Crashes!
I’ve had a quite a few crashes and big “moments” during my motorcycling career, In fact I’m nearly into double figures on proper falloffs. When I was learning to ride a bike off road, I fell off more times than I can remember, however as they were all off road, I’m not counting them. My first proper crash was on my RD125. I was following some friends (who were all on bigger, faster bikes) down the local twisty when I ran wide on a sharp corner. I was attempting to take the corner faster than I had done before. However, my bottle went and when I ran wide onto the verge and hit a large rock. Next thing I was sliding down the middle of the road on my bum! The damage consisted of two bent wheels (from hitting the rock), scraped exhaust, bar and bikini fairing. My crash helmet was a write off, all star fractured at the back where I landed. I reckon that had I not been wearing a helmet, I would defiantly be dead. As it was the only injuries I sustained were a sore leg and a much dented ego. I was off the road for a week waiting for a new front wheel to arrive, and it was the worst week I had had for a while with nothing to do but mope over the bike.
Crash no.2 was on the RD350F. I was winging down another of my favourite roads in Stirlingshire when I came a cropper with a woman in a Mini. The road in question is quite narrow, only just wide enough for two cars to squeeze by each other. At a very sharp 90 degree bend the Mini came round the corner in the middle of the road. At the time I was about to peel into the corner and was forced to come on the brakes a bit harder. Unfortunately I came on the back brake a little too hard and low sided the bike. Worse though, as the bike came round, the back end hit the side of the Mini damaging the rear panels and light on the bike. Fortunately I walked away without a scratch. I was able to patch the bike up, but it always looked a bit tatty after that.
No.3 was the biggest I have ever had. It also happened to be my first crash on the track. It happened on one of my first outings on the valve. At the time the bike had an old powerbronze aftermarket fairing on, and the screen was totally opaque. We were at Knockhill and I think it was the first race of the day. I made a complete hash of the start and ended up well down the field. Annoyed with myself, I was giving it everything I had. Down the main straight I got right down behind the screen, but as it was opaque I couldn’t really see where I was going and missed my braking point for the corner at the end of the straight. This corner is called Duffus Dip and is the fastest corner on the track. I went into the corner way to quick and lost the front in a big way. The bike cart wheeled end over end into the tyre wall. I was alright until I hit the grass at which point I started rolling. Rolling at 80mph is not an experience I would care to repeat in a hurry, especially when the grass is full of ruts and holes from previous crashes! Some how I managed to escape with only a few pulled muscles in my neck and shoulder and a sea of bruises. The bike did not fare quite as well however. It was a mess. The forks were bent, the fairing was totally destroyed, one handlebar was snapped clean off, the rear of the frame was bent and the tailpiece was destroyed also. Whoops!
Next, I crashed the road bike again (RD 350F). This crash was really low speed but made a big mess. I was on a road I didn’t really know after dark and misread a bend. I ended up dumping it at really low speed but the bike slid on one side then flipped over and slid on the other. The bike looked really tatty after that! I myself walked away without as much as a scratch, courtesy of Swift made to measure leathers.
No. 5 was on the KR1S. I was racing at Knockhill at a British championship meeting and it was my first time out on the bike. The KR1S was one of the sweetest handling bikes of its time and when you rode it, it gave you tremendous confidence. To give you an idea how good it was, when going into a corner on the brakes, you could peel into the corner still on full brakes till the front end started to tuck in. It gave you so much warning that you had plenty time to let the brakes off and still save the slide. Wonderful! Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was starting to get a bit cocky on the brakes and had ended up on the grass a couple of times with the result that I failed to qualify for the final. We still got a race anyway and it was during this that disaster struck. I got away from the start about mid pack and started to work my way up. The track had been wet in the morning however a dry line had appeared come our race. Going into the hairpin I went to pass two other bikes in a rather over ambitious move. One of them was also trying to outbrake someone too. I may well have got away with it had the track been dry, but I was forced onto the wet part and as soon as I went on to it, down I went! Amazingly, considering I was doing about 70-80mph when I went down, there was little damage to the bike or myself. The bike just slid along on it side, and as a result the only damage was a scuffed fairing and a broken footrest hanger. The only damage I sustained was a few more scuffs on the leathers. I didn’t even damage my helmet!
On the same day as I crashed the KR1S, I also had a rather big “moment”. I think it may even have been the same race! The lights had gone green and I got away somewhere not near the front. The first corner at Knockhill is Duffus Dip, a fourth gear downhill right hander. My usual strategy at Knockhill is to try and pass a few people on the inside line at this first corner. Unfortunately the track was somewhat slipper than I had bargained for, and as soon as I hit the brakes the front wheel locked. I stayed on but there was no way I was making the corner. There was also the small problem of thirty other bikes going round the corner tightly bunched together. Looked like I was going to cause a major pileup! Unbelievably a gap appeared at the last moment that I was able to go through (phew!!!!) and onto the grass. I even managed to stay on.
The KR1S and I definitely didn’t go to well together as the next crash was on it too. My mate and I were up in the Isle of Skye doing a spot of rock climbing and we had riden up on our bikes. We were up for a week all told. At the end of the week, we set of for home and had gone just a few miles when disaster struck. I was leading and had just came round a bend when I was confronted by two horses coming the other way. Now my experience of horses is that they don’t like bikes at the best of times, so I always give them a wide berth, try and keep the engine revs as low as possible and turn the lights off (assuming its daylight of course!). the horses were still quite far away, so we had plenty of time to react and as it was a single track road, we were going slowly anyway. As we got closer, I recognised the horses as ones we had passed earlier in the week without trouble, so I was not too concerned about passing them again. I still did my usual low engine revs, light off etc, just to be safe. I was about 10 metres from the first horse when it decided that it didn’t like bikes after all. It reared up and tried to turn round throwing the rider from the saddle. I was forced to take to the verge, locked the front wheel up and ended up in the ditch on my bum. Luckily I was down to about 5-10mph when this happened so I just rolled into the ditch. It took me a couple of minutes to extricate myself from my rucksack and emerge from the ditch. This was to discover the second horse rider leading the two horses and the fallen rider away without as much as a glance in our direction. Fortunately my mate Graham had not got involved, so having made sure I was alright, he set off to see where the two riders went. My steering damper had got bent, so I had to remove that before I could go anywhere, but there was no other damage to the bike as luck would have it. I had the steering damper off by the time Graham returned, so the two of us set off to the croft where they had gone. I had noticed that the rider who had been thrown off was a young girl and has obviously hurt her leg and was crying, so was concerned that she was not badly hurt. The door of the house was opened by the other rider who was an older woman, possibly in her fifties. On asking if the girl was alright, I was told to go away. Somewhat puzzled, I then reminded her that by law the accident had to be reported to the police, and asked if I could use her phone in order to do so. “No!” was the answer. She even refused to give me her name. I was by now extremely miffed, so Graham and I headed down to the nearest phone box from where I phoned the local police station. When I gave the policeman the address the riders had gone to, he said to me “Ah yes, I know who that is. Did you notice if she smelt of drink?” Things were getting better by the minute!
We were asked to go to Portree police station to make a statement, so off we went. We were interviewed by a police woman who gave us a bit of a hard time. She accused us of driving far too fast with the inevitable results. She then asked to se what remained of the bike, as she had heard that it had been badly damaged in the crash. Out we went and the first bike she looked at was Graham’s. “Yes, it’s a bit of a mess isn’t it.” said she (Graham had my old RD350F). We then explained that Graham’s bike had not been involved in the accident, rather it was the completely undamaged KR1S that was next to it. When she saw it, her attitude changed totally. It had obviously become apparent that we had been telling the truth after all! Now it was all smiles and “I quite fancy a bike myself”. Oh well, alls well that ends well.