The first ride out on my new bike, 0 mph drop..makes me cry

[stuey2407]

The weather was fantastic at the weekend so I headed out for a short first ride on my first bike. Pulled up in a lay by to wait for my friend who was behind, came to a stop, turned around to wait for him and that's when it happened. I must have been off balance and in slow motion the bike laid down. I scuffed the wing mirror slightly and put a few small dents in the exhaust.

Everyone I have spoken to says it will happen at some point. I just didn't think it would be so soon. Needless to say I feel really disappointed in myself.

I don't think anything can be done about the damage to the exhaust. I am not sure if I could get a sticker or shield to cover the damage. I know I am going to look at it every time I take the bike out.

On the positive side I really enjoyed the ride

[CaNsA]

Dead? no? sliver linings and all that jazz

[Wafer_Thin_Ham]

At least you're not scared of dropped it anymore.

Everyone drops one bike at low speed.
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[trevor saxe-coburg-gotha]

Mate dropped mine last year up on the moors outside helmsley (side stand down w/ bike facing down hill) - an otherwise minty bike had a scratched genny casing, snapped clutch lever and bar end weight scarred. I was actually disproportionately saddened by it, and surprised myself quite a bit at how deeply I'd bought into all this "pride and joy" shit. After many years of not really giving a fuck about anything like that - material possession type stuff i.e. - I was a bit taken aback. And for weeks, maybe even months, the slight scuff on the casing seemed to be all I saw. Suffice to say I don't notice it now.
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Mobylette Type 50 ---> Raleigh Grifter ---> Neval Minsk 125

[Robster]

My plan: buy a busted up old SV that has been kindly dropped by previous owner = don't lose sleep over it

[Rogerborg]

Well, it's out of the way.

I dropped a work chumrade's brand new bike - I mean, he'd literally just rode it from the showroom - for him.

The first thing that went on my GS was crash bars. They'll come in handy when I tackle Mongolia.
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[stuey2407]

I think I am going to order some R&G bungs this week.

[Doovy]

[Polarbear]

[TwoWheelsDail...]

It happens, a few weeks ago i got off the bike thinking i had put the stand down.... turns out i hadn't, it fell in slow mo! luckly i managed to grab it before it actually hit the ground! I have been very careful since then.
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[Mark 37]

Three times.

1, going around a mini round about right outside a busy garage. The back wheel went over the edge of it (that white paint stuff). Arse end slid out. I was able to place the bike down rather than drop it.

2, on the centre stand outside our gate. Pushed the bike off the stand and it lurched to the right just as some female was driving by. Managed again to place the bike down but dually fell on top of it. lol turns out one side of the stand was on a 2" mound in the pavement. I didn't notice it.

3, sitting at a "T" junction and a large curtain side flew by at speed. I wasn't expecting the wind from it and the bike was blown over. Again managing to place it down.
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No matter how fast light travels, darkness was always their first.

[mailee]

Twice so far. First one at a junction, put foot down, too close to the gutter and stood on gravel, stopped it going down hard but forward rolled over it in the process! Second time stopping again, flipped the stand down with my foot.......oh no I hadn't, it had flipped up again, over it went in slow motion with me straddling it! Both times no damage just the mirror came loose....luckily.

[-Matt-]

As you say - everyone drops it at least once. Hopefully the disappointment of dropping it will make you extra careful to avoid it again (unless you get unlucky on gravel etc ).

Try to look at it as a little scratched exhaust has saved you potentially smashing expensive fairings in a future drop

[bamt]

[stuey2407]

And here's the dented exhaust. Hopefully the link works.

https://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c262/stuartmanton/Mobile%20Uploads/2014-03/7EFEF876-8D19-4E0A-B77B-CD0787A5BFA9_zpsdxznka7v.jpg

[Doovy]

[stuey2407]

[-Matt-]

[stuey2407]

[Llama-Farmer]

Just be grateful you didn't drop it while doing some of this

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/01/23/article-0-1169CB72000005DC-461_634x344.jpg

[deadwolf]

If you need some ideas for covering up those enormous dents Google has plenty of examples:

https://www.faildose.com/data/0/322.jpg

https://nerdnirvana.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/norris.jpg

Quite fancy the Norris one personally.
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[janner_10]

That subframe looks twisted too.
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Yamaha FZS600 (Now gone to heaven) > CBR600F4i (SOLD) > '99 YZF-R1

[Doovy]

[Teflon-Mike]

'98 IoM TT; they had just introduced the speed limits through the villages; R1 was debuting; last time Joey would ride the Island, AND.. the WETTEST fucking TT for two and a half decades!

Due to the weather, and the new speed limits; Mad Sunday got cancelled, they put warnings on the radio not to ride over the mountain, you couldn't see an outstretched hand in front of your own face in the fog up there; and they put plod out running rolling road-blocks. There were a lot of very disappointed, Germans with an extra day to live.

I left Bushy's at some stupid hour of the morning and returned to my camp-site. The V-Max contingent had taken over the back field; and when I got in the court-yard coffee shack was still serving curry to a contingent of Swedes sitting on beer kegs. Their club secretary had just arrived in the van; which apparently had been loaded with them at the brewery, and they were determined to make a party of it.

I was accosted by a Viking; "THAT!" He slurred in accented english "eezn't a MAAX?!" Astute of him, I thought. But, after avoiding running him over, as he squinted at my engine, he announced "Eeet Neeerlee u Veeee-Maax... id gort a Veeee!" pointing at my engine; which indeed was a V-four. And that was it; for the remainder of darkness, I was an honary V-Maxer, because I had a V-Four.

Dawn broke. I dont know why the Vikings were so pleased about thier transit van load of Lager; they spent most of the night knocking back Schnaps like it was going out of fashion; but, I had some-how managed to remain notionally sober.... and the weather lifted.

It was a beutiful, clear summers dawn. The wind had turned, and the mists were parting like curtains of silk, revealing lush green fields... and sodden Swedes.

I had an idea. I wanted to photography the entire TT course. It's thirty seven and a half miles. 35mm camera film, contains 'nominally' 36 frames per roll, BUT, you get a frame or so on the lead-in and lead-out, and can usually get 37 or 38 pictures on one.... "Photo a Mile?" the thought went... "Tempting".. so I set off into Douglass to find the grand-stands, for the first frame.

Quickly realised that one frame a mile, and I wouldn't get ALL the TT course in... there's too many corners, you cant see a mile of it from very many places... What the heck... I checked the tank bag... race week hadn't begun, so I still had most of the 30 films I had bought before I left! And decided to take a photo from the start line; note where the course left my frame, ride to that point on the track, take another, and so on, until I had worked my way round the entire course. This proved to be slow work.

But, it was a glorious morning, and there was hardly any traffic in sight; and I could enjoy, just looking at each section, taking my time to take it all in.

As the sun rose, bikes started to circulate, and the further round the course I got, more the sun came out, more bikes started tearing past me.

By about seven o'clock; I could no longer just STOP in the middle of the road; hold the camera up and snap from the saddle; for fear of being rear ended by a Gixxer, so I was pulling over to the side, dismounting, then darting into the middle of the road to get my pic.

About 1/3 of the way round; I pulled over onto the verge; put the kick-stand down, and started to clamber off. WOOPS... Verge was broken tarmac and gravel; VF1000 weighs as much as an Austin Mini... and as I lay the weight onto the side-stand, gravel broke out under the tarmac, and the bike tipped.

Off Balence, I tried to take the weight back up; slipped on the gravel, and as my leg went from under me.... so did the side stand!

If I wasn't red in the face dropping it.... I sure as fuck was trying to lift it back onto its wheels! Damn thing weighed over five hundred pounds 'Dry', before filling the five and a half gallon fuel tank, or adding full touring hard luggage and accessories! That was no 'lightweight'!

What's the damage? Well apart from a hernier and near coronary... quick inspection revealed not a lot more than a broken ball end on the clutch lever.

I took my photo; started the bike and moved on to take the next.... Why's the temperature guage shooting up? I pulled over... more carefully this time of the edge of the tarmac.

Closer inspection revealed a split radiator hose! Spot-Lamp bracket had banged in and sheared it like a knife! BUGGA!

Decided, If I didnt thrash it I could probably limp it back to Douglas where I could get a new hose.

I couldn't. Temp guage started rising rapidly, and notion to stop, let it cool down and then go again for a bit more till it got warm again, resulted in ever longer cooling stops, ever shorter riding hops, until I ended up stood having a fag next to a phone box, some where , I think a little way out of Hay-Mills.

"What the fuck am I DOING?!" I asked myself... "I've got an AA card in my pocket! Why dont I just phone them and let them push this fucking elephant round the TT course for me!" So I did.

It was about 9 in the morning by then, and the bikes were starting to flock, having missed the Mad-Sunday run the day before. What the heck... if Michael cant make it to the mountain..... I sat down and started watching the bikes go by.

Which was all well and good until about ten... when I did a quick fag count, and was running perilously low.

I called the AA to ask where they had got to; and was told that they were 'a bit busy'... they had a couple of chaps out, but they kept getting called away by the police to clear up crashes!

About an hour later.... Recovery truck passes me... Stops... backed up.

Chap jumps out, and calls over; I was apparently not 'his' job, but he spotted me, twice, knew that I'd been waiting for blumin hours, and decided he could squeeze me in with the wreckage he'd just picked up for the plod...

It was a Ducati... or had been... and he hadn't had to use his tie-down straps on it... it was in crisp-boxes and polythene sacks! So he reckoned he had space for me and mine. And started telling me all about the carnage he'd been sweeping up all morning.... "Mad Krouts" kept getting mentioned!

"Hey!, this dont look too bad!" he said as he came and tried lifting my bike onto his wagon..... it's weight was not mentioned... well not verbally.... his eye-brows just did an impression of a Salter-Scale needle.... "Err... dont suppose you could ride it up the ramp could you?" I looked at the ramp.... I have to admit... I WAS tempted! But in over drive he'd already darted off, and was unspooling a cable; "No matter, I can use the winch" he said, and carried on making conversation, telling me all about the Germans.

"Yeah; one I just did before that..."waving vaguely at plastic bag of Ducati-Scrap..."Must have been tramping... plod reckoned he was doing well over 140 when he left the road! Went right over the wall, landed in the field. Must have been thirty yards from the track where I picked up first bit of debris! Hey, this don't look too bad at all you know! Damage all on the other side? Had one like that about half eight..... got there just after the helicopter..... would have known it was crashed till you turned it round....."

I might point out at this point, the chap was a scouser, in verbal overdrive.... though he was quite sparing in his use of the word 'Mayte', I will admit.

Anyway, the rather one-sided conversation then, proceeded with variouse queries as to how seemingly unscathed my bike was, as he assessed its damage as it passed him on the winch, between anecdotes of the major carnage he had witnessed that morning, that eventually culminated, after tales of many high-speed crashes, mention of the helicopter, and bikes in incredibly mangled states and riders dead or nearly so, until he got to....

"So! Mad-Sunday... well, I know its not Mad Sunday, really; but, you'll be able to go home and tell every-one you binned it on the course on Mad Sunday, wontcha? So... how fast were' you going when you lost it?!"

THAT, right there, Mad-Sunday, TT course, came off and bent bike..... at a fucking stand still!

Having to admit THAT, was probably more embarrassing than actually just dropping the fucking thing!

It happens, even to the best of us.

One day, you'll be able to look back on it and chuckle.

How did the story end? Well I got to know V-Max's reasonably well And Sweedish Schnaps... well, stuck on a wet rock in the middle of the irish sea, in the pissing rain? There are worse ways to while away an afternoon without a motorbike!

And the post script? Going through my old film-photo's digitising the negatives.... I have about 80 photographs, now, utterly dissorganised and out of sequence, that DONT show even half the TT course that keep popping up, on my windows screen-saver to get people asking "Err... what's that of? Why did you take a picture of a bit of wall with a hay bale?!" Bringing back memories of the ONLY Sunny day that TT.... and I was sat on a stone wall waiting for an AA man!

You got to laugh.....
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[Doovy]

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