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Sweeping cobwebs from the edges of my mind
Had to get away to see what we could find
Hope the days that lie ahead
Bring us back to where they've led
Listen not to what's been said to you
Sorry to hear about your off, and I'm glad that you're OK. Now's a good time to reflect, and see if you could have done anything to avoid this accident, and try and learn from this unfortunate experience, so that you can avoid it happening again, in the future.
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You meet the nicest people on a Honda.
Regarding whether it was avoidable, I need to go back to the site and see. In the moment perception can be distorted, and after you're full of adrenaline and not thinking clearly either. I may drive back there (in the SUV) and see if my recollection is close to correct and what could've been done. It was a big enough patch that I think it was mostly unavoidable short of riding into the oncoming lane. I was already pretty committed to the apex, so perhaps I could've been further "outside" in the bend... will post an actual pic of what I hit later today... The only reason I am prolonging this post is so someone can hopefully avoid my same fate...
Dang, looks like you came out okay. Glad you're safe. I have that same setup (jacket, gloves, and helmet), except my helmet is one of the models a step up. How well did the gear protect you?
You're lucky. I went down on gravel a couple of years ago on a Ninja250R in much the same way you did. Coming into a turn at the speed limit, didn't see the gravel until after I was committed and halfway through the turn. The bike went out from under me before I could even brake much.
It was a low-speed crash that I should have walked away from, but something on the bike hit me just above my left knee on the way down (I think now it was the ball end of the shift lever) and punctured a 1" wide and 1" deep hole in my leg. I ended up in the ER waiting for a surgeon while a nurse had her thumb stuck in the wound trying to stop the bleeding and 2 orderlies mopped up the 2 pints of blood I had already lost on the floor. The orthopedic surgeon cleaned out the wound and stitched me up, but I lost a lot of the lining of my thigh muscle and almost all of the feeling in that knee. Got a nice big scar there now.
It was kind of a freak accident and not what I expected after sliding to a stop at the curb. I was ready to hop up and check my bike, but a cute paramedic who was sunning herself in her yard saw the whole thing and pressed my shoulders back onto the pavement and wouldn't let me move until the ambulance arrived. They didn't even take off my helmet until we arrived at the ER, so I never had the chance to see the blood spurting out of my knee and didn't even know how bad it was until the 2 orderlies showed up and started mopping up all the blood on the floor around me. I was just a little freaked when the nurse sitting next to me told me she had her thumb in the wound to stop the blood flow.
Talking to the surgeon the next day he told me I came very close to hitting the main artery in my leg and could have easily bled to death if the wound was a few millimeters closer. There was also the possibility that I could have lost the leg if the artery had even been nicked. All this from a slow-speed lowside that I thought I was going to walk away from.
You're going to get a lot of people telling you that your accident was "avoidable". That if you had some experience on dirt bikes you could have motored through it, etc. Fact is gravel is probably the #1 reason bikes go down. In my case I don't think I could have avoided it, but I should have expected it. It was a gorgeous day, but the night before it had rained heavily and the gravel had been washed into the travel lane from a hilly side street. I should have been aware of the possibility and been watching for it. Because I didn't expect it I was already in it before I realized the danger.
I've survived a car sideswiping me on the highway at speed and I've barely avoided deer a couple of times in my 30 years of riding, but that was the first time I've actually gone down on a bike. On the bright side it was probably one of the best learning experiences I've ever had and I'm a better rider today for it.
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