When the ride hits home

[Tev62]

As a contrast to Gone in 60's story of a third party inflicted accident I witnessed the opposite, a self induced accident of a fellow rider. I was out this weekend at a motorcycle Rally, about a 100 people, invite only, mostly my age (60 plus) this weekend gone by. Very civilized, lot of premium bikes, hotel, good food and drink. I clocked up 1100km that weekend and had a ball getting there and back. I cooked lunch with my stove and took in small villages all the way down and back. Rally day was a pseudo rally route which you had to figure out a little, 250km of small back roads and passes in Cork and Kerry. The scenery was stunning and I joined the main group who was led by a testosterone fueled rider followed by equally pumped testosterone filled lemmings. The push on rate was manic, easily doable on my GS but I wasn't enjoying it. I spent 9/10's of my concentration on riding and virtually nothing on enjoying the scenery. It was mentally draining. It took me 30 minutes to realize what I was at and dropped off the pack, dropped my speed dramatically and went my own pace. I was willing the guy on his lovely clean restored Fazer 1000 in front of me to do the same, I could sense his discomfort. As I glide round the next bend the Fazer low sides, albeit at a low speed, off the side of the road and does a nice bit of damage to his bike. The guy was unhurt but you could sense his palpable shock. I had to calm him down, he was so on edge trying to keep up with the others and was frantically trying to pull his bike up whilst full of adrenaline. I felt a little preachy but reminded him he had to ride his own ride, don't get sucked in and admitted I was doing the same for half an hour. The male brain is such a strange thing sometimes, what it can lead you to do. It was a carbed bike and the float bowls were probably semi drained in the spill and it wouldn't start. I said right we will bump start it as the battery had had a hammering by then. A decent chance of starting a carbed bike on a push start. Imagine my surprise when I had to explain to the rider what we were doing, what he needed to do, clutch in, 2nd gear, let me build some speed pushing and dump the clutch with the ignition on. He was clueless. If there was ever a candidate for a mature motorcycle skills course this guy was it. We can be our own worst enemy's too sometimes.