The streets where I live are well paved and clean for the most part. Anyway, I guess I got lazy about watching where I turn as I became fairly use to the smooth roads and like praticing my leans etc on turns with a great degree of confidence. Well last night I missed a turn and had to go back. I decided to turn into an empty lot and turn around. When entering the lot, I (as usual) leaned the bike down when all of the sudden the front wheel began to slip out from in front of me. I was not going that fast and had not fully leaned in when this started to happen so I was able to straighten up fast before I fell.

Somewhat perplexed as to why this happened I turned around to see a huge cluster of loose gravel. I don't know if I was more shocked that the cluster was so wide spread; or the fact that I did not see it or even bother to look. But it was enough of a scare to make me be more aware when turning from now on.

 

Good thing you didn't eat pavement for dinner. Thanks for the post. It's a solid reminder of the due diligence we need when riding and inherent risk involved with our Sport.

 

happend to me once but with my rear wheel. I guess you can say i drifted, crazy feeling...

 

You know, its amazing how many mishaps, and close calls happen at slower speeds. I think, primarily because our bikes seem easy to ride at speed, that we get a bit over confident in our own abilities, and the lower speed manuveurs remind of us of just how important the basic skills and techniques really are.

 

That's exactly why I've quickly become a lover of the track. I almost don't want to ride on roads anymore because of all the variables like this.

 

+1 Unfortunately everyone I know who rides aggressively on the street has crashed at some point...and in some cases pretty seriously. The more I ride the more I have toned it down on the street, after having gone down 3 times myself. It is unfortunately a very dangerous environment to ride in because of all the cages out there. We all need to be rrrrreal careful out there.

 

i have to say that i think socrates hit it right on the head. even if you ride the same area all the time, the one constant variable is the cage in the lane next to you, eating, talking on the phone, having a drink, kissing his wife, you just never know what they're bound to do. you, unlike them do not have that safety barrier, it's they're fender vs. your leg.