Frogfoot

Short version. Ride to work and back on the Daytona last Friday. OMG IT FELT AWESOME to be back in the bike. LONG VERSION. so I spent the week testing my sitting position on the Daytona. It was so tempting with it there in the garage. Doc hadn't given me the all clear but Wednesday afternoon I started her up and headed out. I got down the drive and then pulled my leg up to the peg. That didn't work and there were a lot of weird aches around the knee. I let my leg hang and wobbled back to the garage, defeated. But I couldn't leave it there so the next day I got back on and spent about twenty minutes riding around the neighborhood. The knee is really stiff but not painful. This gave me the confidence to ride in on Friday. The ride in was great. A sunny fresh morning on the open road (work is halfway to the next town along some country roads). I stretched the leg out a couple of times. The way home was more sore - enough that I was nervous I had ripped something open. I got home safely and hoped I hadn't set things back at all. Saturday I saw the Doc and was given the all clear to use my leg fully. So no harm done. It is obvious that I really need to work the leg or it's going to lose a big chunk of range of motion. I have already restarted my fitness and will get back on the bike and the push bike to sort out the leg. Being back on the bike is so amazing :)

Thanks for the comments here and the last entry. Much better now with the doc giving the leg the all clear. Friday I commuted on the other bike. Leg was real stiff but it felt great to be back on the bike. Just got to work on the leg to keep it flexible. I do have a 2 piece (Berik), but as much as they are awesome protection, when the temps are down towards 0 or below (it was 4 that evening) they are no good for keeping you warm. At 110kmh, the wind chill has a massive effect and you can't spend 3 hours at -16 in leathers. I do wish I had been wearing the Dainese pants that match the jacket though. I had bought them about 3 weeks before this crash, but not worn them much.

Its been three frustrating weeks now. I hobble about the house finding it uncomfortable to sit, stand or walk for too long. I count my lucky stars though and know it could have been much much worse. My decision to wear all the gear saved a LOT of heart ache. Here is the bike. Insurance has today told me that it's a total loss. I'm really sad about that, but not surprised when you see the damage. I won't have enough to buy a replacement new VFR, though I could likely afford a second hand one. However, replacing it while I still retain the Daytona is not likely to go down well with the Mrs. I am considering the idea of selling the Daytona and using the money from the insurance and the sale to buy a 2014/5 VFR. I will take some time before I decide that though. And here is the gear. My boots aren't here as they are barely scratched. My Kevlar jeans aren't here as they were cut up by the paramedics. There was a hand sized tear at the knee where my injury has occurred. Weird footnote - when my sister arrived at my place with my ruined gear last week, my wife commented (and she's a theatre nurse in a major city hospital) that she "always thought I was overdoing it with all the gear I wear riding" and that it was a bit silly and over the top really. She's certainly changed her opinion now! ATGATT saved my butt (literally, you should see the scuffs on the back of the jeans!)

That's what my sister and my mum separately described it when I told them. Sunday night, marginally later than usual I headed down the highway from Sydney to Canberra on my VFR. After my usual refuel at Marulan and a text to wife I was on my way again. As I travelled along the edge of Lake George I was passing a car and about level with its doors when it appeared. Ten foot tall with red blazing eyes and a t-shirt that read "death to motorcyclists" the kangaroo leapt from in front of the car next to me and landed in front of me. At 110km/h I had enough time to think "fuck this is going to hurt". Well I probably only thought "f" before I'm tumbling down the freeway. I didn't resist the tumbling, trusting my gear to do the job I spent a lot of money for. It did seem a while but was probably a few secs later I stopped sliding. I could see the wire fence on the edge of the highway only a metre or so away. I was pretty shaken and had no idea if I was hurt but I knew if I could get over to the fence I would be as far away from the traffic as I could get. I didn't want to survive the roo only to get squashed under a semi. I lay in the drain next to the wire letting myself take a few deep breaths and see if anything was hurting a lot. Nothing grabbed my immediate attention so I stood up. Up the road to my left was my bike about three metres away. Past that a couple of people were just getting out of a ute. (They were apparently very relieved to see me stand up) I walked over to my bike with a heavy heart knowing that my bike had seen its last miles this evening. Lying on its side in a pool of oil with the top box burst open I am certain the insurers will deem it uneconomical to repair. I took my helmet off and sat down. The guys convinced me to lie down and it seemed like a good idea. My Kevlar jeans were ripped open on my right knee and a nasty set of gashes poked through. We decided to call the ambulance. As we waited the guys found a few of my things. I took stock of myself and even with shredded clothing the only other injury apparent to us was a light graze on my wrist. But it was cold lying there on the road and I presume the shock and adrenaline as well had me shivering almost constantly (it would be after a couple of hours in Emergency before this would stop) About 30mins later the cops turned up, the the tow truck and then the ambos. I guess about an hour later we arrived at Canberra Hospital. It became obvious that I had been very lucky and that my gear had done its job. I have some deep serious gouges of skin (you can see muscle and bone in the holes) taken from my knee but that's it. Nothing broken, nothing internal damaged. From there it's been a succession of hospital beds and dressing changes. I am supposed to getting a plastic surgeon to look at my knee tomorrow. It's going to take some work I think and lots of time to heal. Some people have gone out and checked out the crash site. They figure the bike slid about 100m. They found the roo, well dead and he wasn't a small one (about 5 feet tall). They found some of the bike with roo hair stuck in it. Most amazingly they found all of my belongings, even down to a couple of USB sticks and my sunnies. Thanks to all my family and friends for all their support so far. Thanks to the guys who stopped (many didn't) and I wish you'd left me your details. Thanks to the ambos and other medical folks. And of course thanks to Dainese (jacket and boots), Draggin (jeans), Alpinestars (gloves) and KBC (helmet) for keeping me so safe. And rest in peace (or pieces??) to my well loved mighty VFR.

Enjoy the bike, 10,000km - its not even broken in yet (that happens about 12,000km, you'll notice it if you haven't got there already) Thanks for reading :)

Ha, yeah, well aware of the proximity of the Police Academy, though thankfully, not through personal experience :) No previous owner on this bike to blame, any troubles are my own doing :) Thanks for the comment.

Honestly, I've kept the chain lubed, the tyres inflated and taken it to my local Honda shop for service in accordance with the book. I am almost totally mechanically inept so I leave to people who've earned my trust over many years.

Here i am, 95km to Goulburn on the side of the Hume Highway. And here's why. Onwards to another 150,000. Though I did drop by the local Honda dealer and checked out the new VFR800. I quite like the look of it in the flesh. I asked about a test ride and the guy almost begged me to take it for a ride - I think he wanted the opinion of a 6th gen owner so he could use it to sell them. I will take it for a ride, sitting on it - it felt very similar. I'll see how it rides...

A cool but sunny late autumn day dawned on the Friday for my trip back to my family in Sydney. It seemed like a great opportunity to try a alternate route that had been recommended to me. The main reason that I hadn't yet tried this way is that I estimated it would take around 6 hours - that's double my normal time, door to door, and being a new route, I would be taking it easy. I also had been warned that snow and ice were real possibilities on this route so weather was also a big concern. But we've had a long unusually warm autumn in South East Australia this year (barely making the single digits, let alone snow and ice temps) and several rain free days before today. A quiet week at work meant that the chances of getting away early where high - all I needed was an early knock off. I slipped away early and soon after I hit the road west from Queanbeyan. My route took my to Tarago, but here I turned North to Goulburn, where usually I head straight across towards Bungonia. At Tarago I deviated slightly to check on a couple of bikes I saw stopped in case they were lost. No problems there so I turned north. This road is the more well known route than my normal way, and its' not a bad ride. A bit shorter and straighter than via Bungonia. Plus it adds more interstate. After getting a little lost in the streets of Goulburn, I fuelled up and turned for the unknown. Again, more northerly towards Taralga (NOT Tarago or Tarana... can get a little confusing). The roads were pretty open and flowing, mostly through farmlands. Some resurfacing was underway and the low winter sun often annoying, but otherwise the ride was very enjoyable. And the kms were swiftly covered. The road continues north over the Abercrombie River. The descent and climb down to the river crossing were fine twisty roads, without markings, but generally wide enough. Up from Abercrombie you head towards the back side (from a Sydney perspective) of the Blue Mountains. Again the roads were wide and flowing, but empty. The area is obviously pine plantations and the odd logging truck may need to be avoided. I arrived in Oberon, grabbed a small lunch and topped up the fuel again. This should easily last me until my doorstep, so no requirement to stop again. From Oberon, you join up with the road from Jenolan Caves and head towards the Great Western Highway at about Mount Victoria. This stretch before the Highway is the last fun before the grind over and down the mountains. And it's a pretty good bit with some nice vistas of Aussie mountains (so really slightly bigger hills than the rest of the area - not real peaks with snow etc) The Highway is being expanded and sorted in a massive upgrade that has so far taken several years so there are slow speed roadworks zones, and the newer areas have reduced limits (because the tin tops can't help running themselves into barriers and off the road all over the place). And the traffic was .... well there actually was traffic, so the fun was over. Still takes about another hour to get over the mountains to home. A really nice ride and I think heading the other way would be nicer (get the annoying bit out of the way at the start). Pity it is so much longer than my normal route so I'll have to save it for next time the stars align. Of course the mighty VFR ate it all up without hesitation. It's now about 500km short of 150,000 and then only 11,000km until it rolls over 100,000miles. Its not impossible to hit that by Christmas.

Another Sunday means another ride to Canberra. The weather was warm with some scattered clouds. A pleasant, if dull ride ahead. I was about forty five minutes from home when I noticed all the cars headed the other way had their lights on. At five in the evening, that wasn't a good sign. About five or so minutes later the road ahead seemed to disappear into a cloud. I quickly pulled over... rain ahead. As I pulled my rain pants from the top box it started to rain a little. Big drops, but not much. Pants on, I hit the road as it really started to rain. Then about 1km up the road was the petrol station I had planned to pull over at anyway! Ah, well. at least I was dry. And a fellow VFR rider was just pulling up as well. Not only was it a fellow VFR rider, but a mate from Sydney who has also moved to Canberra. We chatted as we filled our bikes up and geared up for the rain. We decided to ride together, as heading out together was a lot safer into the heavy downpour that the rain had turned into. The ride, though heavy rain was fairly uneventful for about another half an hour. As we started to clear the heavy rain, the traffic in both lanes ahead started slowing and clearly stopping. Not wanting to get caught at the end of a line of stopped highway traffic in poor visibility I decided to split up the middle - the main reason so that we wouldn't get flattened when someone didn't pay attention and squeezed at the back of the queue. I also hoped to split right past whatever accident was ahead (conditions as they were, it was pretty likely someone had gone off the road or tapped another car). At the front was something else... water. Lots of muddy rising water. The highway was flooding. My buddy came up... "We have to keep going, it's only going to get deeper" At this point it was over the sole of my boots. And rising quickly. I remembered all those images of cars floating away on flooded highways. "Are you sure?". "Yes" He headed forwards. We split some way up the road until we were past all of the cars and the flooded highway stretched out ahead of us. But we could also see clear road. "Keep going, otherwise we're stuck here" he said, just as a semi trailer crept past. "follow him, he'll clear any debris" So we did. The bow wave of the truck kept tugging at the front wheel trying to turn the bike. Sometimes we'd ride over the centreline that we couldn't see, but we could feel the cats eyes. A few hundred metres up the road we were out of the water. We pulled over to check nothing was caught in the bikes. The water had gotten to mid calf, not quite over the tops of my waterproof boots when I was on tiptoe. Riding, it was lapping at my boots on the pegs and the bow wave as we rode through it was at least twice that. We looked back just as the police arrived and shut the road. They wouldn't have let us through I'm sure. Good choice. (or lucky??) Not long after that the rain stopped and eventually the roads dried. More than an hour late I rolled into my garage to get dry and warm. Safe.

Thanks Jag. Speed sensor fixed now... both bikes now fully serviceable.

The VFR spent most of the last few weeks in the shop waiting for a water pump. It started the afternoon after getting home, I popped back into the garage and noticed a small puddle of coolant on the floor. Not a good sign. I rang the local bike shop, a new one as I'm in Canberra now. The guy on the phone said something about "Don't worry, they'll do that when its hot and the overflow tank fills. No need to bring it in." I sat back after hanging up. I've had this bike for ten years and 140,000km. I've ridden in hot weather, sat about in hot traffic and parked it when it's been much hotter. It's never done this. And certainly not with an almost empty overflow tank. I decided to head to the shop. Somethings wrong. Up the road is another shop, so I dropped in and asked to grab some coolant. I topped a little in the tank and it immediately ran back out. Yeah, nothing wrong huh*. I carefully rode on to the local Honda dealer. In the end they decided it was in need of a new water pump. Spent a couple of weeks waiting for the part. I guess a good thing about the VFR is that 12 years later, Honda are still making the same bike (and even now, it's going to be basically the same bike in the new one). So parts are easy (though as they always seem to need to order them from Japan, they don't break often.... but we all knew that) Got it back and headed up to Sydney for my normal weekend at home. That's when I noticed that the speedo was all over the place... it was like speed roulette. It has been sort of liberating, riding without speed limits, so to speak. So I'll have to take it back to the shop. Maybe the speed sensor is out (has happened before about 6 or so years ago) or the shop nudged or bumped something. They can take a look and fix it. Not sure about the shop though. I'll give them this chance. * to be fair, the tech was trying to diagnose over the phone, that's never easy.