[Birdman]

FWIW:

I recently went for a four day riding weekend to meet a college buddy of mine who was riding up to visit. We each had two days of riding to the meeting spot, although his two days were longer than mine, and two easy days to get to my home.
About halfway through the third day we're on this nice curvey mountain road and I'm following him through some twisties. At the apex of one particular 30mph posted corner, he begins to slow instead of accelerating out of the corner. He slows to about 25 to 30mph as he's pulling to the edge of the road and then just coasts off onto the shoulder and lowsides in the gravel. His VTR spins 360 degrees back onto the pavement right in front of me and I climb on the binders so I don't run it over. As I'm watching this I'm thinking "What the F#!*!?" He's no pro racer but he's definitely not a newbie. He jumped up and was fine and the bike was luckily rideable. It turns out he had just put his Jardine slipons on the day before he came up and he kept hearing something rattling when he was taking corners. He heard it rattling in this particular corner so he decided to pull over and check it out. He was so fatigued from the previous two days that he started looking down at the bike while he was still doing 30 or so and rode right off the road. He couldn't believe how dumb this was. It was his first wreck in 9 years and it was totally stupid. Anyway, I've also had a BIG getoff that I can blame on fatigue and lack of concentration. My point is that long rides or lack of sleep or feeling ill etc... can cause fatigue and it definitely effects your concentration and the way you think. So please be selfaware and know when you're not 100% and adjust your pace accordingly. Sorry this is so long.

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If you're gonna ride a couch, why not just stay home?

 

[Guest]

Excellent advice Birdman. Thanks!

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Pete
"Four wheels move the body, two wheels move the soul."

 

[RCjohn]

Great advice. Something to really watch out for when friends/groups are together. You want to ride all day everyday because you can't get together as much as you would like. My reflexes definitely deteriorate when I am fatigued.

In my experience at Deal's Gap, most of the get-offs occur in the late afternoon and on the occasions where the rider wants to get one last run in.

This could be misleading since most of them are sleeping off hang-overs in the morning hours.

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John

"If Harley made an airplane... would you fly in it?"

 

[Twistiesman]

Well said. My wife and I just got back from 7 days on our bikes and after riding in the twisties all day all you can think about is that pain in your butt and back and how you can not wait to get to a room take off your leathers and drink a cold one. Thinking those things in the late afternoon when you are tired is when things can happen.

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Dave
Too many curves...so little time

 

[Cosmo]

I'm glad that your buddy wasn't hurt. I'm sure it was really weird seeing him lowside in slow-mo like that. You were probably looking at him and yelling from inside your helmet; "hey, what're ya doin?"

Personally, I won't ride if I'm tired. This is bad because I'm always tired. Two jobs, and all that. Usually, one of my buds will call either at some ridiculously early or insanely late hour of the day to invite me for a cruise. Most of the time I have to politely decline. I have to be awake, or else I won't ride. Just riding in the street takes mega-concentration these days. All the minivandrivinmoms (sp intentional) aren't watching what they are doing. Where I live there are a lot of retirees as well on the roads, who have no business being out unsupervised, let alone behind the wheel of a 4,000 pound wheeled weapon. Canyon carving requires alertness as well. If I'm going to take the time to suit up, uncover and unchain the bike, and ride out to the twisties, I want to thrash the bike the way it was meant to be thrashed. 'Ya know?

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Cosmo
"You have some options to choose from: You can lead, you can follow, or you can get out of the way!"

 

[Birdman]

You should have seen the looks on the faces of the cage drivers that were coming toward us when it happened. Their eyes were like saucers! They were almost 100 yards away when it happened so there was no danger of them being envolved in it. But they pulled up and were asking us if we wanted them to call an ambulance or the cops or something. We just said no thanks, when we were actually thinking "Hell no! That's exactly what we don't want you to do. We'll be gone before they get here anyway." Fortunately, we weren't there long enough for some of the people we passed to catch up with us. All of the passes were legal but you know they would have had a whole bunch of I-told-you-so's for us. We just picked up the bike, gave it a good exam for any leaks, tears, broken things. There were cosmetic things like the turn signal, mirror, and beat the hell out of his new S pipe for the Jardine high mounts, and the passenger peg mounted outside the muffler saved the can. Everything important looked OK except for the shift lever which was pushed way up and wouldn't budge by hand. I gave it a little kick and it popped down into position and seemed to work OK. Although, he said the shifting doesn't feel quite right. Probably bent a shift fork or something. He's gonna get it checked first thing.

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James

If you're gonna ride a couch, why not just stay home?