The beginning...

Six broken bones, a grazed calf, cuts to my hand, ruined riding gear and a trashed bike marks out the 5th of September 2009 as a pretty bad day for me. The day started out without much to note, but that in itself was fairly odd. My weekends normally have an element of running around like a headless chicken, either working in my voluntary job, visiting my girlfriend or visiting my mother but this weekend I’d somehow managed to not book anything. The following weekend was to be my busy time.

I had nothing much planned but the weather was ok and on the way up to Morrisons for come groceries I came across a cluster of white obviously ex-police Honda Pan European ST1100P’s on the highstreet, the whiteknights were in town fundraising. Me being a sucker for bikes and voluntary organisations I had to go over and see what it was all about, spending a good twenty minutes standing there and chatting made me think about my poor little bike sat outside that works hard for me during the week delivering me too and from Leeds without fuss.

Back in the safety of my place the laptop came out, I fired up the internet and started the usual drag through facebook, twitter, international2cvfriends etc. when it hit me. “It’s sunny outside, I use my motorbike as a tool but I rarely get to take it out and not go anywhere but ride.” What an idiot! So I left a facebook status along those lines and got kitted up.

Leaving Morley I was trying to tell myself I’m not heading anywhere but I knew full well I was heading towards squires milk bar near sherben. I wasn’t in a hurry, there’s no need to be, I was just bumbling along trying to keep out of the way of cars that can’t see motorbikes.

Riding through Swillington nothing remarkable was happening, I’d ridden this road many times and I knew it got a bit clearer further ahead. Ah yes this is it, you go past here and it opens out into national speed limit. I begin to wind the throttle open from 30mph to what I believe was about 60mph. The next bit is a bit of a blur and if I’m honest it feels a bit uncomfortable talking about it;

I wasn’t really aware of it but the bike had gone into a ‘tank slapper’, that is the front wheel had decided to emulate that of a shopping trolley and was flapping from side to side. The first thing I was aware of really was bouncing down the road. “This can’t be happening, this must be a dream” I couldn’t accept that I was sliding along the ground. I’d been here before but this was the wrong timing.