lionlady
Member
My friend and I had had a great weekend at Mountain Moxie 2016. I got comfortable with twisty riding, again, but still can’t keep up with her little Versys' flickability. We had a great ride on Saturday, got photo captured by BlindKenny.com (May 7). We got to hang out with gobs of lady and men riders, all in this AMAZING LODGE, The Switzerland Inn, in Spruce Pines, NC. The event included terrific speakers, orgasmically delicious food, shopping, and OMFG unbelievable roads. My friend and I have ridden thousands of miles together over the years, but very little of that travel has been on winding two-lane country roads.
I crashed my Rockster on our way home, when my assumptions of what she would do, didn't match what she actually did, during a legal pass on the Blue Ridge Parkway. My crash wasn’t a case of not being comfortable riding together. It was a case of not realizing we had different expectations for a specific situation. Each of us reacted as we thought was correct for what unfolded…
We had opted to take the BRP homeward, until we hit the closure at Roanoke, or got tired of it. My friend led, because I get stressed (yes, really), and she had her Garmin, which is better for routing. I didn't even bring my GPS, because Waze works so well for me... until you are out of cell tower range, I discovered.
Anyway, we were doing great. Having fun. The weather was perfect. Not too warm, mostly cloudy, but no rain. One must also understand that passing on the BRP is a challenge because of the winding road, with generally short sightlines. There are passing zones, but not a lot, and they tend to be conservative. Nevertheless, we didn't have to follow slow traffic for very long.
Background: When my husband, Chaz, and I are on roads like this, he usually leads... he'll choose the passing point, signal, move out, and accelerate past, with me sling-shotting quickly after him. If oncoming cars should appear, he'll twist harder to make sure he allows me room to follow/complete the pass. It is understood between us that once he pulls into the oncoming lane, he’s essentially committed both of us to the pass. She and I passed like this, all morning/afternoon (or so I assumed).
Until that last fateful attempt, we hadn't encountered opposing traffic so near to us, from around the next turn... I saw the oncoming cars, and being in “habit” passing mode, I twisted harder, but she didn't accelerate as I expected. I remember suddenly being right on her rear-end: A narrow-focus snapshot of the back of her red jacket, and reacting. I honestly don't remember what I decided to do. But it seems most likely that I simply jerked my bars left to avoid hitting her, which sent me across the left lane and down the steep embankment [grasstumblepaindark]. It happened so fast, she didn’t see a thing. She was focused on the “target” car which paced her briefly, then slowed to let her around. She thought I'd dropped behind the target car. But when she finally had a chance to pull off safely, the car behind her told her I'd gone off the road. She had to turn around and go back.
I'll heal. But my bike is totalled. There weren't any hard obstacles on the embankment for me to hit. My bike ended up nearly 40 feet from the edge of the road. It was a very steep slope. My BMW gear saved my flesh from being torn up by the rough cut brush. I suffered a broken right clavicle and hairline fracture to my left fibula at the ankle. I've got some spectacular bruises, and to add insult to injury, poison ivy from the on scene triage in the grass.
I crashed my Rockster on our way home, when my assumptions of what she would do, didn't match what she actually did, during a legal pass on the Blue Ridge Parkway. My crash wasn’t a case of not being comfortable riding together. It was a case of not realizing we had different expectations for a specific situation. Each of us reacted as we thought was correct for what unfolded…
We had opted to take the BRP homeward, until we hit the closure at Roanoke, or got tired of it. My friend led, because I get stressed (yes, really), and she had her Garmin, which is better for routing. I didn't even bring my GPS, because Waze works so well for me... until you are out of cell tower range, I discovered.
Anyway, we were doing great. Having fun. The weather was perfect. Not too warm, mostly cloudy, but no rain. One must also understand that passing on the BRP is a challenge because of the winding road, with generally short sightlines. There are passing zones, but not a lot, and they tend to be conservative. Nevertheless, we didn't have to follow slow traffic for very long.
Background: When my husband, Chaz, and I are on roads like this, he usually leads... he'll choose the passing point, signal, move out, and accelerate past, with me sling-shotting quickly after him. If oncoming cars should appear, he'll twist harder to make sure he allows me room to follow/complete the pass. It is understood between us that once he pulls into the oncoming lane, he’s essentially committed both of us to the pass. She and I passed like this, all morning/afternoon (or so I assumed).
Until that last fateful attempt, we hadn't encountered opposing traffic so near to us, from around the next turn... I saw the oncoming cars, and being in “habit” passing mode, I twisted harder, but she didn't accelerate as I expected. I remember suddenly being right on her rear-end: A narrow-focus snapshot of the back of her red jacket, and reacting. I honestly don't remember what I decided to do. But it seems most likely that I simply jerked my bars left to avoid hitting her, which sent me across the left lane and down the steep embankment [grasstumblepaindark]. It happened so fast, she didn’t see a thing. She was focused on the “target” car which paced her briefly, then slowed to let her around. She thought I'd dropped behind the target car. But when she finally had a chance to pull off safely, the car behind her told her I'd gone off the road. She had to turn around and go back.
I'll heal. But my bike is totalled. There weren't any hard obstacles on the embankment for me to hit. My bike ended up nearly 40 feet from the edge of the road. It was a very steep slope. My BMW gear saved my flesh from being torn up by the rough cut brush. I suffered a broken right clavicle and hairline fracture to my left fibula at the ankle. I've got some spectacular bruises, and to add insult to injury, poison ivy from the on scene triage in the grass.
