Rode early morning, worked my work day, then took off late evening on a mission to find a nice spot for us to have dinner out. I ended up cruising past several options, but the city's rush hour was in full swing and all the highways I would normally cruise up and down on without concern were then stop-and-go. And every route I tried, and tried, and tried - I kept hitting thick stop-and-go traffic.
But I was on a mission. So I rode onto and right back off the interstate as soon as I got to the next exit and ended up in downtown, and the traffic was still jam packed, with lane closures and traffic stops keeping everything crawling.
So now I'm distracted and very mission-focused, and I motored on until I could get a little breathing room between me and the line-ups of cars behind me and on either side and then turned down a cross-street that leads to a local wood-fired pizza place we like.
I never saw the oiled pebbles, freshly dropped and a couple inches thick in spots.
There were no "Loose Gravel" signs, no "Fresh Oil" signs, in fact no construction signs at all. Nothing warning me that the street I was turning onto wasn't just like the downtown street I was already riding on... I leaned in and started to turn the bike onto the connecting street at speed and within a half-second the Bandit started sliding sideways and tipping to the left.
As much instinct as desperation, I throttled back and started to bounce the clutch (I was in second gear) trying to regain some traction on the back tire to keep the bike upright while the Bandit sunk left onto my increasingly strained knee, my left boot dragging through the gravel and spraying me and the left side of my bike with pebbles. After a few tense seconds and a lot of left-leg pressure to keep the bike upright, I managed to regain control enough to fish-tail my way through the rest of the gravel and turn into the parking lot for the pizza place ahead of me. Thankfully, the car behind me slid to a stop as soon as they saw I lost traction. Only a few seconds after that, the Bandit was safely in the parking lot and I was filling my fountain drink with a shaky hand.
So life is like that - get too focused on the mission, you risk losing perspective on the big picture as well as other important details.
Sure, a street sign may have helped me but it's not the city's fault or anybody's fault but my own. I know full-well the risks I take when I try to navigate public roads on two wheels, and frankly I wasn't paying enough attention to the details to notice the change in street color/texture. My fault entirely, and I'm just glad I didn't have to set the bike down or pick oiled gravel out of my skin that evening.
I take it as a reminder to always keep the big picture in mind, even when I'm headed towards a goal. Pay full attention to everything and (like Jason Curdy at Full Throttle Academy taught our MSF class): "NEVER stop trying to make a bad situation better!"
Good advice in general, thank you Jason.
No comments:
Post a Comment