I had my first (and hopefully last) drop last Saturday.
Let’s start with the gear. What I was doing right:
-Full Face helmet (scorpion exo400)
-leather jacket (alpinestars atl)
-leather gloves (scorpion stinger)
For what I was doing wrong, I was wearing jeans and normal tennis shoes. I always thought ATGATT was a nice catch phrase to ride by, but not very practical. I’m glad I learned my lesson in a not too severe way and now will for sure be riding in all the gear, all the time.
So here’s what happened, I was approaching an intersection and I was in the left lane, going approx. 40mph, as the left turn lane opens, a green Lexus driven by a 70+ year old lady going about 25 in the lane to the right of me comes right into my lane with no signal. I panic… hitting the rear brake too hard, lock the wheel, and my back tire comes sliding out to my right, all of this causing me to lowside to my left. Thank God there was not a car behind me, because I would have been a speed bump.
The jeans ripped pretty bad, and as I slid/rolled to a stop my knee/upper leg took a bit of road rash in the process. My shoes also ripped up, leaving just a little cut on my foot.
I pulled the bike back up and pulled the old lady over, and basically lectured her for a minute. Didn’t yell at her or anything, there was no good that would have come out of it.
I learned my lesson the hard way, but it could have been sooo much worse. Gotta gear up all the time. Gotta work on those emergency stops too.
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