Slippery Slopes

Slippery Slopes

I was recently on a long single-lane unfamiliar fairly well-maintained driveway with some ruts, some leaves and some loose gravel on my 400 lb. '80 Honda CM400A. The driveway got steeper going uphill than I wanted to go back down, and I spun a little, so I stopped to turn around and found myself not where I wanted to be in terms of control. I managed to get turned around, but as I braked soon after starting back down, I slid forward in my seat and lost all hope of steering control.

I fell over on the side of the road, bruising my finger,and shoulder and spraining an ankle under the bike. The only damage to the bike was a broken windscreen. After hitting the kill switch and getting the bike up - a bit painful with the sprained ankle - I was able to ride out without further mishap, and make it home to my Ibuprofen for pain and aspirin for anti-clotting.

In replaying my situation I realized I might have been able to do better in neutral, with my non-brake left foot on the foot peg inside the roll bar to help keep me from sliding forward in the seat. I do know now to avoid steep graveled places, but thought I'd share my experience so some might learn from my mistakes. All in all I felt I got out in much better shape than I might have and am not likely to do that road again in anything other than my '85 4wd ranger pickup. Even in a car, sight lines are terrible, and you'd have to go too fast to be safe for on-coming traffic to be able to make the steep sections. Any suggestions for getting out of such 'bad places' would be appreciated.

Thanks for visiting VirginiaWind.