Cliffs at the bottom…
So I went up to Lake George for the weekend for the Fireman convention/parade. Well last night was the awards and it was only about 50yards down the road so I just threw my helmet on and left my shorts/sneakers/t-shirt on since it was such a short ride. We ended up taking 3rd place and so on the way home its a little tradition that as we drive up the hotel driveway past the rest of our crew that stayed back (a couple different firehouses stay at the same hotel and we set up a big tent, keg, etc for a good party) we do what we can to make noise to let them know we “won”. Well being I have the HR1 on the bike, and its quite the noise-maker, I got right behind one of the chiefs trucks and kept the RPM’s around 12k and honked the horn. Well thats when the real squidding happened… lol. Not wearing gloves mixed with sweaty hands from the heat was a recipe for disaster. Right around 12k or so the clutch slipped right out of my fingers and the front tire immediately went to about 11o’clock. Now for those who have read my posts in the past know that I am more of a cruiser biker on a rocket. I really have no desire for wheelies or hitting heavy twisties or doing 150+. I enjoy riding for the free feeling of the open air… so this was the first time that front tire has ever come off the ground. Needless to say I had to change my underwear back at the room… lol. Luckily my foot was covering the rear brake b/c I was directly behind the truck (within about 5ft or so) and we were stopping b/c as soon as the tire came up I hit the rear brake, pulled the clutch and pretty much slammed the front end back down as quick as could. Then as soon as it hit I grabbed a ton of front brake and managed to not slam into the back of the truck. The people sitting in the back of the truck went nuts, but me not so much. It was by far the scariest damn thing I’ve done so far on the bike… and of course it just had to happen on the one and only time I didn’t have full gear. I managed to keep the bike up and never went down but it got damn close. One of the girls in the truck thought for sure I hit the tail on the ground but there doesn’t appear to be any damage so I must have just gotten really close.
Cliffs:
- Went to fireman convention
- Took the bike 50 yards down the road for awards with full “squid” gear on (aka none other than a helmet)
- Took 3rd place and came back to hotel to make some noise
- 12k rpm on the R6 + clutch slipping out of sweaty hands = needing to change underwear.