Wild Motorcycle Tales By Walter F. Kern Here's a great story from Benjamin Bright. Got your own story? Send it to me. Physics, My Frienemy It was the end of one of those difficult days at the cabinet shop I worked at in Rosemount Minnesota. The shop was located in two buildings of a re-purposed World War Two ammunition manufacturing facility. It was dank and old. It still had the institutional feeling from the many "G" men that once worked there even though it was some sixty years after the war. It was opened near the end of the war and was only in operation for a little over a year. But on early mornings, when I was the only one there, I could still feel the many busy men in precisely pressed uniforms, holding cups of coffee, and going about their business with a sense of pride, honor, and duty. I have always loved woodworking, but the monotony of shaping the profiles of two hundred and thirty door panels is mind numbing. Watching that shiny shaper blade spinning round and round as my precious guitar-playing fingers passed time and time again, I just couldn't take any more. I was going home early. It was one of those hot and humid Midwestern summer days. A quick blast home on my Kawasaki Ninja 750 should do well to unravel my mind and cool my body. I was wearing shorts, tennis shoes, a leather jacket, and helmet. I have been riding many years, and a helmet has already saved my life. I lived in South St. Paul and used Highway 55 to zip between home and work. When you live in the city and commute to the suburbs, traffic is not usually a problem. On this afternoon, it was early, and Highway 55 was wide open. I opened the throttle to sixty-eight miles per hour, in a fifty-five zone, not wanting to pay a ticket for fifteen or more miles per hour over the posted speed limit. Everyone drives close to that speed anyway. I could feel myself unwinding. The stress and monotony were blowing away with the wind that I left behind me. My body was cooling, and it was sweet relief on such a muggy day. The sound of the wind soothed me. The engine sang its lullaby as I entered a long sweeping left-hand turn. Then I saw at a distance, the outline of a light bar sitting on top of a squad car. It was parked on top of an overpass and almost completely concealed by the concrete wall of the bridge. It was a speed trap. I was still a half mile or so away, and knowing from my best friend who is an officer how hard it is to pick up a motorcycle at a distance on a radar gun, I just rolled off the throttle and coasted down to fifty-five out of respect. I was sure I had seen him in time. After I had passed under the cop, I began looking to my right, checking the on-ramp just in case it was one of those always-by-the-book cops. Sure enough, he was coming down the ramp. My few minutes of relief from my job and heat were shattered. No worries, I thought. He probably just wants to run my tag and check my record which was pretty clean. I hadn't had a speeding ticket in over two years. Before he even turned on his lights, I was heading up the next off-ramp to park so that we would not be stopped on the shoulder of the road. As I slowly rolled up the ramp, I noticed that he had turned his lights on. I already knew he was coming after me. I stopped off to the side, shut down my bike, and removed my helmet. How much nicer could I be? He approached and asked if I knew why he pulled me over. I said, "I was going a little fast back there." He took my license and insurance and went back to his car. I thought for sure that I was going to get off with a warning; at worst, a ticket for five over. I had received several warnings in the two years since my last ticket. I was familiar with the drill. When he came back and gave me a ticket for the full thirteen over, I was internally pissed. I had done everything I could to make his job easy and safe. This jerk didn't even knock it down to ten over. Outwardly, I accepted the ticket and put my helmet back on. I rode down the ramp and up to the red stop light on top of the hill going down to the Mendota Bridge. I was the first one at the light on this six-lane section of Highway 55. As I sat there waiting for the light to change, my anger festered. If I had to pay this ticket, then I was going to do the speeding to make it worth it. I checked my mirrors and saw that the cop was not in line at the light. There was no place on the bridge for another speed trap, so when the light turned green, I was off like a racer, no time for wheelies. I wanted speed. I slid forward in the saddle, sliding the clutch out at seven thousand rpm, and launched. I feathered the clutch keeping the front wheel floating just above the concrete. There is a long wide right-hand turn as the highway descends to the bridge. I shifted to second keeping the throttle wide open with a quick quarter pull and release of the clutch and simultaneous hard kick up on the shifter. A split second later, I made another power shift into third. My Ninja has always had a clunky transmission. That is to say, it was clunky except when power shifting. When I shifted at full throttle, the Ninja left me wanting for nothing. It was smooth as greased lightening. This bike was built to be raced. Just after shifting into fourth I slid off the right side of the seat maintaining a tucked position and extending my right knee out into the wind in preparation for the approaching turn. I had raced around this corner and over this bridge countless times on my way home from work. I visually checked the corner for sand, cars, and other hazards. It was all clear. I did not check my speedometer as I passed through fifth and then into sixth gear. I entered the corner from the far left lane with the engine screaming still held wide open. I began the turn and crossed over the center lane and continued moving toward the far right lane. There is no need to check your mirrors when traveling at well over one hundred miles per hour. I kept the throttle pinned as I reached the apex of the turn and far right solid white line simultaneously. Then I hit the metal expansion joint where the road and bridge connect. In the far left lane, where I usually run around this corner at around one hundred miles per hour, the bridge joint is smooth and causes no problems. But in the far right lane, the joint is uneven. I don't remember ever taking this corner in the far right lane before. I will remember forever the one time I did. I was leaned over hard as I hit the expansion joint. First, the front jumped up and began to slide left. Then the back tire jumped up and began its slide at the same time the front tire regained its purchase on the concrete and came back to the right. I released my pissed-off-full-throttle grip and got my weight back on top of the bike before I slid out. At this point, braking was not an option as it would use up the last of my available traction guaranteeing that the bike would go down in a slide. This caused me to veer outside of my intended line through the corner and toward the concrete median wall. At this point, the bike began to squirm. All I could do was hold on. The front of the bike went left while the back of the bike was going right. Then the front of the bike went right while the back went left. I was a victim of physics. I leaned as far to the right as I dared, but in this uncontrollable state, I was drifting out farther and farther toward the median. I crossed the center lane with the bike wiggling. I was almost to the exit of the corner when I looked across to the left and saw that it was sand covered from the yellow line to the median wall. Once I hit that sand, there would be no other option except to hit the wall. I leaned hard to the right praying that I might get just a little more traction as I drifted out past the yellow line. Physics was my enemy. Then I felt the sand. I lost all traction, and the wall was only three feet away. I surrendered. I was going to hit the wall. All that I could do, I had done. Now I was the passenger and physics was the driver. You know I didn't die because dead men tell no tales. How and why I didn't die is as much a mystery to me as it will be to you. There are few moments in my life that I can say I was fully awake, fully in the present moment, when no other thought was in my mind, and I had no worries about the future or regrets from the past. I was in a perfect moment of Zen. I hit the wall in a full right lean, still in a racers tuck. I was leaning so low that all I could see was the wall and the sky above it. There was a huge crunch and bang as rubber and plastic impacted the concrete mass. I was thrown into the air, my head, now high above the wall. I was looking down into the face of a man in a gray sedan who was traveling in the fast lane on the other side of the wall. His eyes were like saucers, and his mouth was gaping. Part of me was suspended in time, living in that moment of perfect Zen forever. I expected to be slammed into the wall while my leg and left side were ground down to nothing. Yet here I was in the air, floating along pain-free, looking into the face of this surprised man. How curious. I looked back down the road on my side to discover that my bike was still underneath me. We must have been at least two feet off the ground. We landed in the center of the left lane on my side of the road a little sideways, but for the most part straight. The bike did a little squirm and straightened itself right up. I just sat there for a second. What the heck just happened? I looked down at the speedometer and saw I was still going one hundred and twenty-five. The handlebars didn't feel right, but I was riding still and was alive. I didn't touch the brakes until I coasted down to forty miles per hour, and then a light touch let me know they still worked. I took the next exit, which was mine, and slowly rode to my house. I parked the bike on the street, walked up to my porch, and just sat there for the next two hours feeling lucky to be alive and wondering what just happened. Eventually, I got up to inspect my bike. The triple clamps were twisted on the steering stem, and both forks were spewing oil. I put the bike behind the house and covered it. A few days later I purchased a set of fork seals, fork oil, and new brake pads to replace the fork oil soaked ones. I took the front wheel off and slid the fork tubes out. The tubes appeared to be straight as well as the front wheel. I loosened the triple clamps and straightened them. I pulled the outer dust seal on the forks and found that both inner fork seals and washers were tacoed and pushed halfway past the large circlip that retains them. I reassembled everything, and the bike rode fine. So what happened. All I know is that I hit the wall going really fast, was in the air, and landed back out on the road. This is what I think happened. The base of a lane dividing median is not ninety degrees vertical to the road. It is angled like a pyramid to deflect the force of an impact upward. Because I was leaning over so far and almost out of the turn, the suspension took most of the impact, evident in the tacoed fork seals. The only scraped and cracked plastic was on the bottom of the bike between the wheels where it hit the wall. I did slam my right knee into the tank hard enough to leave a nice bruise though, but I rode away without a scratch. I believe the front wheel hit the wall first throwing the bike into the air. Then the extreme centrifugal and gyroscopic forces created by the wheels spinning more than one hundred twenty-five miles per hour stabilized and righted the bike. Physics was my friend. I have wised up since this event. I do not intend to glorify this kind of mindless stupidity. I just wish to share an incredibly true story. As they say about pilots, there are old riders, and there are bold riders, but there are no old bold riders. It is only a matter of time before riding like I did in this story will kill you. Ride safe before it does. Just ask my friend, Ryan, R.I.P. -- Benjamin Bright
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© 2017 Walter F. Kern. All rights reserved.
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