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Gravity's Child
How does that nursery rhyme go? “Gravity’s Child has far to fall…?” I think it’s something like that. One thing’s for sure – no matter what you call them: get-offs, dirt naps, soil samples – my falls (and those of my friends) have all been educational. I’d even go so far as to say that falling has made me a better rider. I’m not ashamed to admit it: I’ve gotten quite good at falling off my motorcycle! I remember last year en route to Clayton Lake State Park ... (cue the foggy “remember when” music) … my buddy Danny and I were crossing the Atoka Wildlife Management Area, sliding through gravel turns like old pros and having a grand time raising a twin-plumed cloud of dust. Our plan was to find a dirt trail exiting south of the WMA to Hwy 43, which would lead us directly into Clayton, but try as we might, every attempt to forge to the south met with gated obstacles. Very aggravating! At one such gate, making a tight u-turn over uneven ground, Danny and his XR650L went krumpf! Those damn u-turns will bite you every time!
Like any good riding partner, I pulled out my camera and snapped photographic evidence. Danny was quick to let me know he thought I was “Number One” for taking pictures instead of helping him pick up his bike! Danny’s Honda was so distraught by the fall, that it wet itself. There was a large wet spot on the ground where the bike had gone down. I found this particularly funny because just the week before, Danny’s DR-Z400 had left a “piddle spot” in the parking lot at Lake Draper. See, when Danny arrived and saw that I had my camera out, he rode by me on one wheel (I actually missed that photo!), forgetting that he’d just mounted new tires. When he brought the bike back down and leaned to turn on the pavement, the front tire slipped out from under him and ... you guessed it ... Crash! Naturally, the parking lot was full of riders unloading their dirtbikes. Nothing like having an audience, eh Danny?
What did I learn at Danny’s expense? First, don’t let a camera interrupt your usual brain process. Yes, Danny’s always riding wheelies, but in this case he should have thought about scrubbing in that new tire first. And on rutted trails, keep your momentum up so that the gyroscopic effect of those wheels is working for you. I had a similar get-off on my F650GS Dakar last year in Arkansas. (Danny was even there to witness it!) While traversing what our ride leader called the “hero section,” I got all squirrelly after jumping a rather innocuous log. The trail was tight and rutted and I was out of control. Rather than stand up and throttle through it, I dropped a boot in search of the ground and found nothing but open air – same thing Danny had found while trying to make that u-turn. If you’ve done any offroad riding at all, I know you’ve been there, foot dangling in the breeze, bike slowly teetering toward that point of no return; then finally falling; then there’s that big smack! as the ground puts a whooping on you. While you’re laying there with your buddies snapping pictures, your first thought is usually, “I should have stayed on the pegs and motored through that.” Sometimes, a rider will succumb to the body-snatching abilities of the octopus. This is my term for those incidences when the rider’s feet leave the pegs and the legs flail to the sides, all akimbo, looking as if there are more than just two of them, vainly searching for some semblance of balance and control. After watching my friend Kay almost lose it in some mud just south of the Talimena Parkway at an F650 rally, I dubbed her “Octo Kay.” (Don’t worry, she has nicknames for me, too. What’s the good of having friends if you can’t pick on them?) She then lived up to that nickname on the Clayton ride, losing her balance on a branch-strewn stretch of single-track and allowing the octopus to seize control. I was quick with the camera that day, too!
On that same ride, my friend Connie (“Endo Connie” to the gang because of a fall that I, unfortunately, missed) met the octopus as she was crossing a slippery creek. In my photos, just before the fall, you can see that she’s not on the pegs. I learned from watching both of them: weight back, rump in the air, feet on the pegs. Ignore the fear that you’ve got twice as far to fall when you’re standing. Truth is: you won’t fall as often. Of course, even though I’m picking on my friends, it goes without saying that I’ve made those same goofs. Brian the Octopus. I have eight legs and I’m not afraid to use them! You heard it here. Then there are those educational opportunities resulting from getting in over your head. James Pratt took us off in search of virgin territory around Clayton. The trails were tight and we were traveling fast, but these were all experienced riders. I had left my overweight BMW back at camp and was riding Kay’s little TTR250. Eventually, we came upon the scene of a massacre (pronounced "mass-ah-cree" if you’re familiar with Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant”). A logging company had come through the pine forest chopping and chainsawing and wreaking mass destruction. Everything except the trunks of the trees was left in a great slurry of “pine tree afterbirth” (Danny’s expression for the mess). There were branches up to eight or nine inches in diameter strewn this way and that – easy enough to ride over if it’s all lying perpendicular across the trail, but this mess was scattered every which way. It was like riding through a deadfall or burn-pile. What made it even more difficult were the stumps hidden beneath the pine boughs. Some of these were as much as a foot high, and many of them were impossible to see. If I’d come across this mess on my BMW, it would have definitely been time to turn around! However, “turn around” isn’t in Pratt’s vocabulary. When he charged on through, everyone followed. Danny and I were bringing up the rear. I was right on his heels, chanting my mantra, “Momentum is my friend! Momentum is my friend!” trying to avoid all the stumps that I could see, lofting the front wheel over those that either couldn't be avoided or caught me by surprise. I was much too close to Danny. I think his strategy was different than mine. With the heavy XR, he was trying to pick his way through. I was doing the “Stand aside! I'm coming through!” do-or-die technique, well known to attract the octopus. Danny’s front wheel plunged down into a particularly deep pile of branches, and at least one branch decided it really liked that whole rotational motion thing – only problem is, a straight pine branch measuring five feet long doesn’t really travel well around a 21-inch rotational axis. Danny went down amidst a cloud of dust and pine cones. I slammed on my brakes and plowed to a halt, managing to keep from running him over by about two inches. He rose up out of the forensic evidence of the Great Pine Tree Massacre (remember to pronounce it correctly) with pine needles sticking out of his helmet and sap dripping from his nose, blinking at me like the possums I catch in the act of stealing my dog’s food from the back porch at night. Robbed of all momentum, my bike sank a foot deep into the branches, settling my feet amongst the ticks and chiggers and diamondback rattlers. “You okay?” I asked. (If I’d had a camera on me at the time, I assure you I would have been clicking away.) Danny’s response shall be edited for our younger readers. Essentially, he said he was just peachy keen. (Yeah ... right.) I would have helped him pick up his bike, but I was buried to my knees in branches; couldn’t even dismount. Somehow he got the bike vertical. I pointed out to him that several branches had taken up residence between his front wheel and fender. He dragged those out with an expletive or three, then remounted and got underway. Had he bothered to look back, he could have had a good chuckle at my expense. Stopped dead in its tracks, the TTR’s rear wheel just spun amongst the branches. I was grateful I hadn’t run over my friend (good travel companions are so hard to find, and I’ve just about trained Danny), but I’d lost my assistant, Mr. Momentum. Traction, I had none. I bounced on the pegs, using the suspension to try and lift the bike up on the branches. The wheel caught, spun some more, caught again. I sat back on the rear fender, yanked on the bars, and twisted the throttle to the Warp Factor Nine setting. The little 250 caught on something and launched, skipping over the Brush Pile from Hell. Something knocked me off my chosen path: a log, a stump, a lumberjack on his lunch break ... I dunno. The bike bounced this way, then that-a-way, then something caught the front end, twisted the bars out of my hands, and tossed me ass over tea-kettle. I had a vision of my body hanging impaled in a mad bird’s nest of jagged pine branches just before I landed on my back with a crunch!, crackle!, pop!, pine cones up my ass and scratches on my brand new Arai XD helmet. I’m not sure what I learned from that one … other than riding offroad is always entertaining. Of course, no one got pictures of that fall, so technically it never even happened. Nyah! While you might be thinking all this sounds great, but you don’t ride offroad, I can assure you that the reflexes, muscle-memory, and skills all translate to the other riding you do. I remember coming back from the Gulf Coast a year or two ago on my BMW. It was raining and I thought the roads had had plenty of time to wash off that initial layer of oil that rises to the surface. Apparently, something nasty had been spilled in this one curve. I felt my front end tuck – that nanosecond’s worth of handlebar twitch you get as the front wheel breaks traction and turns in, prefatory to washing out completely. Instinctively, without having to think about it, because the time it would have taken me to think would have been twice the time needed to put the bike and me on the ground, I counter-steered and shifted my weight back and to the outside peg while giving the bike a bit more throttle to lighten the front end and stand it up. If I’d braked or chopped the throttle or spent any time thinking about what to do, I would have experienced the dreaded asphalt dance. The bike still slid a yard or more on the wet pavement (a scary moment if ever there was one!) and I ran a bit wider in the curve than I’d planned, but I didn’t go down in a lowside crash. Feeling my front end wash out in dirt crafted those reflexes. Falling is what taught me how to keep it up on two wheels. Same goes for the rear end of my streetbike when it breaks traction. I know how to handle it because, as any dirtbiker will tell, you’re always sliding the rear tire of your dirtbike. So, don’t be afraid to get out and take a few soil samples. It will make you a better rider. And, if you’re lucky (unlucky?), your friends will get a few good photos out of it, too.
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