Hey Everyone and welcome to this, my most humble blog post EVER. Last Friday I decided that I'd do a little local dirt riding Saturday morning so I rode the 450 home from work. The tires, while DOT approved, are VERY knobby and don't provide a lot of traction on paved surfaces. Well the unthinkable happened. While rounding the cloverleaf getting on 163 south I hit a big, slippery spot of stupid that was in the road and lowsided. Lucky for me I was wearing all my protective gear...except that...other than my helmet I was wearing NONE of the proper protective gear. Turns out that motocross gear, while it looks cool, does not provide a lot of protection from the abrasive surfaces of the modern roadway. I'm a fairly seasoned dirt and street rider but I had never run over a patch of stupid before and had no idea how slick it could be! Ive seen stupid on the road many times in the past but have always been able to navigate around the stupid thus keeping myself road rash free. Had I been wearing all the correct protective gear I'm certain the stupid would not have been in the road that evening. Probably would have been replaced by a slightly less slippery and relatively safer spot of over-confidence. So given my ATGATT (All The Gear All The Time) epic FAIL I left the better part of my elbow skin on the freeway onramp.
A few years ago while riding a track day at Willow Springs I hit a very large spot of over-confidence in turn four and highsided down the hill. I was a bit bruised up but my leather suit spared me a LOT of pain and embarrassment. The incident proves beyond reasonable doubt that running over a patch of over-confidence is not as likely to injure the rider as an equal sized patch of stupid.
This past winter some friends and I were riding our dirtbikes around Superstition Mountain when the engine on my CR125 ingested a piece of shoddy maintenance and blew up. My friend Gary towed me back to the truck and was nice enough to let me ride his Husky TE510 for the rest of the afternoon. A couple hours later I decided to try and climb a steep, rocky hill on the borrowed bike. Well about 1/2 way up the hill I ran over a large pile of carelessness which sent the bike swapping left to right. Just as I was getting things back under control I hit a larger pile of showing off and flipped over backwards. Lucky for me my helmet took the brunt of the impact and other than a mild concussion and repeatedly asking my friends what time it was for the next hour and a half I was none the worse for wear.
So let's review:
Shoddy maintenance can lead to showing off or carelessness. Showing off is not as dangerous as carelessness but should be carefully avoided most of the time. Over-confidence is not as likely to cause injury as stupid because stupid ALWAYS hurts.
Thanks for reading
-Sean DeAngelis
No comments:
Post a Comment