I almost lost it. It was one of those moments when time seems to expand. I watched myself do all the wrong things going too fast through an S on Wildcat Canyon Road.

I went into a left turn too hot and hit my brakes just a bit too hard. I panicked and left the brakes on too long into the turn. My rear wheel locked up, then I let off and my bike stood up abruptly about halfway through. Now I'm in the dirt shoulder on the outside of the turn heading straight to the edge of a stone wall. The bike starts to shake and I'm thinking that I'm going to crash big time, but by some miracle, I just miss the stone wall. Now I've got to make an abrupt right turn, which I take wide into the opposite lane. Again luck was on my side and there were no cars coming from the other direction.

"Man, your leg just missed that wall!" my riding companion said later as we stopped. Yeah - my leg between a stone wall and a speeding motorcycle. It probably would have been mangled beyond recognition, and wouldn't you know it, for once I wasn't wearing my riding gear.

How did I get myself in this situation. I always though of myself as a mild mannered rider, not inclined to bad-boy antics. But there I was, trying to show off with a pace that was way beyond my abilities. I was surprised that I would be so susceptible to that competitive, testosterone-driven urge to be fast, but there I was, and it nearly got me hurt.

It wasn't that my bike was too much to handle. I could have put myself in the same situation riding a bike with half the power of my SV. No, it was that itch to push the boundaries, and that itch got a little nudge by riding with a really fast sportbike rider. My riding companion for that day had years of experience and he was on a fast, albeit old, sportbike. Somehow, I felt I had to ride up to his level, but it was not in the cards. After that near accident, he was gracious and explained that everyone falls. "Heck, I fall all the time and it's really nothing to feel bad about" he chided. "Besides, you didn't really fall - almost did. You put on a good show, though". But in the back of my mind, through the embarrassment, I kept thinking how I really was out of control both mentally and physically.

Back home, I'm reading the February 2003 issue of Sport Rider magazine. There is a great article in the back called "Morotcycling's Dirty Little Secret" by Jeff Hughes. In this article, Jeff writes about those very issues I was contemplating after my little "almost accident". He discusses how we tend to want to be competitive among our peers and how this can be the source of some serious problems for sportbike riders. I won't try to reproduce the article here, but it is well worth the read. Jeff doesn't have any earth-shattering answers, other than to say that we need to be responsible riders. Responsibility is an easy concept to understand, and all too easy to forget. Sometimes it takes a near miss to really bring that concept home. Hopefully, I won't forget to be a responsible rider the next time I'm out riding with my buddies, if only to keep my own hide safe!

George