The Ride Report

I almost killed myself and crashed my motorcycle last night, and the engine wasn’t even running.

I’ve been working in the transportation department on a low budget movie the last couple of days, towing the wardrobe trailer and the honeywagon to and from the shooting locations. This show is so low budget they don’t have overnight permits for the trailers, so we’ve been towing them back to the producer’s house and leaving them on the street there overnight, then picking them up in the morning to go back to set for the next day of shooting. Pain in the ass. So today we finally browbeat them into paying the extra $$$ to get permits to leave the trailers at the West L.A. location we’ll be at for the next three days so we wouldn’t have to start and end each day with setting up/breaking down everything and towing to/from Northridge.

The only problem with this solution is that me and the other driver’s vehicles were still back at the producer’s house in Northridge, so we took off to get them and bring them back to set. Why we didn’t have a PA drive us so we could each drive our own vehicle, I don’t know. That’s what we had talked about, but when we finally hit the road it was just me and the other guy in one of the show’s stakebed trucks. Long story short: this meant only one of us could get his vehicle because someone was going to have to drive the stakebed back.

The other guy got the great idea to load my bike into the back of the stakebed and I’d drive it back to set while he followed in his van. That way we’d have both our vehicles and the stakebed back at set. I didn’t love the plan, but the other guy happened to be my boss and I want him to call me for work again in the future, so I went along with it.

Getting the bike on the stakebed was a pain in the ass. The truck had a liftgate that the bike barely fit on, and then to maneuver it into the bed we had to remove one of the wooden side-rails and sort of slide the bike on an inch at a time with half my front tire hanging off the side of the truck. I thought for sure we were going to drop it then.

(That’s called “foreshadowing.”)

So I drove back to the set while he followed in his van, and the whole way back I was watching my bike in the mirror and thinking Is it moving? It isn’t moving, is it? Naaaah, it’s not moving. Holy shit, it’s moving! No, wait, maybe it’s not. When I got off the freeway 15 miles further, I took a good hard look during a red light and saw I had been right: the damn thing was moving. One of the tie-downs — the one my boss had rigged — had totally come off. My tie-down and a kickstand was the only thing keeping my bike on the truck. I re-strapped it down and we continued on to the set.

Getting the bike off was going to be a challenge. As hard as it had been getting it from the liftgate and into the bed of the truck, it was going to be even worse getting it off. It was just too dangerous and maybe even impossible to do it the same way. We needed a different solution. An abandoned loading dock would have been perfect. My boss’ idea of “we’ll back it up to a hill or steep driveway” would have been fine if we used a ramp, but had a liftgate. So I came up with the bright idea of using the liftgate on the grip truck since it was bigger.

Now, what transpired from there was partly my fault because using the grip truck liftgate was my idea. But it was mostly my boss’ fault for rushing it and trying to do it fast and risky instead of slow and safe. But it was ultimately my fault because I went along with it against my better judgement. I had my eye on getting work from him down the road and didn’t want to contradict him, even though I didn’t like the way we were doing it.

Long story short: We backed the stakebed up to the grip truck at an angle instead of straight in, and when I was straddling my bike and backing it up onto the grip truck, I ended up at an angle at the edge of where the two trucks’ liftgates met. I was walking it back, I pushed with the left foot, pushed with the right foot, pushed with the le– When I put my left foot down to push, I put it down into air. I had gone too close to the edge.

The bike started tipping and I couldn’t hold it. In my mind I did that fast-forward thing I’ve talked about before and I mentally played the scenario out to its painful, dead-Chuck ending, with me on the ground and the bike landing on top of me. Fuck that — I jumped.

It was a beautiful move, that jump. The timing was perfect, the form was excellent, it was graceful, it was an aerial ballet — right up to the part where my foot got hung up during the dismount. After that it turned into an ungainly belly-flop onto concrete from 4 feet up. There was a small crowd of people watching all this go down, and I remember hearing a horrified collective “Ooooh!” from them when I hit the ground.

On the ground, my first instinct was to get the fuck out of the way, because I knew the bike was coming down right behind me. Thing is, I couldn’t move. The bellyflop knocked the wind out of me and all I could do was lay there, croaking like a toad and waiting to get crushed by 750 pounds of plummeting Road Glide.

Fortunately, the bike didn’t fall. The one bright spot of this whole carnival of stupidity was that the bike got hung up in the side-rail and the other guys on the liftgate were able to grab it and stop it before it went over.

When I was finally able to breathe and move again — I came out of it with just a scraped elbow — I climbed back up on the gate and finished the job and got the bike safely down on the ground. I felt like an ass when all was said and done. I got lucky on that one. It could have gone a completely different way and ended really ugly for me.

…and that’s the whole story. It’s not really about riding per se, but it involved a motorcycle and it is what I’ve said this blog is about: tales of and from the road. And perhaps above the road…

I took Topanga Canyon over to PCH during my ride up to Camarillo yesterday, and along the way I came across a “biker” broken down on the side of the road. “Biker” because he was on a scooter, but two wheels are two wheels so technically he’s a biker. But whatever, the point is that I stopped to help him.

His air filter was acting up– it was gone, actually; he’d been using a crumpled-up napkin that either fell off or got eaten by the engine — and he was trying to jury-rig a fix for it with a piece of nylon stocking. I cut a few inches off one of the leather laces on my jacket so he could use it to tie the nylon in place, and then he was down the road again.

I post this only to point out to Dom that both times I’ve stopped recently it’s been for Honda riders. That’s gotta do something to offset my contributing to “the stream of stories of parts falling off Harleys,” right?

Busted Honda

Lemme tell ya, that was one broke-ass Honda he was on. I was surprised it ran at all…

I went for a putt along the coast yesterday. I was heading up to Camarillo to go to a party and decided to take the scenic route through Malibu instead of the freeway.

As I rode along, enjoying the sun and the sea air and the ocean view and the bikini-clad hotties dodging traffic on Pacific Coast Highway, I wondered what the riding was like in “safer” places where they don’t have earthquakes and wildfires and mudslides.

I thought about Chicago, but then I remembered it’s not “safe” there anymore — they just had a 5.2 earthquake last week. I sure hope they’re riding again soon…

I was feeling pretty smug about riding while others were freezing because I thought I remembered reading headlines saying winter was lingering in the snow zone. Weather.com, however, says different.

Pepperdine

Xenia, Ohio, for example, got up to 65 degrees yesterday. Lebanon, Kansas, geographic center of the United States, hit 57.

Coming down to Malibu Seafood

Hell, even Milwaukee, Wisconsin, my Harley’s birthplace, scored a high of 49, which I’d say is definitely rideable if you’re wearing long underwear.

Zuma Grub

So maybe it’s not as bad as I thought, living in the snow zone. Maybe they’re not giving up as much riding time as I thought. And maybe I’m too defensive when people say it’s dangerous to live here with all the earthquakes and mudslides and wildfires.

Zuma Beach

I mean, maybe they have a point. After all, as I took these pictures there was a wildfire raging 50 miles away in the hills outside Pasadena. There is a price to pay for living here.

Nearing Pt. Mugu

But there are benefits too. These pictures could have been taken any time.

Not a snowflake in sight...

Like this one, taken at sunset on New Year’s Eve a few months ago. It was T-shirt weather that day, and not a snowflake in sight. Weather is simply not an issue out here.

All things considered, I think it’s worth it.

I was lanesplitting my way up the 101 freeway yesterday through unusually heavy traffic when I caught up to a tow truck angling over to the inside lane where there was a car stopped. That explained the back-up — I figured it was either broken down or an accident. Then I did a double-take when I saw a motorcycle down and a guy sitting on the ground next to it. Accident.

I flipped my helmet up as I went by and yelled “Are you okay? Need some help?” to the biker. No response, he just looked at me, looking kind of out of it. So I followed Rule #1 of Biker Code: stop for fellow bikers. The tow truck, car, and downed bike were blocking two lanes of traffic, so I did a U-turn and rode back against traffic and parked my bike in the fast lane in front of the stopped car.

The cager was standing next to his car and looking pretty freaked out when I approached. Maybe he was afraid I was going to thump him — and the thought did cross my mind, because he had obviously clipped the bike and put him down — but I think it was more his adrenaline pumping from the accident. I asked him what happened. “I never saw him. I was changing lanes and he came out of nowhere!” The usual. Because, you know, motorcycles are invisible.

The biker was squatting against the center divider behind the car and looked a little loopy. He was pretty much intact; nothing appeared broken and he looked okay for the most part, but he did have a nasty gash on one forearm and he was bleeding pretty good. I asked him what had happened and he had no idea. He didn’t remember the accident and he wasn’t very oriented as to where he was at that moment. One glance at the scuffs and scratches on his helmet lying on the ground explained why.

The motorcycle — I think it was an old Honda, maybe a Nighthawk or a CB750 — was lying on its side at the end of a trail of assorted bits of broken turn signals and plastics. The seat had somehow come off and was lying on the ground, so I kicked it over to the center divider and told the downed biker to sit on it and relax while I got the other driver’s info for him.

At about this point a guy in a pickup stopped and said he was a fellow rider too. He had a First Aid kit and medic training, so he took care of the biker while I talked to the cager and wrote down his insurance information, then I decided to be fair about it and got the biker’s info for the cager too.

The ambulance and the CHP showed up at about the same time and things moved pretty fast from there. Both the EMTs and the cops came to me first asking “Are you okay?” and I kept pointing to the bloody guy sitting on the ground and saying “Not me. Him.” They got the biker on a gurney and threw him in the back of the ambulance, and the cops got everyone’s information and story on what happened — which wasn’t much: me and the other guy who stopped hadn’t seen a thing, so the only witnesses were the people involved. Once the biker was in the ambulance it was all over but the shouting, so I jumped on my bike and took off.

I don’t know that I really helped all that much other than giving moral support to a fellow rider, but I know I would have appreciated someone stopping for me. It is part of the code, after all.

I learned a valuable lesson today: When riding in parking lots, take care when cutting across the empty spaces.

I was riding through a nearly empty parking lot this morning, riding diagonally across several rows of empty spaces, and I started leaning/turning to the left to set up my entry into my intended parking space. Suddenly my rear wheel slid out and the bike was kicking out sideways as though I had locked up the rear wheel and was skidding to a stop the way we used to do as kids on our dirt bikes. Only thing is, I’m not a kid, this wasn’t a dirt bike, and I wasn’t anywhere near ready to stop.

Instant thought: Oh shit.

It’s funny how fast your mind works in a situation like this and how time seems to slow down. In my head, I was playing out where the bike was going to go while my body was reacting in slow motion. In my mind I saw the bike going down on a low-side to the left, but somehow I managed to ride it out until the tire caught traction and stopped the skid.

Unfortunately, that’s a recipe for a high-side to the right, and the bike whipped upright and tried to throw me that way. So my mind played that out too, seeing the bike toppling over and the fairing crunching across the pavement while I shoulder-rolled over the windshield. Somehow I managed to ride that out too, however, and I was able to get it under control without dumping it.

I have no idea how I did it because I truly was just along for the ride. I thought for sure I was going down. I remember noticing that I had pulled the clutch in, but I don’t remember doing it. Instinct, I guess. I dunno if it was a good instinct, but it worked out in the end. I think I grabbed some front brake too but I’m not sure. All I know is that I ended up in the parking space I was originally aiming for after making a wild, giant zig-zag across the parking lot to get there.

When the bike stopped I jumped off it like a rodeo rider, laughing and going “Woo-hoo!!!” It was a wild ride and it was an adrenaline rush when it was over. It must have looked pretty damned funny to anyone who was watching.

And then, because I’m a big old geek and I usually carry a camera in my jacket, I took a couple pictures of the skid marks.

Call me Captain Obvious if you want, but the red dashed line shows my path through my little adventure. The skid from the rear tire is obvious, but if you look carefully you’ll see the oil tracks from the front tire too to the left of the red line.

Looking at the first skid from the other direction. You can see here just how much and how far the wheel slid.

I only wish there had been some judges watching my performance. I rode it for the full 8 seconds and think I earned a good score. I want my rodeo belt buckle.

Me and some of the guys went for a little putt up to the Poppy Preserve up in Antelope Valley yesterday to see the flowers since they’re in full bloom now. My wife thought this was hilarious and got a lot of mileage out of it at my expense (”Look at the big tough biker going to look at the flowers!”), but whatever. They were pretty. And I am a big tough biker, so I don’t care what anyone says. Plus, I killed several puppies with my bare hands and ate their hearts raw while I was out there so I could keep my tough guy cred, so I’ve got that going for me.

Anyway…

It was a great ride. It was pretty much the same ride I’ve talked about in the last couple of entries, but I’ve already said that Bouquet Canyon and Lake Hughes Road are two of my favorite roads, so why be surprised if I ride them again and again and again? The loop up to see the poppies went through a few miles of road I actually hadn’t ridden before, so I have a few new roads to explore again later. Here’s the map of the route, just in case anyone’s interested. Ignore the fact that the data says my top speed was 190 mph — I clipped the start and end off the GPS track and I think that screwed up Google Earth’s calculations. My top speed was really only about 100.

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I had a little footboard issue along the way. When I added my skid-plate the other day, I forgot to put Locktite on one of the bolts when I re-mounted the footboard, and it fell off on the ride. That left the footboard hanging by the other bolt, which severely compromised my cornering. I jury-rigged a fix with a bungie cord by threading the hook through the bolt holes and wrapping the excess around the footboard, but that’s only going to last until the bungie cord burns through from touching the exhaust pipe. But it’ll do for now.

Here’s a picture of the repair, and I’ve also taken the opportunity to highlight how ground-down the footboard is so you can see that I’m not exaggerating when I say I need the skidplates. Notice that I’m grinding the bungie cord down now too.

Spring has sprung here in SoCal, with all its attendant bug guts:

I’ve been pretty busy with a career change and assorted generalized fucking off, so I haven’t posted an entry in awhile. Oops. I’ve been riding back and forth to Fontana (about 60 miles each way) during the week for truck driving school and riding for fun on the weekends. Two of the longer rides I’ve done lately are:

First off, I’ve been kicking around an idea for a poker run for my club, so I decided to pre-run the route to make sure it’s a good one. It’s about 100 miles from the start point at Glendale Harley to where it ends at a VFW in Canyon Country, and it has stops at three popular local biker destinations along the way: the Hidden Springs Cafe on Angeles Forest Highway, the Rock Inn in Lake Hughes, and the Big Oaks Lodge in Bouquet Canyon. I got together with a few of the prospects from my club last weekend and we gave it a shot.

It was a fugly day at the start: overcast and threatening rain, and the clouds were so low that we were riding through them as we climbed Angeles Forest Highway. We stopped about a mile into it to don raingear, and as we continued visibility got so bad that you could hardly see 20 yards in front of you. It got so bad that I started considering canceling the ride for safety, but then we broke through into the sun and it was clear and beautiful for the rest of the day.

The final assessment: this will make a great route for a poker run — if the weather is clear. Here’s the route:

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…and then yesterday I did one of my favorite local rides: take the 5 North to the 14 North, exit Sand Canyon and turn left, over the hill to Sierra Highway and turn right, turn left on Vasquez Canyon, then right on Bouquet Canyon (my favorite local road). Up Bouquet to Spunky Canyon to Lake Elizabeth, stop for lunch at the Rock Inn, then down Lake Hughes Road to get to the 5 to head for home. Check out the good non-freeway parts:

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In maintenance news, my right footboard is starting to get ground down to nothing in the turns, so I recently bolted some steel brackets to the bottom so I’d grind down a 25-cent bracket instead of the $50 footboard. It worked — sort of. I was definitely grinding the brackets — until I ground them completely off. It’s a good solution, but it looks like I’m going to have to use thicker steel next time.

What’s really cool is that the guy riding behind me said I was throwing up showers of sparks as I scraped through the turns. Ya gotta love that…

My odometer clicked over to all 4s while I was out riding last weekend. Because I’m a big geek, I pulled over to take a picture.

This is what’s called a “filler entry.”

The phone rang at 10:30 Sunday morning. It was one of the guys from my club with a revolutionary and ground-breaking question: Did I want to go riding? Lately we’ve been joking that our MC stands for Meeting Club because we haven’t been doing much riding, so hell yes I wanted to go. I was out the door ten minutes later.

The route we took was a new one for me. We made a big loop of Topanga Canyon to Pacific Coast Highway to Mulholland Highway. I’ve ridden Topanga to the beach dozens of times, been up and down PCH many times, and ridden parts of Mulholland to get to the Rock Store, but I’ve never ridden the whole thing in one non-stop shot like we did yesterday. It was great. It’s my new favorite ride.

It was also one of the most challenging rides I’ve ever done because of a few sections with back-to-back hairpin turns that, while fun, also inspired some serious pucker moments. Scraping my floorboards is nothing new for me, but there were a few points where I went way past floorboard and was scraping my frame, and I knew if I counter-steered any harder I was going to lever my rear wheel into the air and low-side it. I’m still picking my seat out of my ass. Big fun.

As hairy as the turns along the route were, though, the scariest moment of all was this:

$4.29 a gallon for gas. Ouch. We definitely pay a premium for our year-round riding out here. Of course, I got to ride along the coast in beautiful, sunny, 78 degree weather while it was 38 degrees with snow and ice in Akron, so maybe it’s worth it.

Here’s the route we followed in case any of you ten readers are ever out this way and want to try it:

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