Ambition exceeded talent

[Tack]

My wife just bought a 2X doubler for her camera and wanted to try it out so we headed off to Mt Mee to take some photos and I took my bike so I could play on the windy bits while she took photos.

We went down a road called Campbell pocket road. On the way in we passed a group ride coming towards us who were heading towards D'aquiler hwy. Anyway, we pulled up on a crest on Campbell pocket road with a dirt intersection(Dawes Rd) that looked over the valley. Seemed like a nice spot.

I got off the bike and noticed another bike ( a triumph) parked and a guy standing in the long grass in the paddock on the phone. I didn't take much notice. I just thought that he was with the group that passed us and has stopped to take a piss.

I walk over to him cause the guy seemed a bit stressed and there's a BMW R1200GT in the paddock and an old guy laying on his side. So I did what I could to help.

Bugger me but we'd pulled up just after the old bloke had cartwheeled into the scenery on his BMW and the other guy following him had stopped and was organising an ambulance.

So it turns out that he was tail end charlie for a Ulysses ride and he was trying to catch up to the rest of the group. He'd come down this huge hill, up to this long left on a crest. Basically he'd gone in way too fast, apexed early, ran wide, got into the gravel edge, swerved to miss a row of arrow signs, clipped the the last one and bent the sign, carried on over the gravel triangulated intersection, got to the long grass beside the paddock, got it sideways and cartwheeled into the scrub.

One of his panniers was flung 20 metres away!

He had a bit of bark off, a sore shoulder but his leg and hip were painful. He'd snapped the RHS handlebar off and flung the panniers all over the place but the bike was pretty good.

Tha ambo's turned up and the fireys , in fact we had about 7 vehicles there in the end.

Then all of a sudden they were all gone. So we went home.

[redmistracer]

And the Pics are ????? on there way!...........

[Jonno]

That Campbell pocket road is a tricky road. I often stopped at the creek area on a small short road off that one at the bridge

Good he was still kicking and you two weren't directly involved

[Tack]

That Campbell pocket road is a tricky road.

Yeah I thought the same. Tight narrow road, quite bumpy with steep down hill hairpins and corrogations in the bitumen.

hit this sign

Snapshot 2 (2-05-2011 6-01 PM).png (180.36 KiB) Viewed 640 times

BMW out of the scrub

marks showing where he headed for the bush

c4_edited-2.jpg (201.21 KiB) Viewed 640 times

went threw this wire fence

This is the exit of the corner...a right hander follows...and hopefully you can see the crest in the road...dunno how he expected to make it all the way road at the speed he was doing

30 minute search to find the other pannier

[Tack]

Dunno about you but it seems to me that correctly judging corner entry speed is a bit of a problem for motorcyclists. Dunno if it's the major reason for accidents but from my observations it seems to happen pretty regularly.

I've done it myself quite a few times....in fact I recently had an off at Queensland Raceway and ended in the gravel for just this reason.

There's an old race adage of: slow in, fast out. I reckon it's probably the most applicable for road use. Get on the brakes early, get the corner entry right
and use the power of the bike to accelerate you away.

anyway that's my opinion for what it's worth.

[zx-10r]

Dunno about you but it seems to me that correctly judging corner entry speed is a bit of a problem for motorcyclists. Dunno if it's the major reason for accidents but from my observations it seems to happen pretty regularly.

thats true, its good to know the road a bit before going hard.
Seen some guy go straight into an embankment in a '25km'corner which followed about 5-6 corners you could do at 80-90. I guess if he slowed a little a took full lean he could have made it but he probably paniced.