Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted

Here's 4...

Leaving a friend's house late at night, I get 1 mile away and suddenly think to check for my house keys, and realize I left them at his house. I try to make a U turn and just as I'm completing it, my weight on my right wrist rotated the throttle unexpectedly and rapidly. The LeMans tries to wheelie out from under me, and though I struggle mightily, I lose it, come off, and do the world's clumsiest ballet move driving my knee into the asphalt. Scraped the fairing, broke the front left turn signal, and that little plate bolted on the left cylinder head. With the adrenaline I now have, I right the bike and try to start it. No dice. I push it off the road and check, poke, and prod for 20 minutes. I have lights, and am pulling in the clutch, it just won't turn over. I call my friend to come get me. Just as he's pulling up, I see the damn kill switch is off, it must have been actuated during my frantic attempt to hold on. Click. Vroom. Apologize. Ride home filling my helmet with curses.

 

Trying to leave our driveway on a trip with my wife (she had a Yamaha V-Star), we don't get 20 feet when she has some problem I need to instantly address. I swipe my left foot in the muscle-memory defined arc to set the kickstand, and hop off. Well, my "memory" was certainly faulty, because I completely missed the kickstand, and the LeMans rolled on it's left. Fortunately, this time, it was on grass.

 

Washing my Yamaha Radian I was lying down cleaning underneath it, and somehow pushed against it to move myself to reach other areas. It rocked to one side (on it's centerstand), and rocked back... kept coming, and landed on my chest. It took a full minute of struggling to squirm to a position where it wasn't stopping my breathing. From there I was able to catch my breath, regroup and do a screaming bench press to right it enough to get on my feet and straighten it back up.

 

My first bike was a used Suzuki 350 two-stroke streetbike. It had a truly peaky horsepower curve. For the first 500 miles or so I'd gotten used to the way it ran, but thought it wasn't running perfectly, so I took it to a mechanic who was highly recommended to me. The tune-up cost $15. As I rode around, I decided it didn't seem to have made much difference, but I didn't get the chance to whack the throttle full open ... until... getting off work late at night, I thought I'd impress my coworkers with a small wheelie. The $15 tune-up instead gave me a monster wheelie I never thought that bike was capable of. Slamming the throttle shut before I went over backwards dumped most of my weight onto my hands, making me twist the throttle wide open again, and again lofting the front wheel almost past the point of no return. This happened two more times in quick succession before I finally was able to grab the brakes as hard as I could. My pals thought this was the coolest trick riding I'd ever done and applauded. Little did they know....

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...