Last Saturday was first time I've ever seen a bike street crash

[fnfalman]

I've seen a lot of crash aftermaths but I've never seen anybody crash on the street before. Usually they've crashed and I would come upon them but I finally busted my cherry on that issue.

I took two guys from work riding this Saturday and after we've done with the twisties, getting ready to head home via the freeway, a group of three came up: 1 enduro (Honda?) and two Harleys. One of the Harley boys challenged my guy with the Street Rod for a drag and my guy was sensible enough to laugh it off and went on his merry way along with his riding partner. Well, I should have known better but I didn't. Not to mention that the Austrian Orange tends to make me behave naughtily.

So all four of us had a little drag race going. I gave'em all a head start just to make things interesting and as I passed Harley #1 tailing the pack and approaching Harley #2 with the Honda enduro leading the way, suddenly guy on Harley #2 decided to stomp on the rear brake and locked it up then let the brake out. The bike proceeded to high side threw him off to the left while it tumbled maybe three times to the right. I saw in slow motion the guy flying off to the left spread eagle and said to myself, "This is gonna be ugly." The guy had a chrome dome on, wifebeater, jeans and tennis shoes. Since that he was heading to the pavement face down, I expected the worst to happen, but amazingly enough he hit the pavement, bounced up and started rolling without his head even touching the ground. One of his shoes flew up about twenty feet in the air. I jammed on my brakes and trusted in the ABS, hoping to keep myself from running over his ass.

The enduro guy stopped, I stopped, but his other buddy on Harley #1 kept on going passed all of us. I looked in the mirror and amazingly enough, the guy popped up and started hobbling while the enduro guy ran back to prop up the bike. Since that he was up and running without anything broken, and the enduro guy had everything well in hand, I took off as well.

I'm sure that something significant must have broken off because you don't tumble a 800-lbs bike without bad things happening to the bike. But the guy seemed to have gotten away without much blood loss and serious wounding. I hope that he learned from his lesson and put on some proper gears next time.