Can't put a price on this!
I want another set now!!!

[ Sunday - September 26, 2015 ]

So my buddy Minh and myself decided that we've been sitting on the couch too much of late (figuratively speaking), so we decided to make it a day trip by heading out to Cerro Noreste.  All was fine until we make the left from Peace Valley road turn on Fraizer Mountain Park road.  That's when this weird sudden motion happened where I felt the left side of my helmet banging something. It was also very bright and the thought, "I think I just crashed!"  "Is this what it feels like to crash on the road?"  It almost felt like I was lying there for minutes but it was seconds.  Next thing I knew I pulled my left leg from underneath the bike, stopped the engine with the kill switch, grabbed the left side of the handle bar and heaved the bike up. "Wow!  That came up really easily."  The last time I dropped my bike, in the garage, I had a hard time picking up this monster.  How come it came up so easily this time around?  And RV was moving around us to continue on it's way.  I put the GSW on the kickstand, kicked the engine on, and quickly go the bike to the left side of the road.  "Are you OK?" repeated several times from my ride partner.  "Do you want to head back?" "Say what?!"  "Why head back?  We just started the ride."  "Are you OK" "I'm fine."  "I would hardly call that a crash."  There was no damage to the GSW at all other than a nick or two to the engine guard, and the very left bottom corner of the trunk.  As for me, it all happened so fast that all I can think was "I think I crashed."  My left bum is feeling a little something, but nothing serious.  My left knee and left foot didn't feel anything even though it was partly pinned under the bike.



The last time I crash was about 10 years ago when I took the F650GS off road and hit a sandy spot.  In that case I low sided.  In this case, my front wheel hit some soft gravel/sand that looked like tarmac and cause me to do a low side spin out.  Given that it was only in 20+ MPH, there was really no hard done.  All of the armor that comes with the Rally suit and all the gear I have on, made light of the situation.  If I had been a squimon, I think my left kneecap would have disappeared.  This gear is expensive but it did what it was suppose to do... protect me when I come off.  In this case, go down.  Like the low side 10 years ago, I didn't feel a thing on my left knee.  The armor was the CE level 2 and is now NP-2, kept me from sobbing like a little girl.  You can't put a price on this.  The next thoughts I had was, "I need to go spend some more money on another set of clothing.  Both the suit and the boots."  This shit is awesome.


Do I want a second suit because of this little rip?  Hardly.  I want a second suit because I'm
so please with the protection the current suit provides.  I regard this little rip as a badge
of honor.  I eventually hot glued the hole to prevent further shedding/shredding in the wash.


A close look at the little rip.  You can see the second layer of ballistic nylon underneath.  Under that is the NP-2 armor.


Last but not least... a picture of the left dirt cover bum.

I shrugged off the incident and stuck to the ride.  At first I was ever so slightly timmid, but everything went back to normal quickly.  Cerro Noreste is the beautiful ride that it always is.


Written on: March 30, 2016
Last modified: March 30, 2016