of planning to crash
Peter Egan
LAST SUNDAY, ON A BRIGHT, FROSTY AUtumn morning, Barb and I sat in a café in the small town of Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, drinking coffee and hovering over the steam. We were gripping our coffee mugs with both hands, in the fashion peculiar to chilled motorcyclists and torpedoed sailors who have just been rescued from the North Sea.
“We should have dressed warmer,” I told Barb. “It was supposed to get into the 70s today, so I thought blue jeans would be warm enough. I should have worn my leather pants, the ones with the knee pads and shin guards.”
Barb nodded through the steam, and I rubbed the thin denim that covered my bony right knee-an Egan genetic trait inherited, no doubt, from generations of Celts who didn’t have to kneel on anything harder than a peat bog.
“And, under the circumstances,” I added, “it wouldn't be such a bad idea to have some knee protection, anyway.”
The “circumstances” of which I spoke were tacitly understood by both of us.
Just the night before, we'd gone to the hospital to visit our friend Greg, whose right knee was about to be reconstructed by a team of orthopedic surgeons who gathered around his X-rays like football coaches plotting a double-reverse play at the Super Bow l.
On the previous weekend, seven of us had gone on an all-day ride through the gloriously red and orange autumnal backroads of southern Wisconsin. Late in the afternoon, Greg and I had traded bikes so he could take my KTM 950 Adventure for a short test ride.
Uncharacteristically (this is a guy who’s fast and smooth and hasn’t crashed in 30 years), he went too deep into an off-camber decreasing-radius corner, ran out of road and traction simultaneously and disappeared into the woods.
Greg and the bike flattened a small grove of saplings and came to rest between two much larger trees. A woman motorist called 911 on her cell phone, and EMTs arrived within minutes.
We pulled the bike off Greg and-to our great relief-found him lucid and essentially uninjured, except for a dysfunctional right knee. He was carted off to the hospital, and six of us lifted the bent and battered KTM back up onto the highway.
Amazingly, I was able to start it up and ride home, though my dealer now says the frame and triple-clamps are tweaked, and the 950 is probably a goner.
But it’s just a bike, and we're all deeply grateful Greg’s injuries weren’t any worse. Big trees are unyielding things, as several celebrity skiers have fatally discovered. His helmet was cracked in two places and his armor-clad jacket was scraped up, but he had no injuries beyond the damaged knee beneath his blue jeans.
Meanwhile, back at the café, Barb and I soaked up heat from our coffee and pondered all these things. It was interesting, I noted, that less than a week after Greg’s crash. Barb and I were riding our big Beemer around the leaf-strewn, deerinfested, gravel-plagued backroads of rural Wisconsin with nothing over our vulnerable kneecaps but the reassuring cotton weave of Levi’s denim. Through which-if you hold it up to the light-you can almost read.
We had full-face helmets, jackets with body armor, gauntlet-style leather gloves, sturdy touring boots and...jeans. What were we thinking?
I’ve been riding dirtbikes quite a bit the last few years, and I would never consider riding off-road without knee and shin protectors just above my Frankensteinquality motocross boots. And why not?
Because I know I’m going to crash.
Okay, I don’t crash every time I go dirt riding. Just every other time or so. And I know, with absolute certainty, that every time 1 drop the bike I’m going to land hard on at least one knee. And probably an elbow, too. It’s inevitable.
Riding a dirtbike without body armor is like playing football or hockey in street clothes; you can get away with it for a while, and then it’s time to contemplate those interesting patterns in the acoustic tile on the ceiling of your local emergency room, while you wait around for an intern to tell you the eternally amusing “donor-cycle” joke.
Okay, so I look like Wayne Gretsky when I go dirt riding. Yet I generally hop on my streetbike with almost no lower body protection, even though I have a closet bulging with so much gear I can barely close the door. I’ve got roadracing leathers, two-piece street leathers with knee cups and a nicely armored Aerostich suit. But off I go for a day of riding, more often than not. in my trusty blue jeans. Why? Well, there’s heat to consider. On a hot summer day, jeans arc cooler. And then there’s “appropriateness” of dress; I always feel a little odd sitting in the dentist’s chair in a full set of leathers. Also, the creaking of body armor can be distracting at movies and dinner parties.
But mostly I wear jeans on days when I don’t plan to crash.
If I do think there’s a high likelihood of a get-off—going on a fast sportbike ride with friends, for instance-I wear my full street leathers or Aerostich suit.
Same with helmet selection. Open or full-face? Do I feel lucky today? On “safe” rides, I often take the open one, despite full-face helmets having saved my chin and teeth from the tarmac grindstone in two roadracing crashes.
All of this is total lunacy, of course. Most of us aren't very good at predicting when or if a bike will go down. Accidents happen randomly, despite our best efforts to choreograph fate. We can't see the future; if we could we'd stay home that day.
Or wear everything we’ve got.
Barb and I rode home from the café that Sunday morning without incident, our denim-clad knees unharmed once more. Barb decided to weed her flowerbed while I took off on a long solo ride toward the Mississippi.
The fall day was warming up nicely, but I changed into full leathers before I left anyway. It seemed like a good idea, even though I wasn't really planning to crash.
