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Woof
 Standard Member
145 Posts
Jacksonville, North Carolina
USA
Suzuki
SV1000S
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 Posted - 10/23/2009 : 1:24 PM
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Some of you probably read the subject line and already know which lesson I learned.
Yesterday, I needed to be in Havelock, NC for a conference at 8:30am. My route options from Jacksonville, NC were to either skirt along the coast past Camp Lejeune and a through a few small towns (and multiple speed/school zones), or to ride through New Bern. The coast option was the shortest, distance-wise, although construction at the Lejeune main gate was likely to cause problems. The route through New Bern would tack another 15 or so miles onto the trip. I asked a longtime local (not a rider) which route he normally took, and he mentioned Catfish Lake Road as a poor alternative due its hard-packed dirt and rock surface. I Google Earth'ed the road and saw that it was paved at the beginning and end, but I didn't dig any deeper into its layout. The Google Earth route from my home to Havelock included Catfish Lake Road, and showed a total distance of 40 miles, and time en route as 1:11, which didn't make a lot of sense to me and should've been a good indicator of problems to come. Having encountered "inadvertent" dirt before without much drama, I decided to give Catfish Lake Road a shot.
The road was semi-curvy and more fun than a lot of the roads around here for the first few miles until it turned to dirt. The road widened (30-40 feet would be my guess) and consisted of hard-packed (very dry, on this day) dirt with scattered gravel. 45-50mph was comfortable for straight-line riding on the center 70% of the road. Within the first mile or two, I saw headlights behind me closing fast and thought, I'll be a nice guy and pull a little closer to the right. I very slowly pulled to the right, and rapidly found my bike sucked into the 2-3 of dust that had accumulated near the edge of the road. My brain went into high alert, and I gingerly tried to arrest the bike's rightward veer toward the edge of the road (and the ditch). When I was within a foot of so of the edge, my bike's bars started rapidly oscillating from left to right, the bike shook violently, and I was fairly certain I was about to be thrown off. I'd never experienced a tankslapper, but I'm pretty sure I was involved in one at this point. I fogged my visor as I repeated, You are NOT going to drop this bike! to myself a few times, and reacted by keeping off the the brakes, relaxing my grip on the bars, e-a-s-i-n-g off the throttle, and leaning my body ever-so-slightly left as I'd more or less lost steering effectiveness. I regained control at a very slow speed, assumed my previous position out of the river of dust, and continued on my way at a sedate 30-35mph. In hindsight, pressing on was the second worst decision I made, although I made it without further problems. I think I made it to Cherry Point around the 1:11 mark.
In my 38,000+ miles on the SV1000S, I never felt I was in danger of losing control until yesterday. If I'd had an ejection handle, I probably would've pulled it out by the roots. Riding ATTGATT (fully armored) in combination with the slow speed, I didn't believe I was in great physical danger; I was more worried about the embarrassment I'd feel after becoming another single motorcycle accident statistic. Following the incident, I had a much clearer appreciation for GS1200s and other dual-sport bikes.
My lesson learned: Leave the dirt riding to the riders and bikes prepared for the dirt. In the future, I'll put dirt roads into the high probability of failure risk management category.
I've never been afraid of a little dirt, but for me the risks (crashes, ruined suspension, dust intrusion into delicate bike bits) don't make up for any small amount of time saved by riding unimproved roads. I was lucky in that there were a total of five other vehicles on this 15-mile stretch of road which minimized my risk of sliding under someone else's wheels.
If the unpaved portion of the road were paved I'm sure it would be a heavily-trafficked time-saving route for a lot of people. I was told by a long-time resident that the road isn't paved as that section runs through a bear habitat, and environmentalists fought paving with the claim that bears were more leery of crossing an asphalt road than a dirt road. With food on both sides of the road, a paved road could've become a bear survival issue.
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Edited by - Woof on 10/23/2009 1:30 PM |
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