Holy cow, man…

I knew it was possible, but I didn’t think it would really happen. I mean, I had felt the bike lean before, but…

So we head out from our friends’ house where we had dinner, and cruise towards the “ring road” that semi-encircles Kiev. It’s a beautiful summer evening, probably around 22°C for the ride home. We were wearing our leather jackets, helmets, and both of us had pants on… thankfully. And as always, I was wearing my trusty steel-toed BMW boots.

The road we were on was large (blue arrow below, heading North), with 3-4 lanes on each side, including a divider. The road we were turning onto was perpendicular to ours, and it involved an overpass — and thus, the transition was anything but normal. Have a look at the schematic I whipped out…

-

So you can see the unusual transition to the crossing boulevard. Instead of the usual semi-smooth curvy transition, it was a triple curve. To be honest, I had ridden this transition before, and I knew about the triple curve. Perhaps that is why I thought I might take it a little faster than the first time.

Perhaps I could enlarge the diagram so you can really see what’s going on:

The large arrow on the right points to the POINT OF CONTACT. Yes, we hit the wall. OK, I suppose HIT is not entirely accurate — let me explain.

The first curve off of the main street was taken at a fairly standard speed and acceleration was nothing out of the ordinary. Then, I remembered how fun this “S” turn was, and kept my speed up (heading to the right, in the diagram) as I approached the first (lower) part of the S. Needless to say, I love speed and consider myself a wannabe race car driver / motorcycle racer, and I kept the bike a bit wide as I entered the turn, and proceeded to cut across the apex of the curve, just like Laguna-Seca.

I was intentionally keeping the car behind us from passing, by controlling the lane(s). Otherwise he would have made us slow down while he passed, etc…

So my speed was up (probably only about 25-30 km/h) as I approached the final curve. Somewhere around the yellow “X” in the diagram… Oh, did I mention it was pitch black outside?… around the yellow “X” I felt a very unusual thing. Everything was leaning a bit too far left, as if the whole world was being tilted under my tires. What the ???

Almost instantaneously I realized it was not the earth that was tilting, but it was the Dnepr MT-11 under our butts. Thankfully I’ve ridden enough, both on dirt and pavement, to know that I was going down unless I corrected the steering immediately. The caveat was that I was IN a turn, heading to the right at about 25 km/h — but in order to set the motorcycle back on 3 wheels, I was required to turn the handlebars to the left. Within about a millisecond I had made the choice. If I did not turn, we were road-rash hamburger and the bike was smashing us against the ground, flipping over, and probably landing on top of us. And I hate breaking bones. So, I decided against this, and opted for turning the handlebars.

However, as noted in the diagram above (shown in red), there was a 4-5 meter high solid concrete retaining wall directly in front of us. Remember, the road we were getting onto was an overpass! So turning the handlebars meant turning INTO THE WALL.

Alas, I had no choice. Another millisecond had passed…

I turned the wheel, set the sidecar back on it’s wheel, and headed towards the wall. Needless to say, I squeezed the drum brakes as hard as I could, but they were not going to stop us — no way, no how. I used the curb at the base of the wall (which stuck out from the wall by about a foot and was about 6 inches high) as a shock-absorbing pseudo-wall, just as I turned the wheel back to the right.

Indeed we hit the curb pretty hard (thankfully no real damage there).
And amazingly, with the coincident turn of the handlebars to the right, the the curb helped set us back on track — but it was not before a “ssssccccrrrrraaaaaapppppppeeeee” could be heard from my cowling that sits atop my left cylinder.

Unbelievable. A scrape on a piece of metal was all that touched the actual wall — and although it sounded quite loud and nasty at the time, the damage was practically unnoticeable.

My heart was beating around 200, and my wife started screaming at me to stop acting like a race car driver. (oh, and she punched me a couple of times). I’m sure the car behind me got a good look at the whole episode.

Anyhow, we pulled over and assessed what had happened. No damage. No death or destruction. No slamming into the daunting vertical overpass concrete uncompromising wall.

We proceeded home, and I was giggling to myself in my own helmet (not letting my wife see my grin). Once again, I just got lucky (but I also thank my quick reflexes — they’ve saved me once before — but that’s for another post). No, this was not intentional, and not even reckless as far as I’m concerned. I just pushed the limits of the motorcycle (admittedly, perhaps, just a bit beyond what I should have) — but as all riders (and many drivers) know, knowing the limits of your vehicle is imperative to knowing how to stay safe. A bit ironic I suppose… maybe even hypocritical. That being said, I’ve since abided all safety standards

Normally I tell my fellow motorcycle riders to keep it on 2-wheels. I’m gonna start saying 3-wheels now!!!