Just When I Thought I Was Safe ...

I've been on the other side of that equation.

Seventeen years old or so and driving my mother's car.  It was a sunny, early spring afternoon and I was on my way to pick her up from work.  I had to turn left off a main road into a neighborhood.  I was going east, no sun in my eyes, great visibility, traffic was light.   Nothing headed the other way at all.  So I swing into the turn lane and proceed to pull across the oncoming lane of traffic. 

BOOOOOOMMMM!!!

Dude on a motorcycle hits my right front fender, goes over the handlebars, bounces of the windscreen and tumbles 20 feet down the road off to my left.  I'd pulled right out in front of him.  Farked him up pretty good too even thought he was fully kitted out.

I swear that guy wasn't there.  I don't know if he pulled out fast from somewhere or what but I would have bet a week's wages he didn't come straight down the street.  I wasn't driving crazy.  I wasn't baked.  The circumstances were perfect as regards traffic, visibility, etc.  There's no reason I shouldn't have been able to spot this guy.  But I didn't.

Motorcycling is inherently dangerous even when the rider does everything right.  Sometimes *feces* just happens and when you're sitting loose on top of a few hundred pounds of cold, hard steel it can turn out bad. 

You guys must be thinking of this:



And thanks for wiping up the oil slick before you took those pictures.

Then don't make that mistake now. 

I test-rode a Magna years back, but I just didn't like the handling.  We had a Virago 250 as one of our teaching bikes; I rode it (along with all the other bikes in the class) and liked it.  But I prefer the sharper handling, lighter weight and more advanced technology of the sportbike/sport-touring genre.