52. And So I Crashed... At Highway Speed

After much contemplation, I decided I would write about this. I also thank all the people who have kept this to themselves as promised over the last little while during my recovery.

Having covered 16,000kms from Sydney through to South Australia and everywhere in between over the last 6 months, the uneventful finally happened to me.

My unblemished no crash record is now officially flushed down the toilet bowl!

From the start, I've always known that motorcycling can be dangerous and sometimes things are not always in your control.

My crash happened ~400kms from home.

The weekend plan when this happened was to ride via Putty through Gloucester and onto the Oxley before the planned stop at Port Mac.

About 8 hours into the trip while we were riding on a straight road 20-30kms before Walcha (past ingleba creek along the white concrete bridge), my worst nightmare happened. The bike may have hit something on the ground and before I knew it, my front wheel was wobbling violently. I had no recollection of how I came off but I do remember picking myself from the road and dusting myself off.

At that moment, I recalled thinking very logically... "Right! I crashed. Need to get off the road so I don't get run over. Phone.. where is my phone? I need to call the ambulance. Where is my bike?".

Once I was on the side of the road, I proceeded to taking off my gloves, helmet and earplugs as I normally would at the petrol station and waited for Thomas to turn up. We had never lost each other in the last 16,000kms and I was 100% sure he would turn up within the next little while.

Before I knew it, 3 cars and T were on site and everyone did what they could given the situation. A man from the fire brigade assisted me and made me lie on the ground, T gathered all my belongings which had been scattered and a guy with a satellite phone rang for help as there was no mobile phone reception in the area.

Two ambulances, two police cars and a helicopter arrived very shortly and the road was closed for the helicopter to land. I was transported to Tamworth hospital by air (and the boys in the heli were all motorcyclist themselves!)

Given the nature of the crash and the speed at which I came off, I count myself extremely lucky to have sustained no major injuries. All the visible damages were a small bruise on the inside of my lip and two pinhead sized scratches on my fingers. Besides that, most of the recovering I needed was from the pain in my left hand and upper body. 

I also finally had the chance to see my bike and it is not in great shape. =(( The front part is smashed, my wheels have eaten grass, my ventura rack broken, my exhaust scratched and there are a few cracks and scratches all over the bike. 

Looking back at my experience, there are two really important lessons I would like to share...

1) Always wear full gear with armour on all joints - Elbow and knees. You never know what can happen and sometimes, not everything is within your control. 

2) Always ride with someone you trust and someone who will watch your back. I recently became aware of a rider in a group who was left behind. He crashed and no one bothered to look for him until nightfall when his wife made phone calls to everyone he knew. He was found dead the next day. 

51. Rain of Terror by James May

After experiencing the wet bum syndrome and collecting sufficient water in my boots for a couple of goldfishes, I started researching for super duper true rainproof wet weathers and I came across this article by James May... Totally worth a read and soooo funny! 

"From where I’ve been sitting, which is on a motorcycle, it really is hard to believe that there are parts of the world where water is a bit short. There’s enough in my socks to grow rice for 5,000 people.
It’s enough to make me wonder if those agencies charged with combating global drought and the subsequent famine are missing a trick. Next time some desperate farmer in Africa is struggling to irrigate a field, they should just fly me out with my motorbike. ‘May is here,’ they will cry. ‘As soon as he’s ridden around for a few minutes, it’ll rain like buggery.’

These days, I seem barely able to sit on a bike without being soaked through to the marrow. I can wheel it out of the garage in perfect and stultifying sunshine, but within a couple of miles I seem to have ridden into the Fountains of Rome. For this reason, I now become quite cross with people who advertise second-hand motorcycles as having ‘never been used in the wet’. How can this be possible in Britain? Show me a man who claims to have owned a motorcycle for 10 years and 20,000 miles without once being caught short, and I’ll show you either a card-carrying pork pieist or the long-awaited replacement for Michael Fish. Of the last five motorcycles I’ve owned, four of them have been ‘used in the wet’ on the way home from the showroom.

There are two things I want to say about this. The first is that, in the old days, I used to like a ride in the wet, especially once the rain had stopped actually falling. Wet-road riding requires a particular and stimulating set of skills: smoothness, anticipation, avoidance of potential treachery from manhole covers and the white bits of zebra crossings. The world smells great after a good dousing, and, providing you dry it off afterwards, a rinse is actually quite good for the bike. At least it gets rid of that difficult baked-on crud at the front of the crankcase.

However, I’m now getting on a bit, and I’m ready to admit to being a fair-weather motorcyclist. Riding in the rain means wearing waterproof clothing, and since I find it hard enough to summon the energy to put normal clothes on, I really can’t be bothered. Also because I’m ageing fast, I find I always need a wee-wee as soon as I’ve done up the last zip or press stud, and that the bike key is still in the pocket of my normal trousers underneath. 

Consider this. My current set of protective waterproofs requires that they be zipped together once on, around the waist, and in order to achieve this I have to adopt the stance of one inviting a swift mounting from a bull. It’s worse than watching a woman do the ‘tights dance’. Then there are boots and gloves and inner gloves and a balaclava thing, and the whole business can put your back out. In the time it takes me to put this lot on, I could be 100 miles away in the Fiat Panda. I can barely move dressed as a middle-aged mutant ninja turtle, so how I’m supposed to operate the sensitive levers of a big-bore bike I don’t know.
And the second thing I want to say is this. ‘Waterproof motorcycle clothing’ seems to be one of the world’s great oxymorons. It doesn’t matter how thoroughly I do everything up, water comes in somewhere. It only needs to be a trickle down the neck or up a sleeve, but after an hour that’s a bath. Arriving anywhere soaking wet is bad enough, because then the sofa/office chair/doctor’s waiting room becomes wet as well. It’s even worse an hour or so later, because you start to smell like a damp dog.

Motorcycling is a hobby, not away of life or an assertion of my masculinity. People who ride around in the pouring rain imagining that it makes them more of a man should go and live in a windowless bothy.
Things are either waterproof or they’re not, and now I think about it, hardly anything is. Watchmakers seem to have cracked it, but why the hell does a mobile phone pack up as soon as it’s used near someone wearing a slightly moist sweater? Same with digital cameras, laptops, and anything made in Italy involving wires. Put these in a ‘waterproof motorcycling rucksack’, and the problem is simply compounded. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s all a plot. Waterproofing is still in its infancy, so the idea that a man can be kept dry in a 70mph driving headlong squall is ridiculous.

Strangely, confirmation of my fears comes from no less an authority than the Australian army. They wear that type of cowled overcoat known as a Drizabone. Apparently, it’s also known as the Wetzabastard."

http://www.topgear.com/au/james-may/james-may-rain-of-terror-2008-12-01