wrong side up

I was asked by a friend of mine to recall my first time "off" the bike - meaning how did I crash. So I wrote down the story and send it to her as she had sent me a story of how she put a Yamaha R1 over a cliff. I thought I would save this story for posterity by putting it up here on my blog. And since its been a while since I've updated, this also serves a secondary purpose (keeping my readers with material).


The year is 2000 and I've been riding for about 5 months. At the time I owned a Suzuki Intruder 800, my first cycle and a nice bike to learn on. It was the end beginning of July, the 3rd to be exact. How do I remember the day so well? Easy - it was the day after my sister got married. The family and friends were gathered in a small town called Idyllwild in the mountains just outside of Palm Springs.

I was taking the bike home to where I lived (near Joshua Tree, CA) and enjoying the curves of the road as I descended down the mountain. A few miles into the trip, a blue BMW Z3 came up behind me, rather fast. I was going at my own pace and I remembered from the MSF training course that the quickest way to crash was to ride outside of your ability range. So I took my time, rode the bike to the best of my ability. The driver of the Z3 wanted to go a bit quicker and decided to pass me on a 100 yard straight-away on the road. As he started to pass, we both noticed an oncoming car. Rather than hit the brakes hard and slow to return to his spot behind me, he moved over back into the right lane, forcing me off the road.

I was fortunate enough that there was gravel by the side of the road as if there wasn't, I doubt I would have slowed down enough to avoid going off the side of the mountain. The front wheel washed out in the gravel and both the cycle and I hit the ground going somewhere around 30-40 mph.

The BMW never slowed, never came back, heck - never even touched the brakes. The oncoming car saw the incident and stopped to help me up. I had smashed the windscreen and lightbar on the bike, my jacket was a little messed up on the right side and my pants were slightly shredded. The bike and I both stopped about 4 feet from the guardrail, both a bit tattered but still in decent enough shape to make it home.

I ripped off the windscreen and got back on the bike after a short break. I got home and put the bike in the garage. My entire right side of my body was bruised but I didn't tell anyone except the girl I was dating at the time. If my parents or sister knew that I had crashed on the way home from her wedding, they would've freaked. So when my uncle punched me in the bicep the next day, I grimmaced and complimented him on how strong he was, not mentioning that I was in true pain from the crash.

But the safety gear did its job and I rode away. And any crash you walk/ride away from...