Road Hazards
Road hazards
LEANINGS
Peter Egan
SHORT OF WINNING A MILLION DOLLARS a week for life, there are few things better than being invited by Cycle World to leave Wisconsin on a sub-zero day in January (15 below) and fly to Southern California to participate in a 600cc sportbike comparison test.
There’s more traffic, yes, but it’s 90 degrees warmer. Which, if you have ever played around with the thermostat in your house, can make a big difference in your personal comfort level. Especially at 70 mph.
And that’s about how fast The Guys and I were going as we headed home from Carlsbad Raceway after a day of testing, crossing Saddleback Mountain on the famous Ortega Highway. When Barb and I lived in California, this was my favorite-and nearest-road for wringing out a sportbike, or just taking an early-morning breakfast ride to the town of Lake Elsinore. Now, Lake Elsinore has become something of a bedroom community for people who work on the other side of the mountains, so a lot of cars commute over this twisting road and it’s not as much fun as it used to be. Still, it’s better than shoveling snow or knocking icicles down with a broom, and the road is okay if you hit it at the right time of day.
Which we did. We were headed against the bumper-to-bumper commuter flow, in the westbound lane, which was largely empty. Whistling along pretty well.
I was on the lime-green Kawasaki ZX-6R, just a few miles past El Cariso village, when I came around a sweeping uphill corner with the setting sun in my eyes, trying to keep up with the rapid Mr. Catterson and shading my visor with one hand. At that moment, I saw something spectral coming down the road, backlit by the sun.
Whether it fell off the flatbed truck that sped by or was merely kicked up by it, I couldn’t tell, but the object turned out to be about an 8-foot length of 2x4, cartwheeling toward me, end-over-end, throwing off slivers and chunks of kindling. I dodged and feinted as best I could with the Kawasaki, and the board went tumbling past my left shoulder with a hollow bonk!, conveniently missing both me and the bike.
A moment later, I felt that warm flood of body heat that sometimes hits after one of life’s near misses. And that 2x4 looked like a good thing to miss.
I’ve always thought we make most of our own luck riding bikes, but sometimes these little gifts of fate come bouncing along to keep us alert and humble. Road hazards come in many forms, and this isn’t the first interesting object I’ve dodged.
About 20 years ago I was riding a borrowed Honda CB750 Four (my first ride ever on this legendary bike) when I came up behind an open trailer on the highway. The trailer was piled high with household goods-bicycles, chairs, sofa, etc.-with an old upright piano standing tall in the center of the load.
As I bided my time, waiting to pass, I could see the wind lifting the lid of the piano up and down, like the fluttering exhaust pipe cover on a diesel tractor. “That can’t be good,” I mused wisely. “They should have loaded in the piano the other way around, with the hinges into the wind.” Suddenly the lid stood straight up in the wind. First one hinge snapped, then the other.
It caught the wind like a wing, sailed high into the air and then pirouetted down in a series of backflips while I watched it come toward me, awestruck as a cat eyeing a rattlesnake. It finally slammed heavily down on one edge, right in the center of the road next to my weaving bike, in a small explosion of veneer and hardwood trim.
I sped up and tried to tell the owners of the tow car what had happened, but it took a long time to make eye contact and slow them down. The driver rather grudgingly apologized, as though I might have been to blame for the whole thing, and then went back for the remains of the piano lid.
I learned a basic riding lesson here: Never follow an open load of anything.
Even today, whenever I come up behind a dump truck full of construction debris, a load of garbage or a family moving a table and chairs, I use it as a moral excuse for a long burst of illegal speed so I can get the hell out of there.
I’ve often wondered if a judge would accept the “gravel truck defense” for a speeding ticket, but haven’t had to test it yet in court.
When Barb and I first moved to California in 1980, a friend of ours, Lyman Lyons, who had just moved to L.A. himself, told me he couldn’t imagine riding a motorcycle on the Los Angeles freeway system. “Why not?” I asked.
“Because just last week I saw a guy in a car hit a card table that was lying upside down on the freeway with the legs fully extended. And a few weeks before that, I had to swerve around a sofa in the center lane. You wouldn’t want to hit either one with your bike, I shouldn’t think.”
I had to wince. Something about that card table with the extended legs left a burning impression in my brain, like a 6foot spider in a nightmare, and I made a real effort not to follow cars and trucks too closely with my bike. Still do. You never know what will come out from under them.
As I discovered (again) coming back from Willow Springs on that same 600 sportbike comparison a few weeks ago. I was riding the Honda F4 at night on the Santa Ana Freeway when a large rectangular object appeared from beneath the car ahead of me. Turned out to be a large sheet of plywood (3/4-inch, I would say, judging by the thump) and I ran right over it.
No nails, fortunately, and no flat tires.
But, of course, I was following too closely, with just enough time for my hair to stand on end, but not enough time to change lanes or swerve. Lucky again.
I guess the worst part of discovering these interesting pieces of furniture and used lumber on the highway is that you are seldom able to return them to the carefree, happy-go-lucky owners who neglected to tie them down, which you would always like to do, personally. Especially the 2x4s. □
