Reading Jim’s post yesterday about slipping and having his bike fall on him just made me think of several instance when something gets away from you and you lose control of it, it’s a sickening feeling when you see it happening and can’t stop it.
I have had several bikes tip over on me and I couldn’t stop it, usually with disastrous consequences. It’s amazing how much damage can occur from just falling over. I’ve heard of high end sport bikes with uber expensive bodywork actually being totaled simply because it fell over.
My old ‘07 Bonneville America got away from me while I had the back wheel jacked up about 1/2” off the ground so I could rotate the tire to oil the chain. I was sitting on a stool and it did this slow mo tip away from me and I couldn’t wrestle it upright and the resulting fall did over $1000 damage to my bike and the clutch lever dug into the door of my new car and left a 15” long crease down the door. I just about had an aneurism over that.
Or back in the 70’s in a hot summer day I had ridden my new ‘73 RD350 to the bank to cash my paycheck, and when I came back outside, there was my bike laying on its side in a pool of gasoline. The sidestand had sunk into the hot asphalt and it finally succumbed to gravity.
This is a fun one, when I was in my 20’s I worked in a lumber company fleet garage, the company had all manner of big trucks, fork lifts and even tractors that we maintained. We kept a big rack in the garage filled with mounted tires for all these vehicles so we could do quick swaps in the event of flat tires. One day I was moving the tires around and I grabbed this big tractor tire to move it, not realizing that it was filled with water, it weighed a ton! As soon as I started tipping the tire , the water shifted and it just pushed me down and landed on me and pinned me to the floor like a bug! I was helpless to get it off of me and I started hollering for help, two mechanics ran over and got it off of me, after they stopped laughing that is.
I have had several bikes tip over on me and I couldn’t stop it, usually with disastrous consequences. It’s amazing how much damage can occur from just falling over. I’ve heard of high end sport bikes with uber expensive bodywork actually being totaled simply because it fell over.
My old ‘07 Bonneville America got away from me while I had the back wheel jacked up about 1/2” off the ground so I could rotate the tire to oil the chain. I was sitting on a stool and it did this slow mo tip away from me and I couldn’t wrestle it upright and the resulting fall did over $1000 damage to my bike and the clutch lever dug into the door of my new car and left a 15” long crease down the door. I just about had an aneurism over that.
Or back in the 70’s in a hot summer day I had ridden my new ‘73 RD350 to the bank to cash my paycheck, and when I came back outside, there was my bike laying on its side in a pool of gasoline. The sidestand had sunk into the hot asphalt and it finally succumbed to gravity.
This is a fun one, when I was in my 20’s I worked in a lumber company fleet garage, the company had all manner of big trucks, fork lifts and even tractors that we maintained. We kept a big rack in the garage filled with mounted tires for all these vehicles so we could do quick swaps in the event of flat tires. One day I was moving the tires around and I grabbed this big tractor tire to move it, not realizing that it was filled with water, it weighed a ton! As soon as I started tipping the tire , the water shifted and it just pushed me down and landed on me and pinned me to the floor like a bug! I was helpless to get it off of me and I started hollering for help, two mechanics ran over and got it off of me, after they stopped laughing that is.