'Moments'

[Vard66]

Ok. Just reading the knee down thread, and my hackles are up reading Jamz' moment anecdotes.
So who's had a good'nn?

My only two so far -
Marlborough ---> Pewsey road, first day on the bike. As described in the Knee down thread, I chickened out on one of the tighter corners halfway through, and lifted off the throttle, bolting the bike upright, and drifting me right across the road towards the hedge. That was hairy.

Swindon ---> Cricklade, can't remember what road it is. There's a small roundabout as you come off the A419, with a chicane leading onto it. I didn't get the bike into the second turn quick enough and had a moment like Jamz's, heading straight for the kerb with both feet down expectant of an impact

[zimm]

jumped a hump-back bridge at about 80mph on a tzr250 only to find a tractor and plough across the road on the other side .. ducked under the plough blades with the wheels still a foot off the ground ..

knew there was a reason i normally only went 45-50 over that bridge .. had to stop and smoke half a pack of fags .. was still shaky as f*** when i set off again.

went into a smallish roundabout at 3am (off to get rizla's) and exhaled .. visor misted up, couldnt see, didnt have time to take a hand off the bars.. guessed where the exit was .. missed .. smacked both knee's/shins up on the kerbs, lay in the road for 5 minutes swearing.

headed off to visit relatives pissed .. (not done it before or since) and with only a sidelight bulb thinking "oh well, i know the road" .. pre-empted the right turn halfway down a lane .. by about 20 feet.. jumped a ditch, went up a bank, through a hedge, across a field, through a hedge down a bank, across a ditch and back on to the road .. f*** knows how i didnt come off.

jumped a red light going onto a busy roundabout in bristol, in the wet (just stopped raining) threw it left, lost the front, gassed it, lost the back, drifted it, felt it catch at the front, threw it right, lost the back, drifted across 3 lanes of (rather startled) traffic, caught it, threw it left for my exit (going straight on) back spinning up again, as i picked the bike up the spinning rear found some grip and i wheelied away from the roundabout thinking "um, ok, thats me out of luck for the next thousand years then"

125 mph lock to lock tankslapper while setting up the suspension geometry on Emma's ZX4 .. in a straight line without hitting any bumps ! (?) needless to say the "setup" wasn't quite right .. (needed more preload and the front dropping another 5mm).. this was only last week !

let the front drop from my most impressive "tzr125 over a crest and yank like fook" wheelie ever to find a bin lorry 30 feet in front of me on a single track road with deep ditches.. locked both wheels trying to scrub speed, wasnt going to work so stayed on the back brake, and stayed sideways till about 6 feet away then let the bike flip up in a kinda controlled highside and aimed for slightly left of the lorry, made it.. just.

snapped chain at 130mph, M5, rush hour, filtering. (just passed the M42 junction, northbound) was sure i was going to die, not quite sure how i made it to the hard shoulder (under the flyover bit), but I flat spotted the back tyre so badly I needed a new one.

total electrical failure (lights an all) @110mph on an unlit section of the M4 with no other traffic about.. on a bike i'd never ridden before. Quite how i didnt end up in the barriers, or off the edge of the hard should i really dont know, i couldnt see toad.

fixed it by using me lighter to find the fusebox and wrapping all the fuses in the silver paper out of me fag packet.

racing the 4/6 against a zzr1100 the length of the M69 at 160mph + .. too many "moments" to process.

following a 250 mounted mate between two lorries on a 125 and only just making it out the front.

powersliding a zzr1100 round derbyshire 2 minutes into having a go on it (first time on a BIG bike, spent all day caning my ZXR, was um , "on it") thought better of it and gave it back while i was still in one piece.

turning into alpine hairpins with the back wheel off the ground and getting the backend spinning up on the way out... then remembering I hadnt ridden a bike up there before, only my van.



I used to scare the toad outta myself nearly every time i went out, these days i just try to be smooth and enjoy it, plus i count myself lucky not to have ever really hurt myself in what must be getting on for quarter of a million road miles over 14 years.

[Vard66]

jumped a hump-back bridge at about 80mph on a tzr250 only to find a tractor and plough across the road on the other side .. ducked under the plough blades with the wheels still a foot off the ground ..

F**k that...

went into a smallish roundabout at 3am (off to get rizla's) and exhaled .. visor misted up, couldnt see, didnt have time to take a hand off the bars.. guessed where the exit was .. missed .. smacked both knee's/shins up on the kerbs, lay in the road for 5 minutes swearing.

ROFL!

jumped a red light going onto a busy roundabout in bristol, in the wet (just stopped raining) threw it left, lost the front, gassed it, lost the back, drifted it, felt it catch at the front, threw it right, lost the back, drifted across 3 lanes of (rather startled) traffic, caught it, threw it left for my exit (going straight on) back spinning up again, as i picked the bike up the spinning rear found some grip and i wheelied away from the roundabout thinking "um, ok, thats me out of luck for the next thousand years then"

I doubt there'll be terribly many moments as cool as that.

total electrical failure... fixed it by using me lighter to find the fusebox and wrapping all the fuses in the silver paper out of me fag packet.

Brilliant. Shame I don't smoke.

powersliding a zzr1100 round derbyshire 2 minutes into having a go on it (first time on a BIG bike, spent all day caning my ZXR, was um , "on it") thought better of it and gave it back while i was still in one piece.

That's more or less how my older brother described his first ride on Hoover, his GPZ 750 Turbo, only he didn't think the better of it, and just bought it on credit. He's still in once piece however, and atm, as far as I know is on a brand new FJR.

On a mildly related note here, I found a photo of Hoover.

And the little one beside it is me, aged (?).

[Jamz]

jumped a red light going onto a busy roundabout in bristol, in the wet (just stopped raining) threw it left, lost the front, gassed it, lost the back, drifted it, felt it catch at the front, threw it right, lost the back, drifted across 3 lanes of (rather startled) traffic, caught it, threw it left for my exit (going straight on) back spinning up again, as i picked the bike up the spinning rear found some grip and i wheelied away from the roundabout thinking "um, ok, thats me out of luck for the next thousand years then".

Now THAT is a classic 'accidental riding God' moment!!!

[Scott221]

The biggest scare I've had on the ZXR, I was on my way to Stratford stuck behined 5 or so cars. Hit a long stretch of road, drop it down and cars start going backwards. I get close to the front car doing about 80-90 to see an AA van pull out from a junction on the right, he didn't even see me as he continued to pull out. Now im there, a car on my left, one in front and about 100 metres before me and the van get personal. So I think f*** it, pin the throttle as far back as possible and just slot in before the van crosses the white lines. I must of left a slight brown stain on his bonnet, it was pretty close. Ah well, good dose of adrenaline!


Another one, I was trying for KD and got the peg down instead, the bike kind of joulted and I had to muscle it back up. It through my confidence then, one of those things you don't get over till you try to do it again.

[Xphyral]

140 mph on an empty dual carriageway round a slight bend in it, when the trees on my left opened out into fields a gust of wind sat my bike almost upright. tried steering it back down but still drifted towards a curbed central reservation, thinking i was probably about to die somehow my wheels managed to just bounce off the slight curb and push me back onto the road with an almighty tankslapper at over 120. i thanked every powerful being in the heavens for that one.

flitering past traffic at about 20mph when a pedestrian stepped out about 5m in front of me, locked the front up coming to a stop about an inch from the guy frozen in horror.

heading through some back roads on my cheap chinese dirt bike at about 60ish when i heard an almighty clanging from the front of the bike and then started getting massive juddering from the bike, saw something fly off the front of the bike just before the front locked up and dumped me into the hedge at the side of the road as i was trying to pull the bike over. pulled myself and the bike out to find a caliper bolt had come loose and ripped a good thrid of the spokes out of the wheel and got them lodged in the caliper. Why on earth the chinese thought mounting caliper bolts on the inside of the caliper was a good idea i dont know.

that's about it really, had a lot of people pull out in front of me but those are becoming too numerous to go through and none of them particularly momentous.

[Jamz]

I've been trying to remember any recent 'moments' I've had where I scared myself, but can't think of any!

I don't know if that's because now when the wheels slide or people do silly things around me, I'm expecting it and it barely raises my pulse?

Or maybe I'm just getting old and sensible?

There was a rather scary incident a few years back - I was on a motorway roundabout with my wench on the back, pootling to the front of the lights in the empty middle lane of three. Both other lanes were chock-a-block with big old lorries.

As I came lever with the part of one where the trailer links to the cab, I heard the engine rev up and about the time I thought "Uh-oh!", the lorry started cutting into my lane as fast as he could!

I just managed to nail it and slip through a tiny gap to get ahead of him, and according to my girlfriend managed to create some rather inventive gestures at the driver before we moved off.

It really was pretty damn close, though...

[zimm]

flitering past traffic at about 20mph when a pedestrian stepped out about 5m in front of me, locked the front up coming to a stop about an inch from the guy frozen in horror.

had that happen in coventry bout 2 years ago .. cept it was a pregnant woman and a 6 year old kid.. and she was 2m in front of me..

needless to say i hit her square on.. she went up in the air and landed on her son, i came to a dead stop.

i nearly got lynched by the surrounding white van men until the police arrived and booked HER ! for basically being a twat.

found her bracelet behind where my headlight used to be so feck knows how she didnt break her hand/wrist..

shook me up a bit, dont know how i'd have felt if she'd been killed or seriously injured.. but as it was she was ok, the kid was ok, she didnt lose the baby, so its all good ..

well, cept that whilst it may have been her fault, (for running across a busy road across 3 lanes of traffic with a kid in tow, without looking) pedestrians dont have insurance, so i was still over £100 out of pocket repairing my bike.

[Xphyral]

i know how that feels aswell, i overtook a taxi on a road through town only just as i was passing he decided he was going to pull up on the right hand side of the road without indicating, i hit the car at an angle that rather than knocking me off the bike funneled me onto the pavement where i hit an 86 year old lady, the impact knocked her out and broke her leg but she made a full recovery as far as i was aware.

i've since had a court summons blaming me for the damages, and some nice "independant witness" swore the driver was indicating.

i felt really really awful that day, i had no idea if she was going to live or die and i must have hit her at 30+ since i had wound it up to overtake nice and quickly. Really sux causing serious injury to someone who was doing nothing but walking down the street.

The one that really pisses me off and it's happened 4 or 5 times now is stupid retarded mums pushing prams out from behind parked cars into the road before looking, and then they give you the evils as if your the f*cking numpty.

[Jamz]

Kin ell - I'd hate to hit anyone!

My mate hit a women when he was filtering up to a pedestrian crossing, and she decided to cross between the stationary cars...

I see a similar thing happening almost every morning on my commute. I filter to the front of some traffic lights where there's no crossing, and a few people wonder accross the road between the stationary cars.

It's in my head that one day i'll hit one, and if I don't I'm sure someone else will...

[RedexRobB]

had plenty of small moments, like the odd slap from the handle bars, near miss, doing silly speed and nearly not making kinda thing. the big ones where you think your going to die, they always stay in your head.

I had one of those quite a few years back when i had my first ZXR. Nailing it down a road near me, and theres a kinda chicane in it, came out the other side doing 110 just to see that theres a fat old tractor crossing the road to go from one field to the next, 'go being it i thought', 'feck it got a trailer!' I dont think i had ever ever squeezed the front brake lever as hard and as fast as i did that day. Stopped about 2m shy of the tractor and a skid mark just as long in my boxers. and i dunno if anyone else has had it, but afterwards i just couldnt stop laughing!

[Vard66]

Nope. Never get laughter. I get the shakes in my legs real bad though. I've had to stop driving before, because my legs were shaking so bad.

Last time that happened, was almost a year ago, when I was still driving the 214 to and from school every day. Coming down into Marlborough on the Burbage road, there's a mini roundabout. Waiting on my left at this roundabout was a woman in a small blue fiesta. I was moving down the road at maybe a little more than the speed limit, I admit. Probably around 40 ish, I approached this mini roundabout. The woman looked at me, looked away, looked at me and appeared to calculate, seemed to realise I was approaching the mini roundabout, and that it was my right of way so I was going to carry on. She then waited, so I entered the mini roundabout, and as I did so, she decided it was actually a really good idea for her to go. I slammed on the anchors and wound up about half an inch from the side of her car. I can in fact confirm this, as I heard a bang (which I presume afterwards was actually my wheel going over the drain cover) which I thought was a collision, so I got out to check. She asked me what the hell I was doing, and I told her I was excercising my right of way, as when you approach a roundabout, you are supposed to give way to anything coming from your right. She mumbled something and drove off.
I got halfway along the high street and had to stop, as my clutch control had gone to hell with my leg almost vibrating.

[zimm]

yeh, ive had the shakes after moments in cars ... bikes however and im with RobB, its manic giggling time.

went round a blind, crested, off camber left hander in the 924 last summer at about 90mph .. i knew it would go light, i knew i had to feather the throttle at that speed and be neither accelerating or braking lest the car should start to swap ends .. what i didnt know was that there was stationary traffic on the other side of it thanks to a tractor faffing about in a farm entrance..

as I lifted off, the back came round, this started a 3-400 yard struggle with 1.5 tons of fish-tailing, under-braked porsche as i endeavoured to bring it to a halt before i ran out of road and without twatting the oncoming traffic.

stopped with under a meter to spare

got into the next village and just had to let it stall out in a pub carpark and sit there for a bit.

[Gemini]

when I was still driving the 214 to and from school every day

school kids cant drive cars by me in the midlands

must b different drving ages in swindon!

gem

[Vard66]

Sixth form, Gem. What was rather marvelous, was that I was pretty much the first, not only in my year, but amongst the year above me, to pass my test and be driving. That was an awesome feeling. Nearly five months went by before anyone else passed, too. I felt like a god. (In my white, 1.8D 205...)

Plus, zimm - 924 = yummy, but 944>924.