Scantlings

I sold my motorcycle yesterday.

Loved the bike but the riding environment in the DC/Balto area is simply too hazardous. We rank #1 for worst drivers in insurance studies every year. Our roads are on par with Pennsylvania's after a hard winter. The seams between lanes have opened up making lane changes hazardous. Potholes that'll swallow the front tire of the bike. Too many motorcycle hit-and-runs in my locale. I refuse to be limited to occasional riding on weekends, way out in the rural areas in order to gain a reasonable margin of safety.

I'm angry at myself for failing to notice these issues before buying the bike, but it's gone and the guy paid my asking price, so there's that.

As a young man, I came to the same conclusions.... after being knocked off of three motorcycles in five years. I'm a slow learner and still have a few scars to prove it.

I'm glad you'll be hanging around longer this way.

I had a bike that I took out on Sundays out in the boonies. The third time someone pulled out in front of me oblivious to my presence I sold it.

Good decision. I hit those guys all the time. They just seem to come out of nowhere!

We both still have bike licences, the last time we rode was in Europe in 1978.

When I met Laura (wife), she asked me to "never tell me to not ride my motorcycle". I have complied with this 100%. That said, she has not ridden in 2 years and the bike has a dead battery. I hope it stays that way.

Steve

Ajax wrote:I sold my motorcycle yesterday.

Your piston count went down!

Woohoo!

Panope wrote:

Ajax wrote:I sold my motorcycle yesterday.

Your piston count went down!

Woohoo!

Hey, I hadn't thought of that!

Panope wrote:When I met Laura (wife), she asked me to "never tell me to not ride my motorcycle". I have complied with this 100%. That said, she has not ridden in 2 years and the bike has a dead battery. I hope it stays that way.

Steve

My mother burst into tears when I roared up the driveway at about 18 with my first Triumph. She then had my Dad take me to the hospital to look at all the folks with massive injuries from having their bodies mashed against cars, walls, poles, trees, etc..... It was certainly sobering. But, being 18, I assumed those folks just "didn't have it". That would never happen to me.

The first two times I was hit I was sitting still at a red light. Not much you can do from that position. The last time I was in the slow lane on the Hollywood freeway on my way to work and going about 45 MPH preparing to get off onto a surface street. The driver drove right into the front wheel of my Norton and I ended up sliding down the freeway on my ass. He never stopped. In hindsight, I estimate that commuting to work on a Norton in LA was the most dangerous thing I've ever done in my life. Which is a pretty high bar.

I'm really glad I quit and would recommend the same to you all.

Almost bought a Norton after college, but it needed work. I was willing to pay the seller, a mechanic, to fix it, but he refused.

Probably saved my life!

Joel

My wife's first cousin's son bought a motorcycle a few years ago and took it home to show his parents. His mother was horrified. He then went for a ride with some friends, something happened, and he was killed.

I sold my motorcycle two years ago.

TheOffice wrote:Almost bought a Norton after college, but it needed work. I was willing to pay the seller, a mechanic, to fix it, but he refused.

Probably saved my life!

Joel

Nortons, like wooden boats, always can correctly be described as “it needed work”

We had one of those newfangled Japanese Triumphs. It was a nice bike. Ann's idea.

I learned to ride on a 1970’s-ish Triumph Bonneville. My next bike was a Honda XT250 and then after that an Aprilia rs150r. My last bike was a Yamaha FZR bored out to 150cc, ported with a big carb and high compression pipe. When I finally sold it for a car, I felt like a fugitive from the law of averages - I had used up all my good luck. I rarely ride now.

115 pound weakling on a 260 pound bike.

BeauV wrote:

Panope wrote:When I met Laura (wife), she asked me to "never tell me to not ride my motorcycle". I have complied with this 100%. That said, she has not ridden in 2 years and the bike has a dead battery. I hope it stays that way.

Steve

My mother burst into tears when I roared up the driveway at about 18 with my first Triumph. She then had my Dad take me to the hospital to look at all the folks with massive injuries from having their bodies mashed against cars, walls, poles, trees, etc..... It was certainly sobering. But, being 18, I assumed those folks just "didn't have it". That would never happen to me.

The first two times I was hit I was sitting still at a red light. Not much you can do from that position. The last time I was in the slow lane on the Hollywood freeway on my way to work and going about 45 MPH preparing to get off onto a surface street. The driver drove right into the front wheel of my Norton and I ended up sliding down the freeway on my ass. He never stopped. In hindsight, I estimate that commuting to work on a Norton in LA was the most dangerous thing I've ever done in my life. Which is a pretty high bar.

I'm really glad I quit and would recommend the same to you all.

I commuted to college on a 1969 R-60 BMW.
Haven’t ridden a motorcycle in years

We would take these pieces of shit ANYWHERE. Unfortunately, my brother still has that same expression, 35 yrs later.


My dog used to LOVE going for rides. He would rest his head on my shoulder for miles and miles.


This was an fantastic bike with rather unfortunate styling. KLR 650. Powerful enough for the freeway, yet light enough for the dirt. Extremely reliable, little maintenance, bullet proof.
I used to take off alone for weeks at a time, sleeping where ever I could find a flat spot. Toured most of the western states.

BeauV wrote:She then had my Dad take me to the hospital to look at all the folks with massive injuries from having their bodies mashed against cars, walls, poles, trees, etc..... It was certainly sobering. But, being 18, I assumed those folks just "didn't have it". That would never happen to me.

I'm really glad I quit and would recommend the same to you all.

Same experience, except my step dad was a neurosurgeon who had his own "vegetable garden" at the hospital he could show me.

Sold the bike and took up Rugby.

My personal philosophy for riding a motorcycle is this:

Q: If a motorcyclist and a car get into an accident, who's fault is it?
A: It's the motorcyclist's fault.

This is my application of the principle of 100% responsibility. I got back into riding at 37, and took an advanced motorcycle safety course, to "refresh" since I already had my license. It was really good. Their section on "threat detection" really landed for me. They had a simple exercise where they played a video taken in traffic. It paused every few seconds, and they said "What's about to go wrong here?" What I realized is that there is 1,000 times more information available to me than I was availing myself of when driving a car. Cars are so safe that you don't really need to look all that hard for things that could be about to go wrong.

When I ride, my attitude is that it doesn't matter what somebody else should or shouldn't do, it only matters what he could do. In cars it's safe to make assumptions based on the rules of the road. On a motorcycle it is only safe to make assumptions based on the laws of physics. I assume that I am not seen, and that every car that is within striking distance might be about to do the worst possible thing for me. Then I watch for them to do it. Driveways, side roads, the other lane, all of it. I admit I don't check behind me as much as I could.

When I first got back into riding, I was terrified everywhere I went if there was another car anywhere near me. After that course, and like 1 day of applying what I learned, it was suddenly like the entire world was in slow motion when I rode. What I have found is that when I am doing this, I never even have close calls. There is tons of time to avoid somebody doing something that you are expecting them to do. Bikes can stop so fast that these aren't even emergency stops. Yes a car behind you can't stop that fast, but I make it a point not to have cars close behind me in the first place.

The only close calls I have ever had have been when I slipped into "car mode" and expected people to do what they "should." I do make it a point to minimize how long I'm beside another moving vehicle, and I do avoid driving in dense traffic as much as possible. Motorcycles and commuter traffic are a bad combination. Fortunately, all my motorcycles get hot as hell if I spend any time at all moving slowly or stopped, so I have an extra incentive to make sure I'm not in that situation in the first place.

In 13 years since I got back into it, I've had 2 accidents which were both my fault, resulting from me taking risks that I knew I was taking. No meaningful injuries either time. I was dressed appropriately one time, and that was part of the decision to take the risk (single vehicle accident, I leaned too far). The other time it was 10 mph. Honestly I was in shorts, a t-shirt and Tevas - and a helmet. I tumbled, but didn't get a scratch or a bruise.

I may well end up a vegetable tomorrow, but my experience so far is that this expression that has an up-side: "People who are looking for problems usually find them."

A factoid from this weekend in Washington state:

5 Motorcyclists were killed in 4 separate accidents. (two ran head on into each other...)

Chris Chesley wrote:A factoid from this weekend in Washington state:

5 Motorcyclists were killed in 4 separate accidents. (two ran head on into each other...)

My best friend from high school almost died from a head-on collision with another bicyclist. We were working as diswhashers at a fancy restaurant, I had just graduated. It was July 4th. I was supposed to put his bike in my trunk and give him a ride home, but I was in a really bad mood b/c somebody had yelled at me, so I was dragging ass and was way behind at the end of the night. He didn't want to wait for me, so he rode home. There was a big stretch of road between street lights, so it was very dark at 1am. The other cyclist was on the wrong side of the road, neither was using lights.

It was a low speed collision. The reason my friend almost died is that he collected fancy empty wine bottles, and he had one in the pocket of his shorts. He landed on it and shattered it, and it severed an artery in his leg. Also a nerve, so he didn't know it at first. He said when he stood up, he heard a sound like somebody dumping a pail of water out on the pavement. This was 1987, normal people didn't have cell phones. I don't actually recall how police or EMT's were alerted and on the scene before he bled out.

The other person had been drinking, but my friend had not. While "it was dark" and "the other person was drunk and on the wrong side of the road" are as good a set of reasons as you can have to have an accident, the reality is that he wasn't present. His mind was wandering. If you have enough light not to go off the road or hit a telephone pole, you have enough light to tell if there is somebody in front of you. Maybe not 100 feet away, but it only takes about 5 feet to stop a slow bicycle, and no time at all to swerve. It could just as easily have been a pedestrian who was totally in the right and sober that he could have hit, and he would have gotten the same result. Effectively he was counting on pedestrians taking responsibility for him.

Of course he wasn't supposed to be riding his bike home in the dark in the first place. That was on me.