Weekend
Weekend was full of ups and downs.
Saturday: Formula Drift at Long Beach was fun. My g/f blacking out from heat/sunstroke was definitely not. Watching a bunch of World SBK and Isle of Man races that evening was definitely a good time.
Sunday: Motorcycle ride through Malibu was going great. Until I crashed. Short version: I'm fine, the bike probably isn't.
Long Version:
timeadc and I were going to ride Sunday but he got a call from work and wasn't able to join. I headed out from my place around 8am and figured I'd putz around the Santa Monica Mountains and be home around noon. I cruised up Topanga to Old Topanga, Mulholland, Stunt Rd, Piuma, Cold Creek Canyon, more of Mulholland, and was about 3/4 of the way down Decker Canyon when it happened. I'd been feeling good the whole day - hitting the right lines, keeping things smooth. I'd been able to adjust my lines to avoid debris/gravel/rocks in the road so I didn't think I was pushing it too hard.
As I was coming down Decker my mind wandered to trying to figure out which road I wanted to take once I got to PCH. At about the same moment that I told myself to pay attention to now instead of where I was going in 5 minutes, my bike and I hit the ground. It was halfway through a left-hander and transpired very suddenly. I don't think I chopped the throttle, grabbed the brake, or gave it a bunch of gas so I wasn't sure what had happened. Investigation of my skidmarks afterwards led me to possibly conclude that I had clipped one of the toad turtle reflectors which caused the rear to slide out. After a night's rest, I'm not sure if that was really the cause or if I did something that caused me to lose the front.
Either way, fell over on the left side and separated from the bike. I slid for about 15 feet (man, sliding on asphalt is a really odd feeling) before popping basically right up onto my feet. I then watched my bike slide for about 40 feet only to be stopped by the curb and guardrail. What an awful noise.
I immediately ran over and hit the kill switch to shutoff the engine and walked to the downhill side to right the bike. At this point adrenaline has definitely hit and I'm a bit shakey. Some anonymous guy on a sportbike was coming northbound and he stopped to help me get the bike back onto it's wheels. Kind of surreal, but after a quick "you ok?" thumb gesture, he hopped back on his bike and took off. I sat on the guardrail and contemplated my next steps.
Well, I've never been in this situation before so the first thing was to take stock of myself. No pain points, no broken bones. Checked my arms, legs, feet, and hands and didn't find anything other than some scuff marks on my leathers, boots, and gloves. Thank goodness for protective gear. Turning my attention to the bike, my spirits plunged. Clutch lever was bent over and ground down, left handlebar was cracked and bent, left mirror missing, left fairing totally rashed, headlight bucket cracked, and a giant dent in the rear tire was causing it to quickly go flat. Guess I'm not riding this baby home.
This was my first accident on a bike and I wasn't really sure what the next steps should be. For future reference, if you're uninjured and the bike isn't rideable, you should probably call your insurance or AAA.
I Googled for a tow company and called Malibu Towing, knowing the 30 mile tow to Santa Monica was gonna cost me a pretty penny. After I hung up, I hear some lady yelling from the hillside that she had "called for help!" I yelled back that I was "fine!" and proceeded to sit on the guardrail despondently waiting for the tow truck. Le sigh.
First vehicle to pull up was a fire pickup truck/EMT. Obviously the lady had called 911 for a motorcycle accident. Right behind them was a full on firetruck. Within a minute they dismissed the firetruck (my bike was obviously not on fire nor posing any danger of such). The EMTs asked me if I was ok, took my pulse, blood pressure, etc. I was kind of shakey (probably a combination of adrenaline and mild shock) but otherwise fine.
Few minutes later THREE CHPs show up. For a lowside motorcycle crash with one uninjured person involved, I thought this was probably overboard. They seemed to agree, as after a moment of discussion and evaluation, all but one of them took off. The car that stayed had two officers, one of which was obviously training the other. The trainee took my license, registration, insurance, etc. They asked me what had happened so I explained. No citation was issued, but they did give me a card with the number of the accident report, and explained that my insurance company would want to know about it.
Insurance! Of course. I knew there was a reason I give Geico money every month. I called the 800 number and started speaking to a representative. As he's taking my information the tow truck pulls up. CHPs redirected traffic while he lowered the truck bed. We tried to roll my bike but the giant dent in the rear rim prevented it from moving. Hooked up the winch to the front tire and basically dragged the bike up the truck bed. So much for those new tires I put on last month.
Hopped into the tow truck and finished my conversation with the Geico guy. After a long-ass ride down PCH, we arrived at my motorcycle shop, which is conveniently closed on both Sunday and Monday. We rolled the bike down off the truck and pushed it into the alley next to the shop, leaving a nice black trail of Pirelli rubber behind us. I called the shop and left them a message explaining what the bike was doing there and paid the tow truck driver. It was just as expensive as I'd feared.
I called my roommate to pick me up and arrived home at about 12:30, right on schedule.
And now we'll see how the insurance sorts things out. I'm nervous that Ducati's are expensive to repair and estimate I probably have ~$3-4k of damage. We shall see.
Anyways, pictures say a 1000 words, I suppose, so here's the cameraphone documentation:
You can pretty clearly see where the bike went down and the slide marks up to the guard rail:
Saturday: Formula Drift at Long Beach was fun. My g/f blacking out from heat/sunstroke was definitely not. Watching a bunch of World SBK and Isle of Man races that evening was definitely a good time.
Sunday: Motorcycle ride through Malibu was going great. Until I crashed. Short version: I'm fine, the bike probably isn't.
Long Version:
timeadc and I were going to ride Sunday but he got a call from work and wasn't able to join. I headed out from my place around 8am and figured I'd putz around the Santa Monica Mountains and be home around noon. I cruised up Topanga to Old Topanga, Mulholland, Stunt Rd, Piuma, Cold Creek Canyon, more of Mulholland, and was about 3/4 of the way down Decker Canyon when it happened. I'd been feeling good the whole day - hitting the right lines, keeping things smooth. I'd been able to adjust my lines to avoid debris/gravel/rocks in the road so I didn't think I was pushing it too hard.
As I was coming down Decker my mind wandered to trying to figure out which road I wanted to take once I got to PCH. At about the same moment that I told myself to pay attention to now instead of where I was going in 5 minutes, my bike and I hit the ground. It was halfway through a left-hander and transpired very suddenly. I don't think I chopped the throttle, grabbed the brake, or gave it a bunch of gas so I wasn't sure what had happened. Investigation of my skidmarks afterwards led me to possibly conclude that I had clipped one of the toad turtle reflectors which caused the rear to slide out. After a night's rest, I'm not sure if that was really the cause or if I did something that caused me to lose the front.
Either way, fell over on the left side and separated from the bike. I slid for about 15 feet (man, sliding on asphalt is a really odd feeling) before popping basically right up onto my feet. I then watched my bike slide for about 40 feet only to be stopped by the curb and guardrail. What an awful noise.
I immediately ran over and hit the kill switch to shutoff the engine and walked to the downhill side to right the bike. At this point adrenaline has definitely hit and I'm a bit shakey. Some anonymous guy on a sportbike was coming northbound and he stopped to help me get the bike back onto it's wheels. Kind of surreal, but after a quick "you ok?" thumb gesture, he hopped back on his bike and took off. I sat on the guardrail and contemplated my next steps.
Well, I've never been in this situation before so the first thing was to take stock of myself. No pain points, no broken bones. Checked my arms, legs, feet, and hands and didn't find anything other than some scuff marks on my leathers, boots, and gloves. Thank goodness for protective gear. Turning my attention to the bike, my spirits plunged. Clutch lever was bent over and ground down, left handlebar was cracked and bent, left mirror missing, left fairing totally rashed, headlight bucket cracked, and a giant dent in the rear tire was causing it to quickly go flat. Guess I'm not riding this baby home.
This was my first accident on a bike and I wasn't really sure what the next steps should be. For future reference, if you're uninjured and the bike isn't rideable, you should probably call your insurance or AAA.
I Googled for a tow company and called Malibu Towing, knowing the 30 mile tow to Santa Monica was gonna cost me a pretty penny. After I hung up, I hear some lady yelling from the hillside that she had "called for help!" I yelled back that I was "fine!" and proceeded to sit on the guardrail despondently waiting for the tow truck. Le sigh.
First vehicle to pull up was a fire pickup truck/EMT. Obviously the lady had called 911 for a motorcycle accident. Right behind them was a full on firetruck. Within a minute they dismissed the firetruck (my bike was obviously not on fire nor posing any danger of such). The EMTs asked me if I was ok, took my pulse, blood pressure, etc. I was kind of shakey (probably a combination of adrenaline and mild shock) but otherwise fine.
Few minutes later THREE CHPs show up. For a lowside motorcycle crash with one uninjured person involved, I thought this was probably overboard. They seemed to agree, as after a moment of discussion and evaluation, all but one of them took off. The car that stayed had two officers, one of which was obviously training the other. The trainee took my license, registration, insurance, etc. They asked me what had happened so I explained. No citation was issued, but they did give me a card with the number of the accident report, and explained that my insurance company would want to know about it.
Insurance! Of course. I knew there was a reason I give Geico money every month. I called the 800 number and started speaking to a representative. As he's taking my information the tow truck pulls up. CHPs redirected traffic while he lowered the truck bed. We tried to roll my bike but the giant dent in the rear rim prevented it from moving. Hooked up the winch to the front tire and basically dragged the bike up the truck bed. So much for those new tires I put on last month.
Hopped into the tow truck and finished my conversation with the Geico guy. After a long-ass ride down PCH, we arrived at my motorcycle shop, which is conveniently closed on both Sunday and Monday. We rolled the bike down off the truck and pushed it into the alley next to the shop, leaving a nice black trail of Pirelli rubber behind us. I called the shop and left them a message explaining what the bike was doing there and paid the tow truck driver. It was just as expensive as I'd feared.
I called my roommate to pick me up and arrived home at about 12:30, right on schedule.
And now we'll see how the insurance sorts things out. I'm nervous that Ducati's are expensive to repair and estimate I probably have ~$3-4k of damage. We shall see.
Anyways, pictures say a 1000 words, I suppose, so here's the cameraphone documentation:
You can pretty clearly see where the bike went down and the slide marks up to the guard rail: