You just never know when!

Recent weeks have seen me up the anti as far as my riding goes. Our Saturday morning ride has seen me in amongst all but the absolute quickest of riders. I am finally getting a real taste of the handling ability of my bike and this is being noticed by my Spanish pals who have complimented me of late.

But just to maybe bring me back down to earth again I had a real sphincter flexing moment today. A mix of bikes from VFR,Fireblade, Speed Triple, 955i and others we had a long ride of mixed roads. From real fast sweeping action to minor "B" type roads that were very undulating and testing, not for going fast on these sections.

So a level stretch of road approaching a 90º angled turn to the right, no traffiic coming at all so I made my approach from very wide. No sooner had I dropped the bike in to the turn.....but the rear wheel let go! I dont know whether it was instinct, luck or the bike simply regripped itself but the front bars turned with the way the rear wheel wanted to go and all of a sudden the tyre gripped again. I was then able to continue around the bend.

Now we can all exaggerate in these situations but my pal who was following close by told me later that the back stepped out so much he thought I was going to highside. A further indication of how wrong the bike got was that when we were chatting I noticed that my left hand mirror(which is adjustable but mounted as part of the indicator) had been totally knocked out of a position of usefullness for seeing what was behind me.

The only possibler explanation for that can be that with the rear wheel stepping out to the left, the bars being turned in to the direction of the slip....I must have somehow lifted out of the seat and forward and knocked the mirror with my fore arm.

When I realised that, it brought home how close I was to having a very painful and costly fall. Also at about 30kmh when at other times we had been flying with 220kmh showing on my clocks on several occasions!

There is no moral to this story and my pal mentioned that he has found in the past that particular stretch of road to be very "dirty". I mean I am running good rubber, my speed was no more than slow to moderate and my inputs smooth.

Be careful out there boys and girls.

think we all need a wee 'reminder' from time to time ,your a lucky guy peter,as u said it wasnt when u were going fast ,it can (and does)happen anytime ,hope u learned something from it ,and let that b a lesson to you

same thing happen'd to me before on my cbr600 the tyre let go and the bike rear slid then gripped and kicked me up out of the seat, yes i s@it bricks! i does you good every now and again it makes you aware that your not troy bayliss and it slows you down alittle for a while

Same thing happened to me a few weeks back. Nothing like a good fright to slow you down a bit

Yep this happened to me in the rain as I was pushing a bit harder than I should have been. Certainly did the trick.

You know my relatively minor incident makes me appreciate the guts that racing boys have. I was very nervous for the rest of the ride on Sunday and must admit approached any further right hand turns with a little trepidation.

Yet our racing hero's bite the dust,often fast and hard. they then get a scooter ride back to the pits and jump on a second bike and go back on the track at flat out speeds. Credit where it's due I reckon.

The thing we all need to remember is that although we think we can emulate our racing heros like Barry Sheen, Rocket Ron, Rossi etc. They had or have the pleasure of racing on relatively safe race circuits and as time has gone by they have got safer. Added to this, these tracks are inspected regularly to ensure there are no lurking debris and spills to part rider from machine. Also the riders do not have to cope with traffic coming in the opposite direction.

We have to do our day to day riding on public roads that seem to get worse each year. We have trees, leaves, fallen branches, kerb stones, parked cars, cats, dogs, deer, gravel, road signs, lamp posts, telegraph poles, mud, tractors, mad taxi drivers, stupid pigeons, pot holes, white lines, tar overbanding and a host of other hazards all ready to rob us of our lives and families of their loved ones.

Just remember this each time you go out, have fun but be careful and respect the dangers.

Tim