Motodisiac

I am fuming. I was driving to work today in traffic and saw a very disturbing thing. Going approximately 50 mph I pass a blue BMW 3 series coupe and see its driver … reading a news paper. Actually reading it and flipping pages. Also the driver has a blue tooth headset on and he is … talking on the phone. The traffic was not bumper to bumper. We were going at 40-50 mph. That is approximately 70 feet per second. 70 feet per second! A lot of things can go wrong on the road in a second. Is any driver capable of paying their attention to the road while reading and talking on the phone?

This got me thinking - what if a police officer sees this. Is this worth a citation? And if it is then is it a worse offense than say driving in a carpool lane while not having passengers in your vehicle. Ironically enough half a mile ahead there is a police cruiser sitting on a side of the freeway. Although inclined to pull over and ask the cop if I decided not to. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”.

I am still sort of fuming over what I saw. The driver of that BMW does not realize how many people lives (his own life included) he jeopardizes by doing what he was doing. And in my opinion this is one of the worst road offenses there is. I am almost positive that no one has actually gotten a ticket for reading while they are driving. May be our glorious highway patrol has to get their lazy asses moving on the road more frequently to spot these offenders. Oh wait. I forgot that siting on a side of the road with your radar on is a very important and complicated enough task. What was I thinking?

Still fuming …

Every day brings some excitement. Yesterday I saw flying broom. It was coming straight at me. I had to swerve hard to avoid hitting it. No, it wasn’t a part of witchcraft. I was riding to work and it fell out of someone’s truck at 80mph.

I’m amazed how naive and stupid people are about transporting objects in their vehicles. Some just throw stuff in the truck bed thinking it will stay there. Ever heard of turbulence, dumbass? How about losers who tie a matress to their roof with thin rope only to lose the damn thing on the freeway? The scariest one I have seen so far was the BASKETBALL HOOP together with the pole an the base falling out of a truck 30 yards in front of me. Another good one was one wheel steel garden cart, I was lucky enough to avoid it but the car next to me wasn’t, from the looks of the damage it was TOTALLED, even his airbags went off.

If for a car driver dangers like this present the possibitily of property damage, for motorcycle rider the outcome could be crashing hard or even death. That is why every time I see a car within my sights loaded with something that could potentially fall out, I stay as far as possible and prepare for evading action. This morning I barely missed 10 lbs sledgehammer laying in the fast lane. I’m glad it wasn’t flying.

Let me start out with a little flash back down the memory lane. Long time ago when Motodisiac and I became friends I was a certified scuba diver, he was a motorcycle rider. Some time went by. And what do you know - I own a motorcycle and he became a certified scuba diver.

Now that this little history lesson is over I can go on with my story. So Motodisiac and I were talking about riding safety the other day. And a good comparison with scuba diving came to mind. In scuba diving you don’t have to be 100 feet deep to get yourself in trouble. As a matter of fact you might encounter bigger issues even being slightly submerged. Comparably in riding you don’t have to be going at 80 mph to fall off your bike. Similarly the same way some divers brag about the maximum depth some riders share the maximum speed stories.

The bottom line is - do things within your limits, take things slow. This applies both to riding and diving. One will get more pleasure from an activity being relaxed and knowing that his skill set is unlikely to be pushed its limits. Bravado do get people killed.

Friday was marked by a celebrity motorcycle accident. Mr.George Clooney and his passenger known as Sara Larson (obviously a good looking young woman) were involved in a motorcycle accident in New Jersey. Per cops it is a “he said she said” sort of deal at this point. Clooney ended up having a broken rib, his female companion - a broken foot. Both were wearing helmets. More details on the story are here.

Lesson learned - be careful when riding. Anything can happen.

This morning on the way to work I waved to about 20 motorcyclists coming the opposite way and not ONE waved me back. Usually at least some wave, so this was quite unusual. For 50 miles I was waiting for a wave back but it never came. I was gutted, how come all of the sudden riders simply disregard my greetings? Is it my gear? Maybe my headlight is out so they can’t see me? Could they dislike by bike? What bike? I’m driving my freaking car! It wasn’t until I pulled off the freeway when I realised I was driving today. I hope I don’t start splitting lanes on the way back.

Last night I had to ride to Motodisiac’s house. We were going to install frame sliders for unfortunate cases of me going down (hopefully never) and replace rear brake pads on my bike. I had to ride approximately 10 miles on a relatively windy and pretty sloppy road. Being warned that turns could be really dangerous for a beginner rider like myself I set off on my journey. My first excursion to the zipcode other than mine.

First couple of turns made me really nervous. I began gripping hard on the bike handles. The road was making me increasingly conscious of how fragile my life was. Then suddenly 5 minutes into the ride I realized that it is scarier than my wild imagination had built it up to be. From that moment on my confidence level was steadily growing.

My ride home felt much better though I realized I were and am far from being a good rider. Obviously again the night brought out the worst in drivers. Pimped up Nissans and Hondas were flying by. Again some drivers wanted to beat me off the stop light. I had no inclinations to disappoint them in their endeavors.

After a lot of thinking, reading,weighing in different options and last but not least talking to my good friend Motodisiac I was brave enough to purchase my first motorcycle.
It is a 2005 Suzuki SV650S. From what I gather it is a very good beginner bike. Easy to handle, not a complete crotch rocket, good low end torque, reliable, good resale value. So all in all seems like with a “little” help of my friend Motodisiac I made a good choice. By the way little help implies answering my endless stupid questions, riding out to Santa Clarita to bring the bike back to my house, giving very helpful and money saving tips when shopping for motorcycle gear and much more.

In my own opinion (not even being close to expert) - the bike looks cool (you laugh but it was one of the important factors), it is comfortable to sit/ride on, it definitely has enough power for a beginner like me, it is not too heavy.

I had already stacked up on some riding gear (which I will go into details about in my later posts) and have ridden it around a little bit. Though feeling pretty confident I am yet to be allowed by to ride on freeways by my friend Motodisiac. As his previous post shows it is not that safe, especially for someone with little or no riding experience like me.

The sickness truly has no cure.

Motorcycles accidents happen. As someone who commutes 100 miles a day through the worst of Southern California traffic I see a lot of them. Motorcyclists know that sometimes one starts riding just a little too aggressive, a little too risky, a little too fast. From then on it’s just a matter of time before you get a ticket, crash, or see another motorcycle accident.

While riding back from work yesterday, I saw the latter. Luckly, it was one one of the easy ones, the rider was lucky to get away with possibly broken shoulder. When I pulled up, he was laying there by his bike waiting for ambulance to arrive. He was wearing full gear, his shiny but badly scratched Arai helmet on the ground. A scene like this immediately has an effect on you. I wasn’t the exception, the thoughts of the possibility of ME laying there rushed through my head. Needless to say, the rest of my way home was ridden in “grandmother” mode. Stay alert, wear your gear and learn from other people’s mistakes.

I think these pictures are pretty self-explanatory. Looks like they were scanned from some magazine.

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 Go ahead, ride without a helmet….

Even though it’s a little too late in the season, Rossi has finally cracked his string of bad luck and finished on the top of the box at today’s Portugese Grand Prix. It seemed really unusual seeing him so happy about winning, we got used to his domination over the last few years that it almost became a norm to see him on the podium. We all know that this year’s title is out of reach for him, so let’s cross our fingers and hope that next year his bike and tires will actually work and will allow him to show us what a fantactic racer he is, the GOAT.