I was heading home the other night at about 10:30. Through one set of lights, and I make a couple of relaxed lane changes to pass a few slower vehicles. I was keeping to about 10 km/hr over the limit or so. Suddenly there's a set of lights in my mirrors. Bright ones.
At the next set of lights this guy pulls along my left side. I didn't look over, because I was tired, and relaxing on a leisurely ride; no desire to drag race a white raised 4x4 truck. Uh, I think my sportbike might be a bit quicker dude, no need to prove it to you.
So we leave the light and head down a hill (not another light for a few kms), Zeke takes off like a shot while I slowly go up through the gears into fourth. Up ahead I see a couple of sporty cars changing lanes really quick and passing people, one of them passes dude in the white truck, and then with no warning at all and without me even knowing what was going on, my right hand started to turn. It cramped or something. I tried to stop doing it, but I couldn't.
So I'm going about 140 km/hr now and doing an easy weave through a few of these weird people actually going 80 km/hr (the speed limit here) and I pull up in the right lane. Hey, I recognize that truck, it's Buck in the 4x4 going about 120. Now I'm not "racing" right now, just humming along nicely. It's a decent sized group of traffic going at a pretty good clip. Cooter immediately punches it and comes up beside me, then starts to take off.
I said to myself "dude, it's dark out and you can't tell if any of the headlights coming at you are cops or not... and come on, a frickin' 4x4 truck? I don't care what he's got in there, you could smoke him... let him go". I started to agree with myself, and tried sending a signal from my brain to my right hand to ease off the throttle. I must have mistakenly sent the signal to "squeeze off" instead of "ease off" because next thing I know I'm down to second gear (damn, must have also sent a wrong signal to my clutch hand and left foot). So by the time Billy Bob gets his pedal to the floor and his engine starts to rev up, I'm up to 180 km/hr, into third, up to 220... then these crazy images started to pop into my head. Me hitting deer, me losing my license, me losing the bike... me losing all of this because some hick in a 4x4 got under my skin.
So I'm hard on the brakes, downshift a couple and pop the clutch, and I'm back to 80 in a few seconds while Bo in the truck barrells on by. I swallow my heart back down to clear my throat just in time to yell a quick "HOLY "fudge"!" as I see Porky throw on the lights half a km up the road. Dude was *busted*.
So I don't know what happened to Clitus, because as luck would have it this was *just* before my turnoff, and I limped home immediately with my tail between my legs. Me, my 200bpm heart rate, and my soiled drawers.
I'm guessing Jim Bob was probably 80-100 over the limit up there. But man, if I had kept going and gone into fourth... I'd probably be looking at 160-170 km/hr over the limit. (or more)
License: gone. Bike: gone. Bike payment: still there. Suicidal thoughts: surfaced.
It's amazing how having that kind of speed at your fingertips can regress your maturity like that. I can go from 80 to 200 km/hr in a few seconds, but I can go from 32 back to 16 in less than a second. God I need to grow up. Five seconds of wanting to "get that guy" could have lost me my bike, and my ability to get to work for the next year.
Soooooo anyway... those Suzuki M50's are nice looking bikes, eh?
Also, I consider this a gift from the gods. Major lesson learned without all the negative things that usually go along with the big ones.
Signing off Slower Now Than Ever In The Hat,
Kaiser Soze
(I know a major "poo poo" storm of flames are coming my way, I deserve it, but I thought I'd share anyway)
