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Possibly a new crazy topic

  • Thread starter Thread starter Anonymous
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Anonymous

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I was just thinking about all the crazy stories about bugs, bee stings, driving under bridges into 3 feet deep puddles and the like. What we seem to be missing in this collection are stories of snow related mishaps. Is it possible that cold weather has cooled the sense of humor in Europe and the northern countries of the world???
 
The dreaded refreeze

The dreaded refreeze

Maybe less crashing and more just plain old coping with the weather.
I was living in an apartment a mere two miles or so from work so the bike commute was quite pleasant. After three years of commuting year round, and your bike is your ONLY source of transportation you come to appreciate dressing correctly for the weather.
The snow is quite the ...so called wet blanket...not wanting to ride.
During one blustery winter I had a hair up my *** wanting to ride ....regardless. So one one day with some four inches or so melting away in the morning ,I struck out...on to work. Weaving from wet patch to patch(The tire tracks). After the day would end I figured it would all be gone & dry..........not quite. Didn't figure on the refreeze that occured maybe at three or so in the afternoon......two hours before I was to go home. I didn't want to leave the machine at my workplace, that would have been tacky ....unmacho, etc.

The temp was perhaps now in the high twenties as I delicately motored home. The 'tracks' were indeed dry but the intervening snow had that distinctive hard crunch sound as I switched from side to side....frozen solid!
All was well until I arrived at my complex parking lot.
The driveway was a ninety degree right off the main drag and a decent grade for perhaps fifty feet. ALL a sheet of ice, no dry spots
I had perhaps seven to ten miles an hour as I cranked it around the turn heading uphill(I was commited!) seeing the ice and noting my low speed and the sheen of the ice I put both feet down jamming the sides of my shins against the pegs trying to make a four point vehicle.
Must have been quite the sight as I fed the clutch out turning the rear tire and getting all crossed up as I made headway up the hill locked into my machine not wanting to disturb my "four point".
Rick...........
 
One of my worst rides home happened a couple of years ago.

I got up checked outside and could see stars from my house in Jemez Springs. The temperature was in the high 20?s so I decided to ride the bike into work. I left my house at about 5:00 am and headed into work. I live in a valley and cross the mountain to get to work in Los Alamos. I live at 6000 ft and reach about 9000 ft on my commute before dropping down into Los Alamos at about 7200 ft.

The ride in was pretty cold as the temperature drops in the higher elevations. I made it into work in about an hour for the 45-mile ride. I got busy and later looked at the time and it was about 8:15 and no one else had showed up. I walked up to the front of the building to look out and see if anyone was around. What I saw was about a foot of snow on the ground and big fluffy flakes coming down. I checked the weather on my computer and saw that there was a storm warning it looked like the storm was going to get a lot worse so I signed out on vacation and started home.

The first 5 miles weren?t bad riding on fresh snow but then I came to the hairpin turns leaving Los Alamos and starting the climb up the mountain. The road looked glassy as most of the snow had been blown off or run off by traffic. I started up through the curves trying to stay an what snow there was and had no problems getting up the hill other than dodging around a car that was coming down and sliding sideways in my lane.

I had a couple of pickups behind me and decided to pull off on a turnout and let the get around me as I was riding pretty slowly trying to make use of whatever traction I could find. I stopped let the trucks go and then tried to start up again and promptly dropped the bike. :oops: I was on a sheet of ice covered with about a ? inch of snow. I couldn?t pick up the bike because every time I started to lift it my feet would shoot out from under me. A guy in a pickup stopped and helped me get the bike up but I couldn?t get it going up the hill, I just couldn?t get enough traction to get started.

A little later a sand truck came by and sanded the hill. I walked the bike onto the sand and then started up the hill. I crept along fine for the next few miles then came to a hill that descended to a hairpin curve and up the next hill. The road looked just like glass. The bike I was riding was a Honda V-65 Sabre with a 32-? inch seat height. I could only reach the ground with on foot or the other. So I stood up on the pegs and eased the bike down the hill and around the curve. At the beginning of the curve there was a couple on inches of snow close to the edge of the road so I rode in the snow for better traction and was headed up the other side of the curve when I dropped my front wheel of the edge of the pavement and the bike followed. There was about a 3 in drop at the edge of the pavement and I couldn?t get enough traction to get the bike to hop back up onto the road.

I stopped and caught my breath and then started trying to walk the bike backwards down the hill to a spot where I could get it back up on the road. It was about then that the State patrol came by and informed me that the road was closed and asked if I wanted them to call a tow truck. I told them to give me another hour to see I could get the bike back on the road and ride it out. About 15 minutes after the State Police had left I had backed the Bike down to where I only needed to get the rear wheel over a 1-inch lip to be back on the road. A pickup stopped the driver said he had gotten stuck and had to jack his pickup up to put chains on and that was why he was still on the road. He helped me get the bike back on the road and pointed across the road towards some chop ice. I got started got onto the chop ice and road the bike up the hill. The pickup followed me until I pulled over at a turnout above a series of S-turns that were usually the worst part of the road during the winter. I stopped to take a brake and there was a large Bounder RV parked in the same turn out. They invited me in to warm up. At this point my jeans were soaked above my chaps and I was pretty cold.

I talked to the guys in the RV for about half an hour, had a cup of coffee and they decided they couldn?t make it across they way I had just come. So we started down the chute which wasn?t as bad as I thought it would be because it had 3 or 4 inches of new snow over the ice. I made it down the chute with no trouble and then started getting into patches of snow and ice mixed with wet road. Seven miles later I came to where the road was closed and after the road block the road was mostly just wet and in 20 more miles I was home but it had taken 3 ? hours to make the hour ride home.

I had been caught in snowstorms and ridden home before but this was the only time I had ridden on this much ice. Overall I was really impressed with how well the Sabre handled the conditions. I had put about 80,000 mile on the bike at this point so I had a good feel for how it handled which added to my confidence that I could ride it out. I wonder how my GS750 will do in similar situations.
:?
 
That was a good story mike and richard. I really enjoyed reading both and im with rick romero. When i lived in new york, I never rode the bike in winter. I was fortunate not to have to.
 
Scotty I really don't mind the colder weather really, it makes me appreciate the warm more and gives me time to work on the bikes. I just started my four week countdown for riding season anyway! I always try to get on the road by April 1st! No foolin! 8)
GY
 
Come on guys I've already been out a few times, and am going out tomorrow.
 
Come on guys I've already been out a few times, and am going out tomorrow
Click to expand...

Aw Gee, quit rubbing it in. :cry: :oops:

I putting them back together as fast as I can!!!!

Having a cold barn doesn't exactly help. 8O :x :oops:
 
I'm not saying that we got a lot of snow in Connecticut this year but I have a friend in Anchorage Alaska and he told me they got 36 inches of snow so far! And we got 41 inches!!! I'm going out and build me an igloo!
:? GY
 
Never had to deal with snow after all I live in Calif. Close as I have come was having snow on the ground going thru Tioga Pass on the way to Yosemety National Park 12k ft in the middle of summer :lol:
 
Our CMA Chapter in Albuquerque always has a New Years Day ride each year. If the weathers bad some of the city types don't make it but most all of us from North of Albuquerque or the East Mountains do.

This year for me it was about 19 degrees when I left home. The roads were clear except for some small patches of ice. It warmed up to the high 30's that day.

I had friends ride through a couple of feet of snow and ice to make it in from Moriarity, Edgewood and Tijeras.

It was a good ride. :)
 
Mike, y'all are nuts! I rode through the winter in Seattle in '79. Went about 70 miles one way to work. As well as I can remember, there were about a week of snow/ice days and another coupla' weeks of cold days...That cured me of wanting to do that and I didn't do it voluntarily...only had a bike at the time. And y'all do it on purpose!! Whew!
 
This one isnt about the weather, but it happened to my dad on his Vulcan 1500 about a year ago, he was headed to Texas from North Carolina, and somewhere in Arkansas he went under a bridge where he saw a couple of kids leaning over the edge.. Good thing he saw them for he was able to dodge the brick that they dropped as he went under them.. He said it scared the hell out of him.. the thought of hitting a brick at 70 MPH was damn near enough to make him change his pants.
He pulled around caught the kids and drug them to their dad by their ears.. SCARY!
I am a newbie to bikes, and I couldnt imagine..
C-ya
Tom
 
heres a short weather related miss hap.

heres a short weather related miss hap.

being a newbie to bikes and all...

i was ridin home from my parents place. there was one cloud in the sky, which OF COURSE rained on me, i was like.. this sucks dammit. but anyways... kept goin.. as soon as i ran outta gas it started to rain harder. thank god for cell phones. i had to call 'mommy' and have her bring me some gas :)

honestly, i coulndt imagine ridin with out a cell phone. im sure most of you think differently on that one. since accordin to that poll the majority of ya are older than me. (im 24)

granted if you do simple stuff like "KEEP TRACK OF HOW MUCH GAS YOU GOT!!" stuff liek that wont happen. LOL. stupid newbs. :-D (self included)
 
It seems that when I go to rallies or group rides here in New Mexico that if someone has trouble there is usually a cell phone in the group but so far they haven't proved to be very useful.

Most of our rides are in the mountains and cell phone reception is sketchy at best. Even if relatively open terrain we found that one of our members on quest had to ride 50 miles to get almost line of sight to Albuquerque to get a call through on Sprint. Verizon seems to have a little better coverage here but it still isn't that good out of sight of developed areas.

However we have had good luck contacting people on CB and having someone make a call for us.

Mike
 
The country out there is so beautifull Mike. The heck with cell phones. :D
 
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