High Side

I didn't slide, these are compression marks. Slam dunks don't cause abrasions.

It finally happened.  I knew it was coming.  I didn’t know when.  I crashed.

Before I bailed out of Abilene I spent three extremely restless sober nights pacing around making plans for Austin and chatting with Frank Danger on Facebook about our sobriety and insomnia.  After the first two nights we concluded, “U suck.  Check out this youtube video about babies playing with cobras in India.”

On the third night I fired up the bike and decided I needed to ride off some of my restlessness.  The sun was low in the sky and the streets were hot and tacky.  The bike was running perfect.  After much futzing with the fuel injection, I’d finally stumbled across the right setting; air and fuel were combining beautifully.  I felt like I was 13 again and gassing my KX80 mini around a motocross track.  I slid, I jumped, I lifted the front end in a turn as a tribute to supermoto riding style.  It was a stylish manuever, leaned over for turn, front wheel four inches up and counter steered, just a perfect little natural move.  (See photo of Jeff Ward) I wasn’t showing off, I was riding, not looking for attention.

Unfortunately, I caught the attention of one of Abilene’s fascist bully boys in blue who was sitting in his oink operated blue berry topped bacon cruiser.

It's okay to wheelie in this fashion.

From inside his car, the cop raised his hands and mouthed, “What the fuck?” before he began whipping around to chase me.  I looked in my rear view and saw the lights come on and that he was halfway turned around.  I don’t recall the change in me, but I became one of the Dukes of Hazzard, Luke probably, and I decided to run.

I immediately took a right turn into an alley and proceeded to zig zag alleys at 65 mph until I was many blocks away from the street the cop was on.  I got cocky on the last zag into an alley.  Coming off the pavement, I made a snap decision to back the rear wheel into a drift, then bounce off some grass and accelerate away like a motocrosser.  It didn’t work.  I slid in nicely, but throttled too hard too early and kept sliding until I was 90 degrees perpendicular to the direction I wanted to travel.  Physics were never my forte in school but I understand that if my bike is pointing completely perpendicular to my momentum I am, by Newtonian law, pretty well fucked.  Wham.  High side.

Example of a high side crash:

My crash was similar, however I wasn’t wearing that goofy racing suit.  I was clad in a blue tee shirt and khaki cargo shorts from Old Navy.  Also, unlike the guy in the video, I didn’t let go of the clutch or the bars because I learned by age 13 that letting go of the handle bars and clutch during a crash meant the bike died and I lost position in the race trying to restart it.  I wasn’t thrown away from the crash, no momentum was slowed.  I slammed down with the bike.  Old habits die hard…  like my street bike died in an alley somewhere on the north side of Abilene.

I did get away from the law.  It’s not a big deal really.  I know cops in Abilene and it is their policy not pursue a fast motorcycle.  They get the plates and pick them up later, but they didn’t have time to see my plate.  After the crash I pushed the bike out of site in the alley and beat my forks straight on a nearby electric pole, started the bike and rode home.  Increasing pain made the law a rather moot issue.

While riding home, my right shoulder finished dislocating and I had to pop it back while traveling 40 mph.  By the time I was back at the shop, my right ankle wouldn’t move and was bleeding slightly.  I felt the bruised ribs when I pulled the garage door down.  A check of my helmet revealed it was toast.  The compression blow had driven gravel through the first ply of the fiberglass.  It would split if I crashed again.  A concussion was likely but I didn’t feel too goofy so it was a mild one.  Number 9 on the list I believe… The following day I kept getting odd typos when using my computer, repeated words, etc. etc. repeated words…

I was going to sell the bike before the crash but now I can’t.  The bike handled the crash well.  It was equipped with protection and beyond twisted handlebars, nothing vital was broken.  When I brought the bike to Austin you could barely tell it went down but  I was scabby and limping from a stab wound to my right ankle from my rear brake lever.  For a couple of days I was still digging gravel out of my elbow, leg and knee (and I think disgusting the visiting Paintslinger.)  My right shoulder is still popping in and out despite exercise, but I’m hopeful it will strengthen up.  Yesterday I rode the bike over to Shady Grove and had a three beer lunch with a friend.  The bike is fine.  Don’t worry about it.  It’s running a bit rich in Austin due to the humidity, but I’ll lean the fuel map down and it’ll act like a KX80 again.

My latest KX80.

Fred