Well it’s something new to do

Sunday afternoon, quick jaunt out, nowt much better to do, so why not throw your motorbike down the street? You know, just for a laugh.

Well let me tell you now that throwing yourself off a motorbike is not a bit of a laugh. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mean to do it (why would you?) but when you go round a roundabout, your back wheel hits a bit of bare tarmac freshly moistened from a sprinkling of rain (read: more slippery than a penguin head first down a taboggan run covered in used chip fat) and decides it and the bike has had enough of being upright, there’s frankly bugger all you can do. The bike goes one way, you go the other and you pick yourself up and try to deal with it.

As crashes go, it could have been so much worse. Whilst there were parked cars everywhere, there were fortunately no moving vehicles, and the out-of-control bike managed to slide in a line that avoided causing any more damage to itself or anything else than was absolutely necessary (at one point it was trying to overtake me as we both slid head-first down the road); so other than a few hundred quids worth of cosmetic damage, a few grazed knees, ribs and other assorted body parts, and of course a severely dented ego, it could have been a lot worse.

But (in case it needs saying) if you’re a motorcycle rider, or, in fact, any kind of road user, just take care, and don’t take anything for granted.