![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Biker Blues - Almost
Sep. 29th, 2005 11:27 amAlmost lost the bike yesterday evening during the storm - straight line winds dropped a Coke machine on the front end. Got real lucky - missed the fender, the tire held it off so it didn't damage the wheel rim, no damage to the front forks or axle. WHEW!!!
Cruising down 377 from Denton to Roanoke, I got to Argyle (10 miles) and noticed the roads were soaked - a storm had passed through, no big deal ... I can get a little wet. I'm headed home anyway. By the time I got ½ way between Argyle and Roanoke (another 5 miles) and I started to enter the storm and by the time I got to 377 and 114 in Roanoke (yet another 5 miles) the storm was so hard I had to pull over (a few blocks shy of home.)
Pulled under the canopy/cover of the Murphy USA gas station at the WalMart. Parked the bike close to the little cashier's building in the center, to let the storm blow through. In front of the cashier's booth are 4 free-standing Coke machines - the ones with the sliding glass doors? Got off the bike, cocked the front steering wheel all the way over so the bike leaned toward the relative quiet of the building, and had one hand on the handlebars as I huddled up against the side of the building where it was relatively quiet. All of a sudden the storm intensified and we had straight-line winds whipping in from the east. Coulda swore I was in a tornado again, but didn't see anything around.
Anyway, the wind blew hard enough that two of the Coke machines blew over (pulled all the wiring out of the wall and we had electrical sparks, Coke's, bottled water, and jugs of anti-freeze flying all over). The one fell right over on the bike's front end. The wind passed, the employees hustled around shutting down all the power and warning away customers ... then the straight-line winds came back again from the opposite direction. Those eventually died, too. Well, the weight of the Coke machine now had the bike firmly pinned underneath it and too heavy to move. Eventually a WalMart manager brought a forklift all they way across the parking lot, took pictures of the bike and its predicament with his camera-phone (Bluetooth, so he got us the pictures right away at WalMart's photo center), and then gently lifted the Coke machine off the bike until two of us could pull it out from underneath.
Rolled the bike backward to let Joyce see the front end alignment and the tire - looked okay so far. Rode it up and down the WalMart parking lot 4-5 times to see how it felt - Forklift driver (a fellow biker) watched and said the front end looked perfectly square alignment-wise, so still looking good so far. Rode it the rest of the way home at 50-55 mph and still didn't feel anything wrong - no wobbling or pulling. Rode it to work this AM at 60-65 mph, still no problem. I believe I dodged the bullet, but I'll be taking it to D/FW Honda and have them check out the front end just to be sure. Like I said, no apparent damage to anything on the bike ... or the rider (not counting a thorough soaking and scrambled nerves.)
... and that's the whole story.
Cruising down 377 from Denton to Roanoke, I got to Argyle (10 miles) and noticed the roads were soaked - a storm had passed through, no big deal ... I can get a little wet. I'm headed home anyway. By the time I got ½ way between Argyle and Roanoke (another 5 miles) and I started to enter the storm and by the time I got to 377 and 114 in Roanoke (yet another 5 miles) the storm was so hard I had to pull over (a few blocks shy of home.)
Pulled under the canopy/cover of the Murphy USA gas station at the WalMart. Parked the bike close to the little cashier's building in the center, to let the storm blow through. In front of the cashier's booth are 4 free-standing Coke machines - the ones with the sliding glass doors? Got off the bike, cocked the front steering wheel all the way over so the bike leaned toward the relative quiet of the building, and had one hand on the handlebars as I huddled up against the side of the building where it was relatively quiet. All of a sudden the storm intensified and we had straight-line winds whipping in from the east. Coulda swore I was in a tornado again, but didn't see anything around.
Anyway, the wind blew hard enough that two of the Coke machines blew over (pulled all the wiring out of the wall and we had electrical sparks, Coke's, bottled water, and jugs of anti-freeze flying all over). The one fell right over on the bike's front end. The wind passed, the employees hustled around shutting down all the power and warning away customers ... then the straight-line winds came back again from the opposite direction. Those eventually died, too. Well, the weight of the Coke machine now had the bike firmly pinned underneath it and too heavy to move. Eventually a WalMart manager brought a forklift all they way across the parking lot, took pictures of the bike and its predicament with his camera-phone (Bluetooth, so he got us the pictures right away at WalMart's photo center), and then gently lifted the Coke machine off the bike until two of us could pull it out from underneath.
Rolled the bike backward to let Joyce see the front end alignment and the tire - looked okay so far. Rode it up and down the WalMart parking lot 4-5 times to see how it felt - Forklift driver (a fellow biker) watched and said the front end looked perfectly square alignment-wise, so still looking good so far. Rode it the rest of the way home at 50-55 mph and still didn't feel anything wrong - no wobbling or pulling. Rode it to work this AM at 60-65 mph, still no problem. I believe I dodged the bullet, but I'll be taking it to D/FW Honda and have them check out the front end just to be sure. Like I said, no apparent damage to anything on the bike ... or the rider (not counting a thorough soaking and scrambled nerves.)
... and that's the whole story.
