Sliding down the tarmac
December 18, 2007 at 8:53 am | Bike | No comment
Blimey, quite greasy on the roads at the moment!” I think as I exit my company’s driveway.
I tootle along home as per usual, thinking more about the nice warm sofa than the road ahead.
I cross over a roundabout and think afterwards “Christ, I have no recollection of negotiating that roundabout, I really should get out of autopilot”
30 seconds later I’m tumbling along the tarmac thinking “Should I tuck my arms in or not?”.
It didn’t matter, by the time I’d made a decision either way I’d slid to a halt.
I tried to recall the past few seconds.
Somebody pulled out VERY close in front of me, I remember the actual process of waking out of auto-pilot and taking a noticeable split second to assess the situation and realise what was going on, then…
I grabbed the brake, idiot, I’d locked the front wheel up and contributed to an already bad situation.
In all my sliding and slithering I hadn’t hit the car that pulled out in front of me.
I lay there in the middle of the road for a second or two, wondering rather indignantly if the car was going to stop or carry on regardless.
It stopped, and a well spoken middle aged man of indian decent exited the drivers seat and enquired if I was ok or not.
“Nothing’s broken, can you give me a hand lifting this up and getting it out of the road?”
As we lifted my bike and pushed it onto the grass verge I noticed that the one thing that seemed to take the biggest damage was my disc lock, which had flown out of my rear compartment and smashed its plastic casing on the tarmac.
He gave me his card, wrote down his registration on it for me and gave me a lift home.
For my little escapade, all I had to show for it was a rather scuffed jacket, torn trousers (where my motorcross boots had ripped through from the inside) and a friction burn on the heel of my right palm where my £12.99 Tesco Value gloves had disintegrated.
My right pannier was very dented, big horrible scrapes down one side and the hinges had snapped, but they looked like with a hammer and the acceptance of no hinges, they could be made serviceable again.
Having left my bike at the scene, I asked for a lift from one of my colleagues the next day, who took me to my bike and hung around while I made sure it worked.
Beyond a broken indicator, a lot of scuffing and a twisted hand guard, the bike was right as rain! Maybe I don’t need those engine bars!
I started her up and set off for work.
Hmm, it’s not freewheeling very well and there’s a horrible burning smell, shit, that’s not good.
Erm… whoops! Turns out the twisted hand guard was sticking the front brake on, leaving a rather nice groove down the middle of the front disc which was revealed upon later inspection.
After removing the offending hand guard, the bike is happy as larry!
During work I started to experience some rather worrying neck pain, so I took the second half of the day off and went home.
Taking the time off as an opportunity, I took a hammer to my bugger pannier and set it to rights.
After half an hour of stress-relieval the pannier was bent inwards instead of outwards, but at least the lid fit on it!
A quick trial on the bike… Yup, works like a charm, still locks, still fits (not as well as it did, but hey!).
All in all, quite impressed with Jesse!