First ice skating of the season.

[P 0 P E Y E]

Found a slick spot in the road.

It had rained the night before. The roads were wet. I was doing about 25 mph

I knew this section gets slick in the wet. I even did a test power drift as I turned on to the straight before the turns. The back wheel got loose right away, I steered into the slide and rolled off throttle....Nice.

As I decelerated for the entrance to my favorite "s" turn On Ramp.

I down shifted a little too aggressively for the conditions and the bike Began to skid. Both wheels locked for a few seconds and surprised me a little.

I kinda knew it would happen so I was set up for it.

I immediately stopped all breaking and regained grip on the road. I knew and expected the rear to slide as I did a test power. The down shift slide was a bit of a surprise.

When I looked for the limit of traction and found it, no problem. When It found me when I was not looking for it, I got a little nervous.

my speed on the road was faster than it should have been in those conditions. I knew it was slick so I was able to deal with it. The slick road ended up to be ice or frozen dew.

When I passed into the shadows of the trees....There was ice. I knew that any sudden or abrupt changes in this sort of situation lead to disaster and total loss of control.

The bike went through the ice, remained upright and pointing in the desired direction of travel.

I guess all those years of riding in the dirt, sand, mud and wet paid off, That and the writings of a man named Harris, in this forum.

I was a proud reader of Harris' posts.

[THEBEAR]

Nice job staying on two wheels. I guess its time to put the snow tires on!

[Dontdial911]

I did my skating yesterday in 60 degrees. Approaching a city intersection at no more than 15 mph, applied the front brake first as usual, foot was moving to the rear brake to apply light pressure there but out of the blue like the front tire got smacked by an invisible hand it went right out from under the bike. I got tossed off that bike and flopped like a dead fish and the bike slid another 10 feet or so on the highway bars. A brief and embarrassing inspection of the road surface there was streak of some right fresh dirty oil in the left hand side of the lane. Yep..I was watchin the traffic signal as i approached the intersection instead of the road surface directly in front of me, but I dont think i would have seen it even if I had looked.
A side note...i was wearin one of those lil imitation skid lids and it took the lick the back of my head woulda gotten. Without that my head woulda been a whole lots lumpier than normal.
Moral of the story i guess is to expect the unexpected...and having somethin on that head really might not be a bad idea.

[1969K10]

What a wake-up call!! my first this year was coming back from opening the cabin with the OL. Due to childcare issues, we came home saturday night instead of sunday morning (ended up beinga a good thing). Anyway, ran into a cold wall, and then about 2 miles from the house, found some sprinkles. So, the little county road to my house was wet, and apperantly slick in a couple of spots... just took the back tire! nothing bad happened, just caught me off-guard...