Trail Rider Magazine

CHECK POINT ALMOST CRASHING  BY RICK SIEMAN (Notes: In my later years, people asked me how I ever came up with all those ideas for columns. Well, it wasn't too hard if you actually did a lot of dirt bike riding and racing. Add a low skill level to a lot of riding, and you can get the snot scared right out of you. Like when you almost crash. Let's go back a bit, shall we?) N o matter how careful or how good a rider is, every once in a while he crashes. It's part of the game, like it or not. But it's not the crashes that mess my mind up; it's the almost crashes. You know the kind—the rear end kicks up in the air suddenly and the machine rides along on its front wheel for some distance. Somehow the bike doesn't crash, and your large intestine settles back down where it belongs. These almost crashes are so scary, that I really think I'd rather crash instead. Some few years ago, I rode a 100-mile Hare and Hound on a near stock Yamaha Enduro. Now this is a fine little machine for trail riding, but for high speed desert work—no way. I got a pretty good start, being able to start in gear, and flat got with it on the way to the smoke bomb. The terrain on the way to the bomb was typical, fast desert. Medium rough, with deep sand and lots of bushes to dodge. By the time the Yammie was in fifth gear, traffic had thinned out some and I was feelin' good. Right about then, a rider on a Montesa directly in front of me started doing a side-to-side tank slapper and went down. Hard. To keep from hitting him, I swerved to the left and onto a clear path. Clear except for one little, teensy-weensy bush. With one teensy-weensy little rock growing right behind it. Wham! The Yamaha flipped straight up into the air, and I executed a dynamite handstand with a death grip on the bars. As I stared at the front fender, thoughts ran through my mind … "Well, Rick old boy, you are about to eat it." At moments like this, they say, your life is supposed to flash before your eyes. All I could think about was laying in a hospital bed all nice and comfy, with a cold beer and a pizza beside me. I could visualize friends and family bringing gifts to ease my pain and nodding their heads from side to side, saying, "Poor brave sonofagun. He's hiding the pain." on its front wheel and jarred me rudely back down in the saddle. The machine was still careening wildly, but at least I had a semblance of control. I tried frantically to get my feet back on the pegs, but another bump, this one unseen, smacked the saddle back up against my tender butt sending me skyward once more. As all things do, I came down eventually, this time on the gas tank— with only the gas cap there to cushion the blow. By this time, the machine I had slowed enough to allow me to regain control and stop. I put the kick stand down and just sat there quietly for a minute, letting the pain flow out of my leathers. Somebody blasted by on a Husky, looking at me as if to say, "Are you tired already?" I groaned an obscenity at him, but it did little to alleviate the dull pain. After an unreasonably short period of time, I was back in the race and charging again, although a bit more cautiously. For about 20 minutes, nothing strange happened. Then, at the end of a horrible sand wash, loomed THE HILL. The biggest hill in the world. At least it looked that way. "Oh well, what the hell, I thought … let's give it a try." Up-hills, along with downhills and level ground, have always been my weakness. Everything went smooth, in fact, too smooth for me … the DT1 kept churning away and accelerating like a rocket. As I approached the crest, riders cast envious glances at my ascent. This stirred my flashier and more base instincts, so I decided to dazzle them with a wheelie over the crest. God, but it was a beautiful wheelie! The front wheel was high and clean, and the balance oh-so-perfect. At that moment, I found out that Columbus was indeed wrong; the world is flat and you can drop off the edge. At the very highest point of that glorious hill, a sheer drop-off started. Rather unwillingly, I followed it down, much like a ski jumper. Every pore in my body puckered closed in stark terror. My eyes leaped out and threatened to bang against my goggles, and my fingernails turned blue from a vise grip on the bars. It was a long, long, long way down, and it took some time for the rear wheel of the bike to touch the dirt. When it finally did touch, I did the worst possible thing any rider could do—you guessed it, I hit the rear brake. Naturally, this caused the front end to slam into the ground with twice the impact it normally would have had. Having the front end on full lock didn't help either. But this was not to be. Somehow, some way, the Yamaha landed 28 Trail Rider www.TrailRider.com

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