Not recommended

We set out today for a nice ride. Got the bikes out, and Ronk. Ronk. Ronk. All that groveling on the floor under my bike was to no avail and the battery really is hosed.

So we decided to bump start it. Don got out a tow rope and tethered the bikes together. We got to the end of the “street” and I popped the clutch and nothing happened. So we turned around again and tried and again, nothing. So Don got me to try from third gear. At this point I crashed.

As far as we can tell it’s because I wasn’t steering directly after Don; I felt a distinct yank to the left before I toppled. I fell very hard, but didn’t hit my head. The bike scraped itself along for a few more feet, lost a mirror, bent the standard and compulsory foot peg, but otherwise remained unscathed.

In retrospect, jumper cables would have been better.

Shortly afterwards one of the workers at the storage place wandered by because for each and every stupid action there is an equal and opposite audience.

The holder/adjuster pinged off my bike. Actually, we may not need to get a new mirror because it remained intact and it’s just the bolt that holds it into this thing that broke.

I ripped my jacket sleeve.

The start of the second scrape is where I fell off. I figure that the long scrape is probably the foot peg, and the short one the mirror which pinged off when it hit. The saddlebags were flung off too, but having them saved things like the indicator, which is nice. The end of the scrape, which was caused most likely by the mirrorless stalk, is where the bike stopped. (We were going around 15-20 mph at the time.)

I am going to have a wonderful bruise. This is my forearm, folded back so that the hand is towards my face. It hurt a lot. The previously mentioned arnica gel really calmed that down. I also jarred my right wrist, most likely bruised my butt (I’ll spare you that image) and generally shook things up enough to go into minor, albeit brief, shock.

How was your day?