[Stingo]

Had an off today. Conditions clear but roads still damp from overnight shower. Bright morning sunshine sunglasses on - time 0730. Hooning through Torpoint as usual with the rest of the traffic after having got off the ferry. Speed around 30 mph (honestly ? we really were!) In front of me was a mini that suddenly decided to stop to allow a third party out of their driveway. Slammed on the anchors trying not to lose control and fully aware that there was a car up my **** with other vehicles behind that?about 3 metres from the back of said mini I knew that I was not going to be able to stop so at two metres I had to ditch the bike. Went down on the RHS and pointed the sliding beast towards the back of the vehicle. A few nano seconds passed and I made gentle contact with the car - bits of my RHS indicator were pinging off in all directions, my LHS wing mirror was snapped off by the underside of the car and disappeared over my shoulder, my head was coming to rest on the central white line. Behind me I was aware of a skid followed by a number of crashing sounds (concertina effect stylee) as the rest of the traffic came to a grinding & screeching halt behind me!! All very exciting. Even the bus managed to miss the scooter gang. Climbing out from under my hog I looked behind and could see that three scooters had come to grief - one of the riders now being located on the opposite side of the road.
I reckon we were all a bit lucky in that nothing was coming from the other direction.

Damage to me? Sore right thumb. RHS indicator in bits and rear brake pedal is in two parts - left hand mirror knackered. Not sure about the rest as I'm in work now and the bike is around the corner on someone's drive - I'll pick it up later. I've got R&G's on so I reckon they took all the impact. I don't recall picking any other bits up from the road so I reckon they'll still be intact. I think it'll be ok though. One of the scooters had its front fairing thing smashed into large portions but was still hanging on the bike. All good fun.

So - two schools of thought then.
School one:- To a man we were all possibly too close to each other given speed and conditions etc. Therefore it was a disaster waiting to happen. Maybe.
School two:- Mini driver did not look into his rear view mirror before stopping for no apparent reason other than to let a random driver out of her drive way who incidentally had not actually commenced moving from the drive and so had still had the pavement between the car and the dropped kerb.

I guess I'll be doing some minor repairs this weekend. Off to fleabay I must go!!