Gawd, Lucky I'm not going to be embarrassed about it as the cat seems to be out of the bag! Whilst I'm happy to do the "personal responsibility" thing on it "tragedy" is a bit of an overstatement - right pain in the ring is closer to the mark!
Damien kindly dropped the keys off this morning, I had expected to go pick the bike up this arvo but spent all day in John Hunter waiting for an x-ray review on my left wrist which I actually seem to have injured picking that beautiful bike up off the very wet road. Then I felt a bit feint afterward (which lasted about 15 mins into the trip to hospital - then I was wishing I hadn't left the scene!). However it seems I have got a hairline crack in the left arm bone right at the joint so I've wound up immobilised with a cast on for 6 weeks - so I will have to wait to get the bike until tomorrow (with the aid of a forklift it seems).
Surprisingly no more other-body-parts injuries turned up today, and the bruised groin from bouncing off the tank got better not worse - even the wrist feels a lot better. So, how about some pictures guys? Chris? Jamie? Ted? Tony? - Damien tells me phones were clicking and the pics exist - so then people can laugh with me (or, sigh, at me!) after escaping nearly unscathed from this close call. I must admit I am a bit shaken about how bizarrely easily the prang happened, particularly given how we had seen a fair bit of wet tar before during the day without a problem (but we didn't get rained on all day), so I am probably not going to dash out in "replacement mode" in a hurry. In fact the idea of building up an ST4S "race special" for when the local track opens presumably later this year is feeling like a good idea right at the moment as this is not my first road incident, but it needs to be my last....!!!!!
The guts of the prang, for those that want the grizzly details, is that I was 1.3km from and heading to Patonga. Going fairly slowly into a left hander and the front slipped a little, can't say that has happened to me on the Duke in 8 years (without an obvious hazard like sticks / rocks being present anyway). I grabbed control back but I was now on an opening radius at the wrong lean angle on a road my brain said it couldn't simply tip the bike over to recover fully as we had just slipped at a fairly minor lean angle. OK, this meant maybe 20m on the wrong side of the road as it came back in gently, shouldn't be a problem (those that know me know I NEVER EVER cut corners / cross centrelines, change lanes without blinkers, etc as to me this is somewhere between sloppy and grossly irresponsible riding as it means you do not have the capacity to ride the motorcycle in the manner selected!). Well of course just as I crossed the centreline a mighty fine Commodore came into view and I figured I probably wouldn't get back in time - there was about a 2m gap between the car and his side armco which I headed for momentarily - then the brain said "NO", all that will happen is I will get there as the driver panics and turns away from the oncoming bike, crushing me in the process. So I made a valiant effort to make what was now an even tighter turn to get back to my side - and failed miserably!
This lead to the Commodore being Chuck Norris kicked into next week by Bologna's finest, which didn't look the best for the head butting effort either but at least it didn't dump all its oil and water on the road like the car did, the technical term of course is that the car s..t itself! (um, but the bike had a "Not-Happy-Jan" hissy fit about having its way impeded too, so it kinda exploded - but at least it didn't cry like a girl and wet itself!). For my navigational error I was rewarded by being unceremoniously tipped onto the bonnet, smashed the windscreen but didn't go through it, rolled up over the roof smashing the sunroof, and trickled down next to the front passenger's door. A quick check and I'm on my feet walking round to the driver's side and apologising for wrecking his/their day. Looked at the car and thought "gawd that's gotta hurt when the adrenaline wears off" - already well aware that the tank had nudged me a little too uncomfortably "down there". Of course my fellow riders are parking by now while I am picking up debris (tools everywhere), and parking was a bit tricky as this section of road was cut in against a cliff with armco on the other side and barely enough room for the edge line, let alone to get anything out of the way, so they did a magnificent job of managing single lane traffic round a blind corner (thanks guys). And, most thoughtfully, they also refrained from laughing / taking the mickey out of me - at least until out of earshot (again, thanks guys!).
The gentleman driving the Holden was most decent about the whole thing, along with his good wife who unleashed her best mothering skills on me (which intermittently lead me to being the recipient of a well deserved scolding when I got too cheeky). As it turned out the driver "got it" and knew I was thinking of going round him so was actually pulling in to give me more room as I struck him, so he was the 1 in 30 that such a manoeuver would have been OK - hindsight, great ain't it eh? - them's the breaks! At least his kids had a cool story to tell their friends and everybody was very good about this annoying inconvenience I had created.
I looked at all my riding gear today, no obvious tears and not a mark on the helmet - which matches my knowledge of it as I basically pirouetted around my head without it actually striking anything. I do remember a really close view of the bonnet but - it was dark blue!
The below is what I've got by way of photos plus some from Scott showing where I didn't get to, what have you got? So we can all marvel about what a crazy / lucky-for-some world this can be.
