Motorcycle Views

Wild Motorcycle Tales

Here's a great story from Jimmy Presley. Got your own story? Send it to me.

You Take the Highside and I'll Take the Lowside

Re-entering the world of motorcycles after an extended absence while raising a family has been a pleasurable experience for me. The bikes are bigger, faster, better, but that's not the best part. Information! You can learn anything and everything now.

When I was growing up, you had to ride 40 miles to Memphis TN to get a brochure about motorcycles at the dealer. Don't bother asking questions, because in those days kids didn't have any money and therefore didn't need any information. We learned from asking older guys with bikes and got a lot of bad information that way, and we learned in the school of hard knocks.

In my younger days, the term low siding or high siding a bike were unknown to us. You just wrecked!

I gained some valuable information one Saturday morning when riding over to a friend's house. As I approached his place, I saw a group of our friends standing in the yard watching me drive up. I also spotted a plastic garbage can lid lying in the street. I had a thought. Wouldn't it be cool if I locked the back wheel up on that garbage can lid and slid around sideways as I stopped?

It sounded good in theory, but as I put the plan into action something went awry. I had miscalculated the speed of the bike and frictional coefficient of the plastic material against the grain of the asphalt.

In other words, I busted it on both sides. Low side, High side, what's the big deal? I hurt on both sides. -- Jimmy Presley

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