Scavenger Hunting..How Not To Ride Your Motorcycle

The plan for Sunday was to get out a bit and do some Scavenger Hunting. The deadline is quickly approaching….being October 31st. My fellow MSR friends and I agreed: if the weather held, we’d get out and ride around town.

I awoke to gorgeous weather…so the day’s plans were set. There were three of us and the plan of attack was drawn up. We would head north up to Monument Hill for the cellular trees, then work our way south to the Colorado Springs city limits sign, the Statue of Liberty, The Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame, Garden of the Gods, Dakota Wall, then up to Old Colorado City for an art gallery, to Manitou for a fortune teller’s place, the locomotive. We would continue south for the World Arena, the limousine, hospital and finally, Culver’s for ice cream.

I know, I already have the Culver’s shot and don’t really need it….but the need for frozen custard was calling. Besides, I needed a shot with food for the fast food restaurant. Works for me.

I knew I should not have been riding yesterday; I just had a bad feeling of ju-ju when I climbed on the bike. First of all, it took me forever to find all my gear and I was not having my usual Zen moment with my bike. Still, my friends were waiting, so I headed out.

The first stop was out to Monument Hill. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of the cellular trees—they are cell towers disguised as trees. Most people do not pay much attention to the scenery of trees—and do not notice that there are a couple of really strange looking pine trees. Well, for the fact that these “trees” tower over the other trees….I would not have known they were out there.

We decided to take the back way up to Monument—up Highway 83. As we were working our way up, I spotted another weird looking tree and pointed it out to my partner. She agreed that it was a cellular tree and we decided to pull off there instead of figuring out how to make the pull over on I-25 shoulder interstate traffic. My other friend had an unpleasant on the side of the road shoulder incident. His bike was totaled out when a truck hit it. Thank goodness he and his friends were off the bike!!

However, that’s another story for another day.

As we are driving around looking for the tower, I got separated from my group. Somewhere along the line, I needed to make a U-turn in the middle of the street and proceeded to do so. I’ve made many slow U-turns with no problem. I guess that yesterday was my number. As I am in the middle of the turn, I notice that there is a lot of sand down. I automatically think slow down—no hand brake. So here I am—in the middle of a U-turn, looking at the ground (yikes!) and on my foot brake.

True to what I’ve been taught and my experience—the bike goes where you look. I didn’t have enough momentum to make the turn and over I went. I’m in the middle of the road with a downed bike and my friends are up the road a bit. I lay on the horn and wait. Finally, they turn around, see me, and run to help me.

I’m actually still on the bike because I refuse to lay it down. My saving grace is that I ride with my passenger pegs down. I don’t have my crash bar on my bike and when I’m highway riding, I’ll rest my foot on my rear peg. That rear peg was what the bike was resting on. So I’m holding the rest of the bike up to keep it going all the way over. I kill the motor and am thinking…………….grrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaatttttttt……

Saturday, one of my chapter friends dropped her bike. She was talking to another member and wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing and forgot to put her kickstand down. Of course, when she went to get off her bike…over it went. Her new road name is Kickstand. She wasn’t hurt, thank goodness. Well, except her ego, I suppose.

I’m thinking that if I keep having these incidents with sand, someone is going to come up with a new road name for me. Knowing the insanity of my friends…it won’t be pretty—LOL…

At any rate, I suffer no damage as well, thankfully for my rear peg. I often talk about taking them off since I don’t ride two up, but it looks like they will stay. My girlfriend looks at me and says “well, you need to ride with your passenger pegs down all the time”!!

It is all good. No damage with a drop, I had my friends to help me and we ended up with quite a few Scavenger Hunt pics. I’m still so far behind the leader, but it’s all good. It has been a fun experience and another day of stories to add as well as lessons learned. The rest of the day was uneventful...well, I had another near drop from having my bike where it wasn't supposed to be...but the shot was terrific!!! Pics to follow...

Yes, I do consciously look check to see if my stand is down…before I set the bike down.

Lessons learned..

Keep the Shiny Side Up!

~The Rainbow Wahine