What is the most scared you've ever been on a motorbike?

What is the most scared you've ever been on a motorbike?

I'll start things rolling........

On Big Mac V a couple of years ago I was heading South on the A82 from the digs very early on Saturday morning to pick up my pillion Euan - Bravepill6. It was raining quite heavily at times.

A big long straight with no-one around and I decided to go a bit faster than I should have. Let's just say I was 100% confident there was no-one around and I was running late.

TBH I wasn't concentrating on the road surface as much as I should have been and I didn't see a long straight fairly narrow puddle and I hit it right in the middle.

One minute the bike is standing up straight the next it starts to lean over to the right (but still going perfectly straight up this puddle)...and continues to lean and lean and lean.

I moved the bar to try to correct but I was just aqua-planing and all I could do was pray the puddle would finish sooner rather than later as you can only lean so far.

After what seemed like an eternity the puddle finished and quick as you like the bike just sat up straight and carried on.

My heart was in my mouth and the seat had clench marks in it.

Thankfully I continued on without any further incident - I was 100% wide awake after that!

Moral of the story (as if you didn't know) - Make sure you keep looking well ahead, and concentrate on the road surface. If you're running late - better to get there later than not at all......oh and don't ride too quick in the wet as aqua-planing on two wheels ain't nice.

Cheers
Rosco

As I've been riding over 50 years I have had quite a few bottom clenchers, but this was probably the scrariest:- about 25 years ago on a lovely Dec.day I decided to go for a little ride. The day was very cold but the sun was shining brightly. I had decided to go over 'The Trough of Bowland' one or two of the northern lads will know exactly where this is. Anyway its a very picturesque minor mountain pass. The road was mainly dry with just the odd damp patch, and I was having a great time trying get the pegs down. As I came to a fast S bend, and totally commited I got a brief glimpse of the second half of the S, both sides of the road were covered in ice! A millisecond to consider whether I would be dead or seriously injured, then, would you believe it I was round the bend and still on the bike. I stopped to wipe up the poo and consider how I was still alive. What had happened was this:- water had run across the road whilst the temp was above freezing but of course overnight when it was really cold had frozen. Eveywhere else the sun had thawed the ice, but on this particular bend the high hillside blocked the sun. But you might ask how did I stay on the bike. On careful examination the road surface was well chipped and although it looked to be covered in ice there were enough chips sticking through the ice for the tyre to grip. I really could'nt believe my luck. A major arisclencher.

one or two of the northern lads

What about the northern lasses?????


I was exiting a roundabout and looking right to see if i had taken the right exit when I clipped the curb and ended up in the shale, goodness knows how i stayed on!! It was some skillfull Evil Kenevil riding that helped LOL

Yes Ellie, after posting my message I went for a nice long walk, and was thinking of my post, and realised my fopas [do'nt think I've spelt that right] anyway I thought some one' going to pull me up about this and guess what............................yup
Tes

Mine is slightly different as I was standing still at the time. On an A road coming up to traffic lights that are on red. The lights are as there is a main road to the right or to go straight on so I pulled into the right lane to turn right and stopped at the line, like you do.. Whilst sitting there a black BMW overtook all the traffic sitting opposite, on the wrong side of the road, at about 90 mph whilst being chased by a police car. Straight through the red light and it just nipped in missing me by about two feet... The cop missed me by a mile but the BMW didn't half come close to head on killing me.... Never heard anything else about it but I assume it must have been stolen or something as he was not hanging about for a ticket. Needless to say I went straight home!

Well to be honest i have 2, but will start with the one that has seemed to have taken most of my confidence ,

Went early one morning in 2002 Bridlington for brekkie with the brother in law, on the way back to York ,where he lives we were going along the A166, at a fair pace in the wet,, ( yes i used to enjoy wet weather), and we went down the steep hill section which then goes into a good S bend, with a farm on the first bit and walls next to the road.
As i was going into the right hander the bars suddenly turned all the way right and then the back started wobbling, so picked it upright very briefly and got it so i wouldnt hit the wall but that put me with no hope of the left hander unless i used the other side of the road to stop sliding, got it straight again ( and praying nothing came the other way ) when , you guessed it a focus popped into view,well i thought either grass verge 1 foot wide then solid wall or focus front end or sod it and just aim for a gap.

Well i brushed the focus very very slightly but i made a gap and finally stopped it, when the driver stopped swearing at us i walked back to the first corner to find it awash with diesel. Brother in law , who at the time was lot slower than me had missed it by sheer fluke and thought i was having a laugh as always.

Just have never seemed to trust any grip since then, am slowly , as you all must feel, am getting there and then had to sell the bloody bike, hey ho

The other time i suppose could fall into the comedy book of errors

DONT LET THE WIFE FOLLOW YOU TO THE BROTHER IN LAWS WHEN YOU RIDING A BIKE

1 bike , 1 citroen xantia and one roundabout dont mix,, TRUST ME

Pete

Well Ross you could have opened a bit of a hornets nest here, I might need to recall some more lairy moments of old! might have to tell one that happened right outside my house, along with some others, maybe!

Surf & Turf last year is etched into my mind

Not the three man blast up to the cafe which was fun but it was in the afternoon hanging onto Rosco's tail that I missed a decent hump in the road on a long straight which resulted in a totally unplanned wheelie & that awful feeling of lack of control.

More by luck than judgement we sorted it out but I'm aware it was gonna be extremely messy if it hadn't, Not big & definately not clever

Well I can't add to these with only a year riding this time and a couple back in my twenties (I suppose I should be thankful...), and I know offs don't really qualify as fear quickly turns to dismay, pain, shock etc. But, hey, keep this up, you could make me rethink why the hell I got back on two wheels!
Esp. that traffic lights/police chase tale.

wheelie school, potato field......'nuff said....

A combination of silly, unlucky or just entertaining stories so far.
Glad we are all still hear to tell the tale.
Can't wait to hear some more... Come on Terry you nearly promised.

If dirt bike dave posts up his little tete a tete with a certain car on a very narrow bridge on weemac a couple of years back I'll relate a pretty hairy one. Tes.

Ahhh yes Terry, i had conveniently forgotten about that.
I seem to remember Terry and me becoming detached from the main group for one reason or another, so we were pushing along quite nicely to try and meet up with the main group again. We came through a good, fast twisty section of road and i remember seeing a small bridge in the distance at the bottom of a hill with a tight right hander just before the bridge. We were coming up fast on a car in front and we had a good view of the road ahead. Seeing as there was nothing coming the opposite way i decided to it would be a good idea to overtake the car on the inside of the bend and Terry could follow me and get past the car going over the bridge. As i moved onto the inside of the bend and got level with the car i suddenly realised that the road narrowed down to a single track over the bridge!!!! There was no way me and the car could cross the bridge together and i had hit the point of no return so i shut my eyes and nailed the throttle...It was one of those bridges that had drystone walls with pillars at the entrance and exit..Luckily i just managed to nip in to the bridge entrance just ahead of the car without clipping anything...Don't think the car driver (or Terry) was too impressed.. I think Terry got as much of a fright as i did..Terry being a bit older (ahem) and wiser had noticed this lane change on the bridge whereas i hadn't...Think i was a lucky boy that day.
Definately one of those "oh f*ck, oh f*ck" moments...

well described Dave, thats pretty much the way I saw it, will follow up shortly as promised

on the way to Assen via harwich ferry port in 2002. just pull off the motorway with fred on the back
2 cars in front waiting at the roundabout 1 in the left lane 1 in the right
i was going straight on but for some reason decided to sit in the right hand lane
as you can use both for this
when all of a sudden a car drove staight in to the back of the car sitting in the left hand lane smashing it into the middle of the round about
it did not brake at all hit the other car about 50ish the driver was out of his face (drunk)
another car came racing up he told us that the drunk driver has driven up the embankment on the motorway
& he had given chase stopped till the cops etc arrived & went on our way
i know for sure if not both but fred would have been dead
if we had been in the left hand lane not the right
that day some one was looking after us
pete

As promised, the one that happened outside my house. It was about 10 years ago and I was running a Pan at the time. I was coming down the A 684 [I live on the corner of this road and a side road that leads to my house]and as I was approaching this turn and starting to slow, doing about 50ish and changing down, when the bike slid violently to one side, so violently in fact that it hit the bar stop, which sent it violently to the opposite lock where it hit the opposite bar stop. [By the way the road was dry] At this point I was still on my side of the road and fighting to keep it that way, as the turn I wanted to make is on a corner and you can't see approaching traffic, I can't believe I'm still on the bike, but I am, and perhaps in slightly better control than I was, however the bike was more or less doing what it wanted and it seemed in the milli secs you have to make these decisions it was a matter of bailing off or staying with it. I did stay with it but because of the violent occilations the bike was performing I simply could'nt keep it on my side of the road, so I got round the bend on the wrong side of the road, missed my turn and finished in the gutter on the opposite side of the road. Thank C----t there was nothing coming the other way. As I looked around to consider my good fortune, I saw a tractor and trailer in a layby a little further on. The driver was walking back to the scene of my near death with a great shovelfull of soil to spread on the hydrualic oil that the split union between his tractor and trailer had just 1 minute ago spread all over the road. God bless him he was most apologetic, he had seen my last desperate attempts to stay on the bike and although he realised that putting soil on hydrualic oil is'nt the best solution it was all he could do in the short time he had before the emergency services arrived. Its hard to believe but he said that I was the first vehicle to arrive on the scene after the spill. Our kitchen window overlooks my near demise and I often ponder that my wife might just have been looking out that day and witnessed something awfull and not even realised that her husband was involved, I ca'nt remember whether I rode the 30 yards back home or pushed it, but I do remember that I was still shaking 30 minutes later. A proper bottom clencher.

stopped for a right turn and then seconds later hearing tyres screaming in protest behind me, knowing that the impact was inevitable (no escape in any direction.....dayglow jacket, indicators and brakelights meaning nothing to the nob on his phone doing 55-70 in a 30 zone) and that it would hurt ALOT

it did and the 2 years of rehab that followed, were grueling to say the least

Sheep dodging............at least 1 heart thumper guaranteed a year.

In Northern Spain last year, set off leading the group from the camp site to meet Dirt Bike Dave and admire his recently purchased "most expensive rear tyre in Europe". Nice weather, a fantastic road that we had done a few times by then and twas the last day before heading home so I got a bit giddy and set off like the clappers. Started really enjoying myself round really tight hairpins, fast sweepers etc and when I get to the next straight I check my mirrors and notice Terry coming up behind me VERY quickly and thought "What on earth is he doing on the wrong side of the road?"

Took me a second or 2 to realise that it was ME on the wrong side of the road and that I had been since leaving the campsite a couple of miles back Terry had been trying to catch me up and point out my mistake.

Didn't stop shaking till we got all the way to Pamplona, when we stopped my pack of smokes disappeared in about 5 mins while I had a wee sit down and gave myself a good talking to. Really, really frightened myself and the thought of what could have happened still haunts me now.

Yep, Remember that one well Chris, My heart was well and truly stuck in my throat, every corner you took, I thought it might be your last. But, you wer'nt the first to make that mistake, and you certainly w'ont be the last. Tes

Riding to Silverstone on the "Cat", just arrived onto a roundabout closely following another bike two up when the other bike hit a patch of diesel, they so nearly ended up having a big crash but then I realised that it was my turn next, no chance to avoid the diesel had a big slide nearly high sided but somehow got away with it, not sure my pants did though.

On another occasion with Lynn on the back of the "Blade" we arrived at a bend where the gas board had recently dug a trench filled in & resurfaced, badly, the front tyre tracked the trench for a second or two but then wierdly released us & flung us towards the kerb, we were then forced to travel in the gutter with the belly pan scraping the kerb until luckily we managed to get back onto the road, very glad Lynn did'nt pannick cos we would have come off big time.

I haven't got that many miles/journeys under my belt yet so my worst unfortunately would be on the 3 hour practise ride before my mod 2 test, sadly between journey from Coventry to Leicester for my test the heavens sprung a bloody huge leak and monsoon season hit the Midlands, whilst my instructor was showin me the joys of the twisties where he instructed whether wet or not i would hve to ride at the speed limit or face posible test failure and in order to train he basially said "keep up with me!" Feckin cheers!! Well i decided in for a penny as they say and was happily gunning it round the Leicestershire countryside in the pesching down rain, and after losing some yards on the boss gave it a fistfull to catch him and then realised he had gone round a blind left hand bend which i didn't see was that sharp, bum flinched and then bottled it rolled off, sat the bike up on wrong side off road anticipating all sorts coming round at me, fortunately i made it round to see empty road on coming and heard instructor shouting many expletives at me, but must have worked as the test was a breeze after that!!!

Watching the F1 GP last weekend jogged the old memory bank. Can you recall the incident in pit lane when the pit crew failed to properly put on Nico Rosbergs rear wheel? He set off and had only gone a few yards, when off it came bouncing like a huge rubber ball. [which is what it is I suppose] thankfully missing everyone. I had a similar near miss in Germany in the 80s. I,m sure a lot of you will remember the old VW Beetle and owners fitting huge rear wheels to them, well me and my mate were somewhere in Germany on a dual carriagway/ autobhan doing probably 80/90ish when up ahead on the hard shoulder I noticed this VW minus a rear wheel, obviously at the speed we were going we were very quickly level with it, when out the corner of my eye, yep you guessed it, said wheel came bouncing out from the side of the road, along with still attached halfshaft, bounced once as it came from right to left about 10 yards in front of me, cleared the central reservation and onto the oncoming traffic on the other side. I tried to look around to see whether it had collected some poor buggar, but just could'nt see. I think him up there has a bit of a soft spot for me!