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Terminator gone wrong
Adrenalin, lack of attention and unusual attitudes make for an expensive start to the day. GUIDO explains…
You get far too much time to think in a crash. Mark Reed and I were rushing across town for an appointment. He was on a Triumph Scrambler and I on Mac the Valk, when muggins lost the front end while heeled over on a damp tram track. A dumb and basic mistake.
Mac weighs a claimed 350 kilos in dry form and I was shocked by how fast the front wheel fell out from under me. The good and bad thing about adrenalin is it kicks in very quickly. As the wheel went I thought, “No, not this bike, not now.” As the whole plot went from vertical to horizontal, it was, “Damn! Can’t we get it back?”
No, we couldn’t. Reed (who worked with me on a bike mag years ago), just a few metres behind, was equally confused. “I thought, ‘This is wrong. Guy doesn’t crash. Why’s he horizontal?’” he said.
The weird thing was that I was still very much in the seat, if not in control, as the bike skidded down the blacktop. Hands still on the bars, sitting in the saddle, but with the right side of Mac and the riding gear tearing along the tarmac. The thought of ejecting briefly crossed the mind, but there was clearly no point, as I wasn’t being hurt.
But as the brain continued to speed up thanks to Mr Adrenalin Gland, I started thinking, “Please stop sliding, this is getting expensive.” The shrieking of the steel crash bar (which was taking most of the damage), and the dull whistle of the softer bodywork was starting to get on my nerves.
We stopped. The engine was still running and there was fuel spilling out of the tank cap, so I hit the kill switch, hoping nothing would catch fire. I normally wouldn’t have this presence of mind, but suspect some of the flying training (which rightly talks a lot about fire) kicked in.
People came running from the pedestrian stop across the road, with weird mouth-open looks on their faces, to help. Though it only happened at low speed, the sight of Mac going down in a screeching heap would have looked dramatic. They stopped and ran away again as I slid out of the seat, and tipped the bike up to 45 degrees, on what remained of its crash bar, to stop the fuel leaking.
It was only afterwards that I realized that a large person dressed in black denim, with a reflective visor on the lid, who got up unhurt after what they saw as a major trauma was best avoided. I hadn’t turned to liquid metal and reformed into a new body, but suspect what they saw was far too close to scenes from the Terminator movie series for their comfort.
Reed and I got Mac righted and were off again well within two minutes, as we had a Pakistani General to meet. But that didn’t prevent some imbecile in a car from tooting his/her complaint that we briefly interrupted their progress to work. It’s lucky for the tooter that we had our hands full. By that stage we were capable of turning them and their shitbox inside-out.
I’m comprehensively cheesed off at making such a dumb mistake, but am a little grateful it was something I own (rather than a test bike) – even if it costs.
In any case, it’s far from being a disaster. Misses M & A jnr bought me a nice bottle of red to cheer me up, and the bike was repaired in a week.
The final turkey came home to roost when I made the blunder of referring to my little indiscretion as a dumb P-plater’s mistake. Ms A junior quickly put muggins in his place: “I’m a P-plater,“ she pointed out, “And I’m not the one who crashed!” People can be so unkind…
Pic: Mac, the day of the crash, with Major General Farooq Ahmed Kahn of Pakistan in the saddle. (It’s a long story…)
You’re always welcome to get in touch via the palatial Motorcycle Trader offices at locked bag 12, Oakleigh 3166; Or on the wire at guy.allen@traderclassifieds.com.au.
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