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Wheelies Gone Wrong
There's something magical about roaring down the street and lofting the front wheel into the air. Something special that brings a smile to any child's faces, happiness to those who are otherwise dour, and anger to any law enforcement official.
I'm not very good. I fall off a lot.
Jun 2004: XR600 Wheelie Crash
So I bought an XR600 on a whim. It's a big single-cylinder street-legal dirtbike. It's not light, it's not pretty, and it smokes like it's on fire, but it wheelies in second gear. Nice!
On the second or third day I brought it to work, I'm outside at lunch doing wheelies in a nearby parking lot. It's secluded, there's no one else there, and I'm having a great time. I ride the bike back to the Centellax parking lot, and one of my friends is talking on the phone right outside the front door. I can't resist, I rip a big wheelie right by him. I get a big thumbs up.
So I'm heading back past him to park the bike and decide to pull it up one more time. I decide to go all out. I say the immortal words of someone about to do something monumentally stupid: "Hey, watch this!". I pull the clutch, rev to the moon, dump the clutch, and yank on the handlebars. The bike goes up. Way up.
I didn't know the pegs on dirtbikes fold in. It makes sense, because you wouldn't want to get tossed off when riding through rocks. Unfortunately, it means when you do huge wheelies, your feet press on the pegs at the wrong angle, and they fold in. The pegs folded in. My feet slid right off the pegs, my body slid right off the seat, and I had to death-grip the bars to stay on. My face was now right in the seat, my arms straight up over my head to the handlebars. The bike was standing almost straight up and down and started to drag me across the parking lot.
My hand position on the throttle, coupled with the grip I have on the bars, ensures the throttle opens all the way. The bike is now perilously close to flipping over and squishing me. I decide that maybe trying to save it wasn't such a good idea, and let go. The bike falls over, I land on my face.
Coworker applauds, more coworkers emerge from the lobby. They applaud as well. I ripped my jeans and rashed my leg - I have a rash the size of my palm just below the knee. Bike is fine, can hardly tell it crashed. No one else hurt, no cars hit.
I end up stapling my jeans back together to avoid grossing people out. Good thing I wasn't meeting customers or reps that day. Thankfully no one had a camera.